)
search-1
search-1 Search
Located in the UK Located in the UK
Located in the USA Located in the USA
Located in Europe Located in Europe

Commissioned by Cork International Festival

  • SATB
  • James Clarence Mangan

Programme Note

Siberia is the second of three choruses to words by James Clarence Mangan, the Dublin-born poet (1803-49), whose life was a catalogue of personal misfortune characteristic of the wilder Romantic spirits. His poetry is immensely vivid in imagery, and yet, at its best, wonderfully controlled in structure and flow. The three choruses (Motet and Visions are the others) are designed both as a single set, the Mangan Triptych, and as separate works - Siberia was commissioned by the Cork International Choral Festival and first performed there in 1980 by the William Byrd Singers of Manchester, conducted by Stephen Wilkinson.

Mangan's particular obsession with death, pain, and the implacable forces of nature, is given full rein in this poem, but it is slightly more intimate in tone than some of his other work, something reflected in the musical setting. The piece is predominantly slow, with a couple of quicker passages, and the governing mood of doom-laden bleakness is sustained throughout.

© Copyright 2001 by John McCabe

Media

McCabe: Siberia

Discography

A Celebration of Stephen Wilkinson

A Celebration of Stephen Wilkinson
  • Label
    Prima Facie Records
  • Catalogue Number
    PFCD147
  • Conductor
    Stephen Wilkinson
  • Ensemble
    BBC Northern Singers / William Byrd Singers
  • Released
    2021

Requiem Sequence and other works

Requiem Sequence and other works
  • Label
    Prima Facie Records
  • Catalogue Number
    PFCD044
  • Conductor
    Nicholas Ward
  • Ensemble
    Northern Chamber Orchestra
  • Soloist
    Lesley-Jane Rogers, soprano; Richard Uttley, piano; Wiliam Byrd Singers; Stephen Wilkinson, conductor; John Turner, recorder
  • Released
    2016