Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i Choir & Organ

The decision by St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, to disband its choir and make the full-time post of director of music redundant for financial reasons (see News, p.6) may at first glance appear to be regrettable but understandable. If the money isn’t there, the money isn’t there – although there is inevitably a question as to why music is always seen as the first thing that is dispensable. It is, after all, often the music that attracts people to cathedral services initially – and at Belfast, Matthew Owens has certainly upped the ante in the three short years he has been director of music there. The Children’s Choir and Songbirds which he launched now engage some 50 children, including those from a low socio-economic bracket who are unlikely to find the…

STEPHAN POLLHAMMER, FROM AUSTRIA, HAS WON both the first prize (Schnitger Prize) and the Izaak Kingma audience prize in the 14th International Schnitger Organ Competition. The second prize (Flentrop Prize) was awarded to Sunkyung Noh from South Korea and the third prize (Foundation Friends Organ Prize) went to Martien de Vos from the Netherlands. The competition ran concomitantly with the 16th International Organ Academy (27 June to 1 July) as part of Orgelfestival Holland 2022 in Alkmaar. In the final round of the competition at the Grote Kerk (Sint-Laurenskerk), the three contestants were required to play three works: a choice of five fantasias by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck; a Bach trio sonata; and a Bach Prelude & Fugue from BWV 532, 543, 550 and 564. The Sweelinck was performed on the…

Andrew Nethsingha has been appointed organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey. Currently director of music at St John’s College, Cambridge, Nethsingha will replace James O’Donnell, who leaves for Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music in the New Year. Andrew Scott has been appointed managing director of Harrison & Harrison organ builders. Scott, who replaces Andrew Reid, has been with the company all his working life, first serving as an apprentice, then London tuner, before becoming head voicer and a member of senior management in 2012. Richard Yarr, founder and chair of the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition, has been awarded an MBE for Services to Music in Northern Ireland in the Jubilee Honours. Dónal Doherty, artistic director and founder of the City of…

Saturday 24 September Temple Church, 10am – ‘Laws and Canons’ Charles Andrews (org) Works by David Matthews, Gerald Barry, John Caldwell, Kalevi Aho, Guy Bovet, John Butt, Poul Ruders, John Frandsen, Andrew Synnott, Tarik O’Regan, Louis Andriessen, Thomas Ospital, Ad Wammes, Ullrich Böhme, and Bach BWV 600, 618, 620, 624, 635, 636, 643 St Bride’s, Fleet Street, 11.30am – ‘Symbols and Pictures’ William Whitehead (org) Works by Grayston Ives, Naji Hakim, Judith Bingham, Franz Danksagmüller, Diana Burrell, Robert Saxton, Enjott Schneider, Anthony Powers, William Whitehead, Edward Higginbottom, Rhian Samuel, Vincent Paulet, Daniel Beilschmidt, and Bach BWV 607, 621, 622 St Andrew’s Holborn, 1.30pm – ‘Trinity’ Tom Bell (org) with the Fred Thomas Trio Works by Solfa Carlile, Robert Quinney, Geoffrey Webber, Sally Beamish, Joris Verdin, Till Alexander Körber, Matthew Martin,…

part 1 From unsettled pianist to organ master craftsman During this bicentennial year, organists around the world have been honouring César Franck with performances of his major organ works. Only ten of Franck’s 21 works for organ were published during his lifetime, and it was not until 1898 – eight years after his death – that his organ music started to attract a greater following. This can be attributed in part to two concerts arranged at the Palais du Trocadéro (Salle des Fêtes) by his pupil Albert Mahaut, at which he performed his teacher’s Douze grandes pièces. It was after these performances that sales figures for printed volumes of Franck’s organ music saw a substantial increase.1 The 12 pieces performed by Mahaut were those that have become known synonymously as…

CHORAL SELECTION Jeremy Jackman chooses works by Joe Bates, Richard Barnard, Kerensa Briggs and Sarah Quartel alongside Sibelius and Fauré While a featured composer on the NYCGB Young Composers Scheme, Joe Bates wrote Some Parts of Us (SATB (div.) unacc.; Stainer & Bell 9790220227554, £2.50). It has a compelling freshness; the composer has set his own text in a conversational style that has a touch of Sondheim about it. The opening, shared among the four voice parts, features an emphatic four-note rise in thirds. This is balanced by the more emphatic descending phrase introduced at the mid-point of the work: it is this phrase which eventually dominates to the exclusion of all else in an extended fugato-style finale. There is an easy assurance about the shaping of this piece and…

