The National Youth Choir (15-18 years), conductor Neil Ferris, is presenting Heart and Soul, a programme exploring themes of life, friendship, courage and love through the voices of different composers from a mix of cultures, places and eras on Good Friday (18 April 2025) at Albert Hall Conference Centre in Nottingham. As part of a diverse programme that includes Laura Mvula, Brahms, Parry and Stevie Wonder, the choir will be performing Bernard Hughes‘ Hear My Heart Sing about the the biology and imagery of the heart.
For a new piece of unaccompanied choral music, Hughes’ piece has something of a history. He wrote it in 2024 for the Bath choir Lucis who workshopped the piece and then premiered in July 2024 conducted by Francis Faux. In a nice piece of circularity the commission was supported by a grant from the Francis Routh Trust and Bernard Hughes studied composition with Francis Routh as a teenager.
Last week, Hear My Heart Sing had its London premiere at a concert given by the choir Londinium, conductor Andrew Griffiths. The good news is that Hughes has made a recording of the piece with the Epiphoni Consort and you can hear the recording on YouTube, and there are plans for a sampler of Hughes’ music.
Hear My Heart Sing sets words by writer Helen Eastman with whom Bernard Hughes has collaborated a lot. The piece combines ideas of the joy of singing with the rhythms and imagery of the human heart. It is part of Hughes project to write more fast music! Hughes’ fast music includes Birdchant which was written for the BBC Singers at the BBC Proms in 2021 [see YouTube]
He explains, “I think there is a dearth of really good fast choral music these days, amid all the Whitacre and Lauridsen meditative stuff – which I like, which has its place, but I think dominates a bit.” These thoughts were generated by a passing comment by the conductor Robert Hollingworth on the excellent podcast Choral Chihuahua, in an episode about fast choral music, when he asked rhetorically why there had never been a choral equivalent of John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
The result was Hear My Heart Sing, a piece that is fast, punchy, rhythmic, a bravura showpiece that could begin or end concerts. The work is available from Wild Woods Music, full details of the National Youth Choir’s concert from their website.
