FINCHLEY CHORAL SOCIETY
Spring Concert 2012
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
Saturday 23rd June 2012
St. Pancras Church, Euston Road,
London NW1 2BA at 7.30pm.
Handel Jephtha
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.
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.
