The Toronto Consort: Rejoice in the Lamb

Paul Agnew and Daniel Taylor conduct an exceptional New Year ensemble of artists from the Toronto Consort, and the Schola Cantorum. Transcending liturgical propriety, this program features works setting texts ranging from the ecstatic to the apocalyptic, the sublime to the silence of mourning, the universal to the intensely personal.

Composed in 1943, Rejoice in the Lamb is a brilliant and deeply spiritual cantata. Setting the eccentric and devastating text of 18th-century poet Christopher Smart, Britten masterfully blends mystical, child-like innocence with profound emotional intensity. The Consort programs this piece in a broader thematic program of carols promising a dramatic, staggering performance of complex, shifting moods. Taylor has made it the end piece of an ancient and modern Nativity programme (plainchant in glorious contrast to Medieval and Renaissance carols and works by Howells, Leighton, and Pärt).