I’m delighted to say that the premiere of Two Souls (2019 rev.2022) at this years Three Choirs Festival in Belmont Abbey, Hereford was a great success!
Below are two reviews of the work:
“The Three Choirs Festival’s main evening concerts are usually staged inside the host City’s cathedral, yet the most intriguing and rewarding repertoire can sometimes be found in the programmes of morning and afternoon recitals which take place in other local venues. This year’s event, based in and around Hereford, featured a couple of notable examples.
A morning concert in Belmont Abbey on 26 July was devoted to the first performance of the recently revised version of Robert Peate’s Two Souls. The composer told us in a brief pre-concert address that he had significantly trimmed the score since its premiere in Hereford in 2019. That event was billed as a ‘composition workshop’, so it can be assumed that the work’s current incarnation is the official version. As it now stands, the piece is scored for two narrators, chamber choir, four harps and organ; in addition, some members are asked to play harmonicas of varying keys. It tells the story of two women of Alexandria: the first, Hypatia (c.355-415) was the earliest-known female mathematician and philosopher, who was brutally murdered by an extremist gang of early Christians; the second, Saint Katherine, was a pagan princess who converted to Christianity before her martyrdom at the hands of emperor Maxentius. The two stories are entwined for the duration of the work, each narrator representing one of the two women and the music pointing up differences and connections between them. The choir acts as a sort of Greek chorus, underlining the themes of the piece, such as globalisation, religious fundamentalism and feminism. Including extracts from ancient and modern sources, the text is succinct and descriptive, devastatingly so when relating the savage deaths of both women in the closing section.
Robert Peate exploited the mystic, sanctifying qualities of the harp to good effect, the four instruments being used imaginatively throughout, either in expressive, intricate solo lines or as a sonorous duet or quartet. Harpists Esther Beyer, Anne Denholm, Gabriella Jones and Anwen Thomas revelled in this opportunity to take centre stage (literally) and rewarded the composer with playing of considerable poetry and refinement. The choral music depicting and commenting upon Hypatia was Eastern-sounding and often introspective, while the choral music for Katherine was more wide-ranging, taking in plainchant and twentieth-century influences. Conducted by their music director Simon Harper, Hereford Chamber Choir savoured their crucial role, whether floating mesmeric elucidations of the narrative or heightening emotional tension with piercing outbursts. Tim Bannerman and Hilary Markland articulated the spoken text with admirably clear enunciation and a keen sense of theatre, and the contributions of organist Sam Bayliss subtly reinforced the music’s timeless atmosphere.
At just over an hour’s duration, Two Souls is a sizeable statement, yet such is its fluency and integrity that the overall impression is one of distillation and economy of gesture. Britten’s church parables were called to mind, not just by the spare and effective scoring, but also because the unconventional colours and textures seemed to evolve naturally out of the unusual performing forces required. Thanks in no small measure to its discerning eclecticism, the music conjured up a valid and highly individual sound-world, which unfolded with a powerful sense of inevitability. Not quite a full-blown oratorio, nor yet a bona fide cantata, Two Souls stands apart, Sui genesis, as a dramatic and directly communicative religious work of substance and resonance.”
Paul Conway, Musical Opinion Quarterly
“Heard near by in the Benedictine Belmont Abbey, Two Souls, by Robert Peate, is a fascinating exposé (for four harps, organ, a pair of narrators, and chamber choir) of the lives of two fourth-century figures from ancient Alexandria: the martyr St Katherine and the neoplatonist sage Hypatia. With six pages of text, yet here surprisingly not too sprawling, interspersed with “a kind of Greek chorus”, deliberately hybrid in musical style, with at its heart Wesley’s hymn Hereford (“O thou who camest from above”), it is hugely unusual and intriguing, mapping out its highly affecting, intermingled duple story.”
Roderic Dunnet, Church Times
Score available here