Past Performances

Shakespeare in Song
St Andrew's Church, Shottery
Saturday 15th June 2024 at 7:30pm

A review of this concert is now available on the News and Reviews page

Our summer concerts are an opportunity to sing something different, and this summer we have a more relaxed and less formal programme than our usual classical fare. We are singing songs by contemporary composers setting words by William Shakespeare.. The principal work will be a jazzy compilation of songs and sonnets by George Shearing.

The programme will include

• Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare by George Shearing
• 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows' by Sarah Quartel
• 'If music be the food of love' by Richard Allain
• 'The bird of dawning' by Bob Chilcott
• ‘Touch her soft lips and part’ by William Walton

Conductor: Oliver Neal Parker
Accompanist: Rachel Bird


 

Our concert on March 23^rd featured the wonderful Mozart Requiem. Written at the very end of Mozart's life, and left unfinished, we sang the version completed by Franz Süssmayr.

The evening started with Haydn's fiery motet Insane et Vanae Curae. Originally part of Haydn’s first oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobia (The Return of Tobias), Haydn extracted this fine choral piece, rewrote the liberetto in Latin, and revised it as a stand-alone work. This is the version we shall be performing in the concert.

Two short but well known Mozart choral works, the Ave Verum Corpus and Laudate Dominum, were topped and tailed by two fine orchestral pieces.

You can read a review of the concert here.

Samson by G F Handel

Saturday 18th November 2023 at 7:30 pm

Holy Trinity Church, Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6BG

Stratford Choral Society was excited to perform Samson for the first time in more than ten years. With a cast of six soloists and a large orchestra, it was a memorable musical occasion.

Two of our original soloists had to drop out at very short notice and we were very fortunate to get two excellent replacements - Tom Randle (Tenor) as Samson and Francis Gush (Countertenor) as Micah. Tom Randle is a well known opera singer and Handel specialist, and has recorded Samson with The Sixteen. Francis Gush is a new star in the opera world, recently getting high priase for his performance as Cesar in English Touring Opera's Giulio Cesare by Handel. Our sincere thanks to them both for stepping in at such short notice.

Samson is considered one of Handel’s finest dramatic works, telling the biblical tale of Samson and the destruction of the Philistine Temple of Dagon. Written shortly after Handel transitioned from writing operas to oratorios, it has characteristics of both. It is usually performed as an oratorio but on occasions has been staged as an opera.

The libretto by Newburgh Hamilton is based on Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes rather than the Biblical text. The chorus’s role is similar to a Greek chorus in that it sets the scene, offers moral comments, describes the action in thrilling detail and thus gives a backdrop to the various soloists whose characters are vividly portrayed through Handel’s dramatic writing.

Samson was written immediately after Handel finished writing the Messiah in 1741 and was first performed at Covent Garden Theatre in London in 1743. It was an immediate success with seven performances in its first season, the most in a single season of any of his oratorios. Samson retained its popularity throughout Handel's lifetime and has since then never fallen out of favour.

Our six soloists were

• Tom Randle (Tenor) as Samson
• Francis Gush (Countertenor) as Micah
• Hugo Herman-Wilson (Bass) as Manoah
• Eugene Dillon-Hooper (Bass) as Harapha
• Hannah Davey (Soprano) as Dalilah,
• Kari Moffatt (Soprano) as Dalilah’s handmaid. 

Music for a Summer's Evening – a concert of English songs and madrigals

17th June 2023 at 7:30PM

St Andrew’s Church, Church Lane, Shottery, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 9HQ

This year, Stratford Choral Society did something new. We extended our singing season beyond Easter, with an informal Summer concert in June.

What's on the programme?

With the sap rising and birds singing, summer is a time for madrigals and songs heralding the summer.

The centrepiece of our concert was a new four-part arrangement of Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Our Music Director writes:

“When I was at school I played the cello, and one of the first classical albums I bought was Jacqueline du Pré’s recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. On the ‘B’ side is Janet Baker’s sublime performance of Elgar’s Sea Pictures which, combined with the exquisite playing from the London Symphony Orchestra under Barbirolli, remains one of the great recordings of this masterpiece. The way the composer responds to the poetry and weaves together recurring themes is wonderfully satisfying.

"Donald Fraser’s arrangement allows all voice types to enjoy performing every note – not just low contraltos who also have a top A! The arrangement was commissioned by the Elgar Festival in Worcestershire, and has also been recorded by the English Symphony Orchestra and the Rodolphus Choir.”

This was complemented by a programme of traditional songs and madrigals, many of which celebrate romantic love.

• Now is the Month of Maying (Thomas Morley)

• Come Again, Sweer Love! (John Dowland)

• The Silver Swan (Orlando Gibbons)

• Fair Phylllis (John Farmer)

• As Torrents in Summer (Edward Elgar)

• The Blue Bird (Charles Villiers Stanford)

• Linden Lea (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

• Draw on, Sweet Night (John Wilbye)

Why not taste a madrigal by listening to the marvellous voice of Jon Rippe as he sings all four voices of Come Again, Sweet Love.

The programme featured John Rutter’s exciting Gloria, first performed in 1974. Written for choir, brass ensemble and either organ or full orchestra, it is a vibrant and compelling work. The composer described the character of the three movements as "exalted, devotional and jubilant" and the interplay between brass ensemble and choir is at times punchy and incisive, and in the middle movement gentle and restrained. You can hear influences of Walton, Vaughan Williams and Ravel, to name a few.

A concert featuring some of Haydn's and Mendelssohn's greatest choral music

Haydn's Theresienmesse is one of his six great masses written for the Prince Esterhartzy. It demonstrates a fusion of exuberance, originality, classical elegance and intellectual power which explains to a large extent the compelling appeal of his music. These are the qualities that placed Haydn far and away above the level of all except Mozart amongst his contemporaries, and which kept him at the forefront of music during most of the eighteenth century.

Mendelssohn described the Lobgesang (or Hymn of Praise) as a ‘symphonic cantata’, possibly to avoid comparisons with Beethoven’s ninth symphony, though the two works have little in common other than the simple fact that they are both choral symphonies.  The choral sections are clearly influenced by Bach’s example in the layout of recitatives, arias and choruses, the fugal writing of the opening and closing choruses, and the use of the Lutheran chorale ‘Nun Danket alle Gott’ (Now thank we all our God). The whole symphony is, however, unmistakably Mendelssohn.

Both of the pieces are wonderfully uplifting and should make for a thrilling concert performance.

This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Willias, one of England's great composers. Our concert includes three of his best known choral works, along with music from two of his contemporaries - Edward Elgar and Gerald Finzi.

Dona Nobis Pacem is a fiercly anti-war cantata. Vaughan Williams served throughout the First World War, initially as a front-line ambulance driver and later in the artillery. The horrors of war made a lasting impression on him, and he composed little in the years immediately afterwards. In 1936, with war clouds gathering again over Europe, he wrote his passionate plea for peace -  Dona Nobis Pacem - "Give us Peace".

The sublime Serenade to Music, written in 1938, is maybe Vaughan Williams' best known choral work. Reminiscent in places of The Lark Ascending, it sets to music Shakepeare's words from The Merchant of Venice. The profound beauty of both the words and the music in this piece have made it a favourite among performers and audiences alike.

Also setting Shakespeare's words to Music, Geral Finzi's Let us Garlands Bring is a setting of five songs to to music for solo Baritone. Finzi was a young protegé of Vaughan Williams and this is maybe his best known vocal composition.

See the concert review in News