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Light shines through tears in a concert with a luxurious line-up of VOCES8, the Academey of Ancient Music and Robert Hollingworth at the Milton Abbey Music Festival in Dorset. 

After the overload of concerts and carol singing around Christmas, most choirs have a well-deserved break before starting for another year, but not Vivamus. This young London-based choir entered 2013 in style with a candlelit concert for Epiphany. The concert’s main advertised work was Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, with other composers on the programme including Leighton, Howells and Whitacre.

The theme of tonight’s concert, revealed the programme notes, was that of “marking time and preserving timeless values” – Christmas being a season that connects the past with the present.

There’s a trend amongst programmers nowadays to provide concerts with a ‘hook’: an extra-musical incentive to pull the punters in, or at least help performers pinpoint their pieces.