Press Release 29th October 2012
Bach Komm, Jesu, Komm!
Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland
and settings by Vaughan Williams, Howells and Grainger
Saturday 1st December 2012, at 7.45pm Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church, Central Square, London NW11 7AG
Finchley Choral Society’s Autumn concert will feature a selection of works by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Grainger and Bach including the double-chorus motet “Komm, Jesu, Komm!”
Johann Sebastian Bach composed this motet, a choral work for church use, around 1725 from a setting of hymnbook poetry by Paul Thymich. The choir is also singing Bach’s Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV61 which is a church cantata composed in Weimar for the first Sunday in Advent and first performed on 2nd December 1714.
Ralph Vaughan Williams discovered English folk songs and carols in 1904 were fast becoming extinct. He travelled the countryside, transcribing and preserving many himself, incorporating some songs and melodies into his own music. He was fascinated by the beauty of the music and its anonymous history in the working lives of ordinary people. 5 English Folk Songs and Fantasia on Christmas Carols are regularly performed today, this year marking 100 years since the latter was composed.
A Spotless Rose is one of Howell’s most well-known and enduring works – an unaccompanied choral piece composed whilst he was sitting in Gloucester train station in 1919! It is one of the Three Carol-Anthems.
Our concert theme of folk songs continues with Percy Grainger’s Brigg Fair which is one of his songs inspired whilst he was staying at Brigg in Lincolnshire in 1905. Grainger gathered and transcribed more than 300 original folk songs from all over the country.
FCS’s musical director, Grace Rossiter will conduct the programme, with the Florian Chamber Orchestra and organ accompaniment from the choir’s accompanist, Richard Harvey. FCS will be joined by soloists Olivia Clarke (soprano), Christopher Bowen (tenor) and Edward Price (baritone).
Finchley Choral Society 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 1 listed building, built by architect Edwin Lutyens in a similar style to St Jude’s, is one of the choir’s regular concert venues.
Tickets: £13.00, students £7.00, children £1.00. Available from FCS Box Office: 020 7263 3358, FCS members, on the door or from Les Aldrich Music, 98 Fortis Green Rd, London N10 3HN. Tel: 020 8883 5631.
Haydn Te Deum in C
Mozart Sancta Maria, Mater Dei
Exsultate, Jubilate
Schubert Magnificat in C
Mass in G
Saturday 3rd December 2011
St. Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill
London NW3 3DJ at 7.45pm
FINCHLEY CHORAL SOCIETY
Soprano Emma Tring
Mezzo-Soprano Lucy Goddard
Tenor Robert Johnston
Bass Philip Tebb
Organ Richard Harvey
Conductor Patrick Russill
Tickets: £13.00, Students £7.00, Children £1.00
Available from FCS Box Office: 0207 263 3358
FCS Members, on the door, or from
Les Aldrich Music, 98 Fortis Green Road
London N10 3HN, 0208 883 5631
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire
From Britten’s Hymn for St Cecilia
Finchley Choral Society’s spring concert will feature a selection of unaccompanied choral works by Britten, Tippett, Verdi, Bruckner and Purcell.
Britten’s Hymn for St Cecilia sets words of a three part ode by WH Auden. Britten was born on St Cecilia’s day (22 November) and had long wanted to write a piece dedicated to St Cecilia – the patron saint of music and musicians. Britten's music to the Hymn embraces this idea of celebration. The piece was first performed on St. Cecilia's Day in 1942 – Britten's twenty-ninth birthday.
Tippett, a contemporary of Britten, composed the oratorio A Child of our Time between 1939 and 1941. The piece responds to the events in Europe at that time and the Negro Spirituals, which the Finchley Choral Society will perform, appear in the oratorio as the songs of victims of oppression. The set of spirituals features popular songs including Steel Away and Deep River and the work encapsulates Tippett’s own style, recognisably English, coloured with jazz and folk influences.
Verdi’s Hymn to the Virgin is a loving hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary scored for a cappella female voices. The concert will also include sacred setting by Bruckner and Purcell and will be conducted by the choir’s Music Director Grace Rossiter.
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 2 April 2011 at 7.45pm
Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church
Central Square, London, NW11 7AG
Benjamin Britten Hymn to St Cecilia
Michael Tippett Five Negro Spiritual from A Child of our Time
Giuseppe Verdi Hymn to the Virgin
And choral settings by Anton Bruckner and Henry Purcell
Grace Rossiter conductor
Tickets £13.00 | £1 students/children
Tickets are available from the FCS box office (020 7263 3358) FCS members or at the door. Tickets can also be purchased from Les Aldrich Music, 98 Fortis Green Road, N10 3HN or call 020 8883 5631.
Music Director: Grace Rossiter
Registered Charity No. 265563
Press Release: 4 May 2010
Italian splendour
Finchley Choral Society’s summer concert will feature an all Italian programme with works by Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Domenico Scarlatti’s masterpiece Stabat Mater.
Domenico Scarlatti, son of Alessandro Scarlatti, was a contemporary of Handel and Bach. The Stabat Mater is perhaps Scarlatti’s best-known choral work and was written in 1715 before he left Rome. An extensive work, the Stabat Mater is written for ten voice parts and reflects the late Venetian polyphonic style. The austerity and reflective quality of the work stand out against the bel canto mode prevalent at the time and convey the composer’s spiritual intentions to the full.
Without doubt, Monteverdi was the greatest of the Italian Renaissance composers. He revolutionised the music of the theatre and the church with his dramatic and imaginative use of instruments and voices. Beatus Vir, a setting of Psalm 112, was probably composed in 1630 and is a superb example of Monteverdi’s dramatic style.
Grace Rossiter will conduct Finchley Choral Society. They will be joined by members of the Florian Chamber Orchestra and the choir’s accompanist Richard Harvey on the organ.
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 firmly established part of the musical life in North London. The choir will be singing for the first time at St Anne’s Church, Highgate.
END
Saturday 19th June 2010 at 7.45pm
St. Anne's, Highgate West Hill, London N6 6AP
Scarlatti Stabat Mater
Monteverdi Beatus vir
Vivaldi Beatus vir
L'estro harmonico Op.3 No.4
Members of the Florian Chamber Orchestra
Richard Harvey organ
Grace Rossiter conductor
Tickets £13.00 | £1 students/children
Tickets are available from the FCS box office (020 7263 3358) FCS members or at the door. Tickets can also be purchased from Les Aldrich Music, 98 Fortis Green Road, N10 3HN or call 020 8883 5631.
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.
FCS Summer Concert 2012
Handel
Jephtha
Available from FCS Box Office: 0207 263 3358
98 Fortis Green Rd. N10 3HN. 0208 883 5631
