Description
Hepplewhite, Russell: Leaving
Ref
W245
Categories
Choral Music
,
Latest Titles
,
MultiBuy
By
Russell Hepplewhite
Words by
Pam Ayres
SATB and piano
Duration: 4’15”
To leave will be the hardest part,
This richest life, it breaks my heart
In Pam Ayres’s moving idyll
Leaving
, the past imbues the present with a sense of life’s brevity. Fondly remembering a well-trodden countryside footpath where the ‘cowslips dance and harebells blow’, the poet longs to return to ‘A little stream that quiet lies, / With water voles and dragonflies’. The nostalgia is echoed and intensified by music of exceptional subtlety and beauty. The poem closes with a meditation on those most precious, intrinsic bonds of familial love, while the music, in increasingly diaphanous textures, is at its most affecting. With poignant lyrics from one of the nation’s favourite living poets,
Leaving
would make an apt conclusion to a reflective or valedictory programme, since words and music continue to resonate well beyond the final double bar.
Leaving
is one of ten new poems commissioned and set to music by Russell Hepplewhite in his landmark choral anthology
Living Voices
, published by Stainer & Bell. See
here
for more information on the other pieces in the collection.
Leaving
is also the final poem in Pam Ayres’s collection
Doggedly Onward
, published in 2024 by Ebury.
First performed on 10 May 2025 by Gloucester Choral Society, conducted by Adrian Partington
This title is available either as a printed edition (delivered by post) or as a licensed digital download (minimum 8 copies).
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