December 4th 1999

7:30pm, St Peter's Church, Acton Green, Southfield Road, Chiswick, London, W4

Five Holy Sonnets of John Donne for Tenor and Piano Quintet – Alistair Jones

• Deryck Webb – Tenor
• Alistair Jones – Piano
• Rivelin String Quartet

Originally this work was written for Baritone and Piano. It was re-written in the late 1970s for the present forces as a companion piece to Vaughan Williams's "On Wenlock Edge". The first performance was given by Alastair Thompson at a Bristol Cathedral School subscription concert in 1978. In 1984 the Sonnets were performed at the South Bank's Purcell Room, again by Alastair Thompson, with an enthusiastic reception by both audience and national press. This is Deryck Webb's first performance of these songs, though he is one of the composer's favourite singers, being the dedicatee of two other works – David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan and the Thomas Hardy song cycle The Year's Awakening.

Petite Messe Solennelle – Gioachino Rossini

• Louise Hillier – Soprano
• Louise Tucker – Mezzo Soprano
• Deryck Webb – Tenor
• William Peel – Baritone
• Alexis Affonso and Tschong-Hie Kong – Pianos
• Jan Cunningham – Harmonium

This mass, Rossini's last large scale work, comes from the period in which the composer produced what he described as his péchés de vieillesse, his "sins of old age". These "sinful" pieces were on a small scale – chamber works, arias and piano pieces. The Mass was written during the composer's summer vacation in Passy in 1863 and the chamber music style of the accompaniment (two pianos and harmonium), together with the bright and cheerful choral writing gives the Mass a clear affinity with the péchés de vieillesse.

Rossini spent a great deal of time and effort on the Mass, however, and two inscriptions in his manuscript are, on the one hand amusing and serious on the other. The composer states that the Mass was composed for "Twelve singers of three sexes – men, women and castrati …eight for the chorus, four for the solos, a total of twelve cherubim." After making comparison between his twelve and the Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper, Rossini assures God that "there will be no Judas at my supper and that mine will sign properly and con amore your praises and the little composition which is, alas, the final sin of my old age."

The Petite Messe Solennelle was an immediate success after its first (and private) performance and was repeated publicly to great acclaim. Rossini was urged to orchestrate the mass for larger forces but this version remained unperformed at his death in 1868. The first version with its original writing for two pianos and harmonium shows that in his later years, Rossini had lost none of his wit and skill and the work is a delight and rewarding experience for all performers, instrumental, solo vocal and choral.