Tenebrae and Britten Sinfonia: Seven Last Words

Barber’s Adagio and Allegri’s Miserere prepare the way for James MacMillan’s great Passion meditation, in this emotionally-charged evening from Nigel Short and Tenebrae.

For Sir James MacMillan, “beauty is at the heart of our Christian faith”, and few living composers communicate with such emotional directness – taking ancient texts and charging them with a wholly original intensity, wonder and imaginative fire. Composed in 1994, his Seven Last Words have already become a classic. Now, on the eve of Holy Week, they form a passionate climax to an superbly-imagined sequence of musical meditations from Nigel Short, the Britten Sinfonia and Tenebrae  – the virtuoso British chamber choir whose singing was described by one critic as “a kind of musical miracle”.