JENKINS The Armed Man
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No 9

Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man (A Mass for Peace) is a powerful and compelling account of the descent into and terrible consequences of war.  The work was commissioned for the millennium by Britain’s Royal Armouries and is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis.  It is a comtemporary example of a mass based on the fifteenth century French song L’Homme Armé.  For this performance the HMS chorus will be enhanced by a student choir from local schools.

Shostakovich wrote his 9^th Symphony for a small orchestra with no chorus and no soloists unlike his previous two symphonies.  He was 45 and composing in1945.  Some thought he was being mischievous writing so differently from Beethoven (no large orchestra and no ‘Ode to Joy’).   Or was this symphony a defiant attitude to the end of the trauma of the Second World War?

The concert is conducted by James Ross.

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