‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Join us in the beautiful setting of Gorton Monastery for an afternoon that evokes an emotional journey of grief, beauty, and loving and losing. 

Lost Beauty is a continuous journey through music inspired by love and loss, from Shostakovich’s moving tribute to a lost friend to Strauss’s heart-stopping Metamorphosen, written as a farewell to a world changed forever during the blackest days of World War II. Along the way, Dvořák’s Nocturno and Erkki-Sven Tüür’s powerful Action–Passion–Illusion lead us through moments of tenderness, turbulence and hope.

The concert flows without applause, creating space for the music and the silence between it to speak. A short reading from Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. opens the evening, which was written over the course of sixteen years, and records the grief that Tennyson felt in response to the sudden death of his close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam.

Set against the calm, breathtaking beauty of The Monastery, Lost Beauty is both performance and contemplation, an invitation to pause, listen and feel.

Book tickets >

Programme

• Shostakovich Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11: No1. Prelude.
• Dvorak String Quintet in G major, Op. 77, B.49: II. Intermezzo/Nocturno Op. 18 
• Tüür ‘Action-Passion-Illusion’: I. Action
• Tüür ‘Action-Passion-Illusion’: II. Passion
• Strauss Metamorphosen TrV290 (Septet version)
• Zawadzki Low Sun; Lovely Pink Light arr. 

Performed by

• Caroline Pether Director
• Manchester Camerata
• Professional Experience Scheme (PES) students from RNCM