Bath Bach Choir’s summer concert is an uplifting celebration of familiar and less familiar psalms: the poems, songs and prayers from the Old Testament that provide us with uniquely poetic depictions of praise, faith and hope.

The centrepiece of our concert is Leonard Bernstein’s magical Chichester Psalms, his setting of six psalms that was commissioned by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival. Serenely blending biblical Hebrew verse with Christian choral tradition, the Chichester Psalms was the composer’s implicit plea for brotherhood and peace for displaced and troubled peoples. Its final lines give us a vision of a better future: ‘Behold how good and how pleasant it is, for brethren to live together in unity.’ The performance will be accompanied by The Facade Ensemble, specialists in 20th-century repertoire, playing organ, harp and percussion in a pared-down orchestration produced by Bernstein himself.