Handel
Jephtha
Available from FCS Box Office: 0207 263 3358
98 Fortis Green Rd. N10 3HN. 0208 883 5631
FINCHLEY CHORAL SOCIETY
Spring Concert Saturday 24th March 2012
Finchley Choral Society’s spring concert will feature a selection of ‘British Choral Classics’ including ‘The Blue Bird’ by Stanford, ‘I Was Glad’ by Parry (which was sung at The Royal Wedding in 2011), partsongs by Vaughan Williams and Finzi and ‘Old Joe has gone fishing’ by Britten.
This is from Act 1 Scene 2 of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. The scene is set in the village pub, the Boar, while a violent storm rages outside. Grimes the fisherman, regarded as an outsider and object of suspicion by the villagers, enters and sings a visionary and mystifying aria “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades”.He is attacked by one of the villagers, but another villager, to calm the tension, starts up the sea-shanty “Old Joe has gone fishing”, which takes on the form of a round as the others join in.
FCS will also perform ‘The Gallant Weaver’, a setting of the Burns poem by MacMillan, which echoes the wistful dreamlike nature of the country side evoked in the poem, and another partsong (a style related to madrigals) - ‘As Torrents in Summer’ by Elgar. The text is by Longfellow and the gentle harmonies evoke the soft fall of summer rain , building up like the rush of strong water before gently receding.
An evening of beautiful and lyrical choral music conducted by Finchley Choral Society’s Musical Director Grace Rossiter, accompanied by Organist Richard Harvey.
FCS was founded over one hundred years ago to give local people the opportunity to take part in high quality music making. It is now a thriving community choir presenting 3-4 concerts a year. The choir will be returning to the Free Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb. This impressive Grade I listed building, built by architect Edwin Lutyens in a similar style to St Jude’s, is one of the choir’s regular concert venues.
‘This concert will have done much to confirm Finchley’s deserved and growing reputation. Rossiter is giving them the confidence to grow and the opportunity to take risks...’
David Winskill (Ham & High) on Beethoven’s Mass in C
Saturday 24th March 2012
Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church,
Central Square, London NW11 7AG at 7.45pm
Stanford The Blue Bird
Parry I was Glad
MacMillan The Gallant Weaver
Vaughan Williams Three Elizabethan Songs
The Spirit of the Lord
Britten Old Joe has gone fishing
Finzi Seven part-songs - selection
Howells Like as the Hart
Grace Rossiter Conductor
Richard Harvey Organ
Tickets £13.00 / £7.00 students/ £1.00 children
Tickets are available from the FCS box office 020 7263 3358, FCS members, on the door, or from Les Aldrich Music, 98 Fortis Green Road, N10 3HN.
photo: Simon Weir-www.simonweir.com
Breathtaking sounds for the choir
make evening one to remember
Saturday 9th July 2011
Finchley Choral Society
The Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill
Carmina Burana, Carl Orff
On the beach at night, Richard James Harvey
For many people Carmina Burana will ever be associated with a TV ad for Old Spice. Perhaps this is why is it sometimes regarded as a bit of a novelty piece: and it is - I can think of no other work on this scale that is remotely like it.
From the instant that the breath-taking O Fortuna breaks around round this lovely church, we know that we are entering a very different world of music. Orff himself describes the work as "Profane songs for singers and vocal chorus with instruments and magical pictures." A magical evening indeed.
Monumental understates this amazing piece and FCS (working beautifully with the excellent Finchley Children's Music Group) seized the opportunity to show how brilliantly they can handle such a complex and demanding work.
If Carimina Burana was a painting it would be a Breugel (think Carnival and Lent) or, in its really dark moments, a Bosch. Orff took his texts from a manuscript collection of the 13 century thus setting them to music 700 years after they were written. In it he has woven simple monastic echoes (without the polyphony of later ages), rustic dances and all the bombast he can muster using a seriously well equipped percussion section and little else.
One minute lyrical, another primal, the choruses adapted beautifully to the demands of the work. Conductor Grace Rossiter had instructed the choir, especially the men, to sing from the gut and to project as they never had before - at times they seem genuinely surprised by the sounds they unleashed on this appreciative audience. The work of the soloists was superb: I watched as one member of the audience was simply transfixed at the beauty of Jane Forbes' delivery of Stetit Puella.
The evening had started with the world premier of a work by Richard James Harvey to mark his 25 years as the choir's accompanist. Based on Walt Whitman's poem On the Beach at Night, it was a beautiful, reflective piece performed with much affection by this excellent choir.
Visit www.finchleychoral.org.uk for news of their December programme of works by Haydn, Mozart and Schubert.
David Winskill. Ham and High. Thursday July 14th 2011.
Saturday 3 December 2011
Finchley Choral Society
St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill
Haydn Mozart Schubert
St Mary the Virgin is a strangely down at heel building of chipped paint, age settled dust on whitewashed pillars ... and a broken organ. But it has the feel of a congregation that puts its ministry before appearance.
Scheduled to provide accompaniment, the organ failure meant that Richard Harvey was instead given a wonderful Bechstein piano. There was also a last-minute substitution as the brilliant Elizabeth Poole took over the soprano roles. And, following a gloriously Happy Event on the eve of the concert, the regular conductor Grace Rossiter handed her baton to the multi-talented Patrick Russil.
In the first piece, the wonderful Amens of Mozart's Sancta Maria, mater dei had the audience's hairs standing on the back of our collective necks. His much better known Ave Verum Corpus managed in just 46 bars to delight everyone in St Mary’s. So much so that we forgot to applaud!
The two Mendelssohn works were welcome. The choir's rendition of his Prayer for Peace supported Robert Schuman's description of the work as ' a uniquely beautiful composition .. this little piece deserves to be known the world over.'
By Schubert's Mass in G, the choir was clearly fully recovered, in great voice and thoroughly enjoying the noises they were making. Their whispered Kyrie was soon joined by Elizabeth's remarkable soprano voice. Hayden's Te Deum was delivered with a fine, animated start - crystal clear and with strong purpose.
The lack of orchestra placed Finchley Choral society firmly centre stage. They worked hard and delivered all that the stand in conductor asked. But it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the presence of an orchestra, however small, would have added greatly to the enjoyment of the evening. Despite all this the choir really lifted itself to deliver a memorable series of performances demanded by this well-chosen programme.
For details of their concert on 24th March in Hampstead Garden Suburb, www.finchleychoral.org.uk
David Winskill. Ham and High.
Everybody’s doing it! On TV, on U-Tube - and in reality. Singing in a choir is a wonderful thing to do.
It’s inspiring to be in the midst of all this music; challenging to learn famous choral works; and exciting to perform in public. The possibility of going from scratch to the polished performance is open to everyone
who wants to sing.
Finchley Choral Society is a North London choir which could offer you this possibility.
With a century of tradition behind us, the choir’s repertoire is large and varied,
having sung many well-known and lesser known choral pieces in a variety of styles and languages,from Rachmaninov’s Vespers in Russian and acapella pieces by Mendelssohn and Benjamin Britten,to Bach Masses in Latin, backed by the big sound of a full orchestra and professional soloists. It is always a great moment when, after weeks of rehearsals, the choir reaches the final performance - and we are always favourably reviewed in the local press. Most of our venues are local but occasionally include central London churches for performances.
The Williams Church Music Trust and
Michael Gerson (Investments) Ltd.
for their generous sponsorship.
Finchley Choral Society is a registered
Charity No. 265563 affiliated to
Making Music.
