The best of Britten for Bach Choir at St Albans Abbey

AN unfairly neglected work by Mozart and a sparkling Britten cantata are being performed in St Albans Abbey on Saturday by the St Albans Bach Choir. Music director Andrew Lucas said of Mozart s Davide Penitente: Mozart composed some of his most glorious

AN unfairly neglected work by Mozart and a sparkling Britten cantata are being performed in St Albans Abbey on Saturday by the St Albans Bach Choir.

Music director Andrew Lucas said of Mozart's Davide Penitente: "Mozart composed some of his most glorious and sublime music in the final years of his life and Davide Penitente is a notable example.

"It shares its music with his uncompleted project of a grand mass on a large scale (the Mass in C minor) but here set to words from the Book of Psalms in an Italian translation."

The choir is also performing Britten's St Nicholas and Andrew described the composer as, "perhaps the nearest Britain has come to Mozart in the present generation."

He added: "St Nicholas is wonderful and immediate in appeal and has seasonal appropriateness in preparation for Christmas."

Top soprano Lucy Crowe is joining regular soloists Deborah Miles-Johnson, mezzo soprano, and Jeremy Budd, tenor, for the concert.

Boy choristers from St Albans Cathedral Choir and girl choristers from the Abbey Girls' Choir will be providing music from above when they form the Gallery Choir in the Britten work which also gives the audience a chance to join in with the well-known hymns that end each half.

Sinfonia Verdi will once again accompany the choir in the concert which starts at 7.30pm.

Tickets at �27, �22, �16 and unreserved at �7 are available from the Abbey Information Desk on 01727 890256.