Ticket Price
£5 - £30
A transaction fee of up to £3.95 may apply.
Performance Dates
Sat 16th May 2026
Category
Two titans of the Guildford music scene are reunited in this uplifting summer concert of joyful choral and orchestral works.
Haydn - Te Deum in C
Dvorak - Symphony no 8
Puccini - Messa di Gloria
Puccini, nowadays universally thought of as Mr Grand Italian Opera, in fact hailed from a renowned line of church musicians and might have written a great deal of religious music but for the siren call of the stage. His Messa di Gloria was originally a graduation exercise, but is an astonishingly mature and assured work. A relentlessly cheerful piece that fully deserves its ‘glorious’ nickname, the sentiment might be religious but the style is undeniably operatic, with choruses as grand as anything in Tosca or La Boheme and soloists given generous roles by one of the finest ever writers for the human voice.
Although one of classical music’s great practical jokers, the amiable Haydn was also a deeply religious man who signed every score with a dedication ‘to the glory of God’. His Te Deum in C was written in his maturity after a long line of famous mass settings, shortly before he embarked on the Creation. It is written for an unusually large orchestra for the time, with a panoply of trumpets and trombones deployed to underline its joyous, exultant message.
Dvorak’s 8th Symphony has long been one of the most beloved of his works by musicians and audiences alike. Lyrical and full of sunshine, from the soaring cello opening it showcases both his masterful orchestration and his supreme genius for melody, packing almost as many memorable tunes into one piece as other composers managed in a lifetime.
