BBC Singers Lunchtime Concert by Davies, Tavener, Nørgård, Porter, Grieg, Petrassi, De (2014/2014), Director musical David Hill, St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, United Kingdom

For their second featured concert in the Festival, the BBC Singers bring us an eclectic mix of choral music for lunchtime remembering two eminent British composers and celebrating the birthday of a third. Tavener’s iconic music is intense and meditative with the Song for Athene reaching millions when it was performed at the funeral of Princess Diana. Richard Rodney Bennett’s arrangement reveals the jazzier side of this composer’s wildly talented personality and Peter Maxwell Davies’ haunting and evocative settings sit alongside the extraordinary theatricality of the Dane, Nørgård.