SONG RECITAL - CLARE COLLEGE CHAPEL

CLARE COLLEGE CHAPEL
Trinity Lane, Cambridge
FRIDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2007
6 pm

SONG RECITAL
ALISON SMART - soprano
KATHARINE DURRAN - piano

Free entrance

PROGRAMME
FRANCIS POULENC - Airs Chantees
DIANA BURRELL - Longtemps ce fut l'ete
TARIK O'REGAN - Sainte
HUGH WOOD - Alicante
MATYAS SEIBER - Quatre Chansons, Populaires Francaises
GABRIEL FAURE - Mai, Reve d'amour, Le Papillon et la Fleur
BOB CHILCOTT - L'enfant dort
HOWARD SKEMPTON - Le pont Mirabeau
LAURENCE CRANE - Tour de France, Statistics 1903 - 2003
MATYAS SEIBER - The Owl and the Pussycat


ALISON SMART & KATHARINE DURRAN are the leading voice/piano duo in their field. Since her appointment to the BBC Singers in 1996, Alison Smart has regularly broadcast as soloist and has acquired unrivalled experience of a vast range of music through working with the world's greatest composers and conductors.

Katharine Durran is recognised as solo pianist, exponent of new music, song accompanist and chamber musician. Alison and Katharine have recorded together extensively and performed live on Radio 3.

Their recital disc Peripheral Visions was chosen by the Sunday Times as their CD Pick of the Week, several of their commissioned songs have been broadcast and Tarik O'Regan's song Sainte , which Southbank Publishing forms part of New French Song , won the vocal category of the British Composers' Award.


CLARE COLLEGE CHAPEL
There has been a chapel on this site since the 14th Century. The present building dates from 1763 and was designed by Sir James Burroughs and James Essex. Its special features are the coffered ceiling vault, based on the nave vault of St Peter's in Rome & the altar reredos (based on that in Il Gesu, Rome) containing a painting of the Annunciation (1763) by Cipriani, an Italian working in London. Perhaps the most impressive feature is the octagonal ante-chapel, linking the Chapel to the Court.The great organ is by von Beckerath of Hamburg, and the chamber organ (1762 ) is by Snetzler, one of only half a dozen in the UK.

CLARE COLLEGE
Clare College was founded as University Hall in 1326 and re-endowed by Lady Elizabeth de Clare, a granddaughter of King Edward 1. She had been widowed three times before the age of 28 and gave the rest of her life to her estates & endownents. Her purpose was to replenish the ranks of courtiers, lawyers & clergy after the losses of the Black Death. Her statutes provided for the first college community to be composed of Master, Fellows & Scholars. From 1339 the College was known as Clare Hall until the change of name to College in 1856 In 1964 the college founded a research institution which took the name Clare Hall.

The college is based on three sites - the Old Court, built through the troubled 17th Century, and accessed by Grumbold's stone bridge over the Cam, the oldest surviving crossing; Memorial Court containing the College library and built to commemorate the dead in the two World Wars; and the colony, a collection of residential buildings on Castle Hill. The Great Hall of Clare (1692) contains portraits of alumni including Townshead, Chancellor of the Exchequer when the taxes which sparked the Boston Tea Party were imposed, and Lord Cornwallis, commander of the British Forces which surrendered to the American colonists at Yorktown.

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