Featuring music by Elgar, Finzi and Vaughan Williams. It is no exaggeration to describe Portsmouth Choral Union’s November concert as a ‘Choral Extravaganza’ featuring as it does two major choral works by British composers: one quite familiar, the other less well known.  Joining them in this concert will be the London based ‘Medici Choir’ with whom PCU performed Verdi’s Requiem in London, in 2023.  Vaughan Williams’s Towards the Unknown Region, first performed at the Leeds festival in 1907 sets a text by Walt Whitman and was written around the same time as his mighty Sea Symphony(1907) - also with a text by Whitman, this was his first major choral piece and a great success at its first performance.  Their less well-known offering will be Gerald Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality, a major work for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra using a text of the same name by William Wordsworth. As with the music of Vaughan Williams, Finzi’s style is melodic, harmonic and dramatic and this work is known for its contrasts of pastoral lyricism, stylish word setting and intense emotion, which the composers uses to explore the theme of childhood, lost innocence and immortality.  Alongside these two stunning choral works internationally acclaimed and award-winning cellists Pavlos Carvalho will perform Elgar’s ever popular ‘Cello Concerto’.   This stunning programme, performed by the combined forces of two major choral societies and featuring one of the most well-known of concertos in the Cello repertoire is not to be missed.      Buy tickets here.