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The Musicians’ Union and Black Lives in Music have announced a three-year partnership, working together to challenge racism, promote inclusive practices, and accelerate change regarding diversity in the music industry. The Orlando Consort, the world-renowned vocal quartet specialising in medieval and renaissance music, has announced its forthcoming retirement in June 2023 after 35 years. In its final season, the group will perform in the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Luxemburg, Canada and the USA, and also complete their recording project of the complete polyphonic songs of Guillaume de Machaut for Hyperion Records. Wise Music Group has signed a long-term publishing agreement with French-British composer, arranger and performer Josephine Stephenson. Bulgarian-born composer Dobrinka Tabakova has signed a publishing contract with Schott Music. Tabakova’s choral catalogue was extended during a long-term residency…

REMEMBERING FRANCK Gerard Brooks’s recital at the London church of Notre Dame de France (15 Sep) launches a series of four concerts paying tribute to César Franck and the French Organ School. The circular church was built originally as Burford’s Panorama in 1793, to display paintings for public viewing. On the building’s being reopened as a church in 1868, Cavaillé-Coll former colleague August Gern installed a two-manual organ with 24 speaking stops. In the aftermath of the second world war, during which the instrument suffered from bomb damage, J.W. Walker & Sons built an organ incorporating what was left of the original. In 1987 B.C. Shepherd & Sons carried out a major restoration programme. Brooks’s programme includes music by Bonnet, Franck, Rousseau and Guilmant. Other organists in the series are…

Some years ago, I attended a friend’s wedding in the diminutive Roman Catholic Church of St Birinus, Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. The idyllic setting, where church, substantial presbytery and extensive gardens nestle alongside the river, is fused with spiritual significance. It was here in 634 that Birinus baptised King Cynegils, heralding the conversion to Christianity of the Kingdom of Wessex. Today St Birinus is a focal point for the Extraordinary Form, the main weekly service being the Sunday morning 11am Latin Mass. This is led, musically, by a professional schola directed by the renowned conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. In a liturgical environment in which congregational hymn singing plays only a marginal role, chant and polyphony are Alpha and Omega; at St Birinus, only the best music is good enough for God. At the…

You probably know the tune for John Bunyan’s stirring hymn ‘To Be a Pilgrim’, but you might not know it started life as a sea shanty. The young Ralph Vaughan Williams travelled the country at the dawn of the 20th century, urgently collecting folk tunes because, as he wrote, ‘every day some old village singer dies and with him half a dozen beautiful melodies are lost to the world for ever. If we are to preserve what remains, we must set about it at once.’ And set about it he did, collecting 800 tunes between 1903 and 1908. He heard that shanty, ‘Our Captain Cried All Hands’, in West Sussex, and arranged it for the new English Hymnal, renaming it ‘Monks Gate’ after the hamlet in which he discovered it.…

CD IAN VENABLES: REQUIEM; GOD BE MERCIFUL; RHAPSODY FOR ORGAN; HOWELLS: ANTHEMS FOR CHOIR & ORCHESTRA Choir of Merton College, Oxford, Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas (dir, org) Delphian DCD34252 ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆ ‘Merton College Choir sing their hearts out’ (see review, p.75) WIN Premiered in 2019, Ian Venables’s Requiem was originally written for choir and organ. This orchestrated version, created specially for this recording, adds further colour and texture to the piece. Benjamin Nicholas draws the best from his performers, who are ‘ever responsive to the composer’s emotional trajectory through the liturgical text’, making for a ‘thoroughly admirable release’. Courtesy of Delphian Records, we have 5 copies to give away; quote code ‘VENABLES’. CD J.S. BACH: HARPSICHORD CONCERTOS Musica Amphion / Pieter-Jan Belder (hpschd, dir) Brilliant Classics 96070 (2CDs) ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆…

ST ANNE’S CATHEDRAL, BELFAST has announced the disbanding of its professional choir and the role of a full-time director of music becoming redundant from the end of August 2022. On 27 July, the dean and the honorary secretary of the board of Belfast Cathedral issued the following statement: It is with considerable regret that, owing to the difficult financial circumstances in which Belfast Cathedral continues to find itself, the dean and board will now commence a restructuring of the music department at Belfast Cathedral. This will include a move away from a paid, professional adult choir to a voluntary adult choir. In addition, the full-time role of director of music will be made redundant and will be replaced by a part-time cathedral choir director. These changes will come into effect…

