Is there a more soul-soaring opening in all music than Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs? “Rise heart; thy Lord is risen,” exhorts George Herbert’s verse with wonderful simplicity, and the music follows without question.

Five Mystical Songs and The Da Vinci Requiem – Wimbledon Choral Society
Royal Festival Hall, London

Dialogues des Carmélites
Met Live, various venues

Is there a more soul-soaring opening in all music than Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs? “Rise heart; thy Lord is risen,” exhorts George Herbert’s verse with wonderful simplicity, and the music follows without question. Pulsing strings set up an expectation that is gloriously, ecstatically fulfilled by the solo baritone. His first phrase soars skywards – a joyous summons to the chorus who follow close behind.

It’s an extraordinary musical moment, a symbolic start to a song-cycle that traces two very different experiences of faith. What starts off as an isolated, individual experience, a single man’s struggle to sing the praise of God, is swelled by the end into a collective shout, “Let all the world in every corner sing” – a triumphant hymn to the power of shared belief.

That theme ran right through Wimbledon Choral Society and the Philharmonia Orchestra’s concert (7 May), with Williams’ cycle set alongside the world premiere of a new requiem by British composer Cecilia McDowall. The pairing celebrated McDowall’s roots in the English choral tradition, drawing out the musical threads between her sweeping musical gestures and the generosity of Williams, as well as Elgar and Parry before him.
The relationship between soloist and chorus is absolutely at the heart of the Williams.

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