The Platinum Consort are holding a choral workshop of contemplative music from across the centuries at St Mary’s, Battersea (24 Sep, 10.30am-5pm). The core work of the programme is Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry. Tickets are £50. Sign up at bit.ly/3PxrvOG On 24 Sep 10am-5pm, Julian Haggett leads ‘Haggett at Hillington’ on the historic Snetzler organ at St Mary’s, Hillington and the Willis organ at St Peter’s, Wolferton. For players of CAM level 3/ABRSM grade 5 and above. RCO members: £60 (observer £20); non-members: £72 (observer £26). Book online at bit.ly/3PDzDx9 St Martin’s Voices has announced a new concert series – Beyond the Dawn – running from Oct 2022 to Jun 2023. The six hour-long concerts will explore universal themes of philosophy and discovery, each introduced by a short video…

THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ORGANISTS (RCO) presents a complete performance of a unique composition project this September. After lying incomplete for more than 300 years, J.S. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (‘Little Organ Book’) will finally receive a full UK premiere. Over the past decade, 118 new works have been written to complete the Orgelbüchlein – a manuscript which Bach intended to contain 164 chorales but which remained unfinished, with only 46 completed and only the titles penned in for the rest. To fill in the missing pieces, project director and organist William Whitehead commissioned new works – supported by dozens of individual sponsors – from contemporary composers including John Rutter, Naji Hakim, Giles Swayne, Sally Beamish, Louis Andriessen, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik and Nico Muhly. The new and complete Orgelbüchlein is a…

Nathan James Dearden: Now it’s my time National Youth Choir of Wales/Rhys-Evans 1 Sep, Pritchard-Jones Hall, Bangor University, UK Hugi Gudmundsson: The Gospel of Mary [RP] Berit Nordbakken (s), Schola Cantorum Reykjavicensis, Oslo Sinfonietta/Áskelsson 6 Sep, Oslo Cathedral, Norway Joachim F.W. Schneider: Auswilderung – Symphony for Organ Susanne Kujala (org) 10 Sep, Martinskirche, Kassel, Germany Peter Machajdík: De Humilitate Mária Puhovichová (org) 11 Sep, Organ Festival, Karviná, Czech Republic Miroslav Srnka: Standstill for Harpsichord and Orchestra Mahan Esfahani (hpschd), Gürzenich-Orchester/Roth 11 Sep, Philharmonie, Cologne, Germany Paweł Łukaszewski: Symphony no.8 ‘Banganarti Hymns’ NFM Choir, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic/Twórczyński 13 Sep, Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, Wrocław, Poland Louise Alenius: Ausklingen Britta Byström: To måner Niels Rosing-Schow: Hyldest til Per Nørgård: Der er en sang Bent Sørensen: In Wahrheit singen DR Vokalensemblet/Creed 16…

A long with countless other musicians, I owe an enormous debt to Richard Seal. In 1967, as an eight-year-old, I joined Salisbury Cathedral Choir as a probationer under Christopher Dearnley, later to be a chorister for four years under Richard. He was that sort of ‘teacher’ who had complete command over his charges – in this case, 16 boys who had to be moulded to produce, on a daily basis, a ‘perfect’ Evensong. For Richard, the Opus Dei was far more important than recordings or tours – the Daily Office was paramount. That meant right notes, musical phrasing, secure intonation, and ensemble. When things did go wrong (which was very rare), he would be understandably upset, and we felt that. But while that could so easily have created anxiety in…

Although I am not a Twitter user, occasionally tweets crop up on other news feeds, and I was struck by this reflection by actor Samuel West: ‘Singing together was prohibited. Not just choral singing, which brings joy and comfort to so many, but singing at tens of thousands of funerals. And they had a [expletive deleted] karaoke party. #NotMovingOn’. The karaoke machine concerned, as was widely reported, was brought to a No.10 party by the government’s former chief adviser on ethics. You couldn’t make it up. Samuel’s tweet will have resonated with singers, choir directors and organists up and down the country. I remember agonising discussions on safety, and the filling out of risk assessments, and all the time, effort and money spent on developing scientific investigations into droplet emissions…

EARLY MUSIC Rebecca Tavener rounds up the latest releases Masters and pupils of the late Renaissance form a thread between some outstanding recent releases, beginning with Costanzo Porta, disciple of Willaert. It is always exciting to introduce readers to a ‘new’ group, especially when they announce themselves with a debut recording of such sublime quality. So, I commend for your attention the ten-voice Istvánffy Chamber Choir from Hungary, founded in 2014. With development arrested by the pandemic, only now have they released Porta: Missa Mortuorum [BMC CD 306], a liturgical sequence with Gregorian propers interleaving Porta’s exquisite polyphony. Blend and intonation are excellent and director L“orinc Muntag steers them through its marmoreal architecture with a serenity in search of ‘divine calm’. Their singing of chant is exemplary, as you might…