Light Classical Choral Mix – June 2019

BrahmsBrahms Saturday June 22nd 2019 at 1:00 pm BrucknerBruckner
Rochdale Parish Church, 7 Church Stile, Rochdale. OL16 1FF
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The concert will present a variety of classical choral music spanning dates from 1727 almost up to the present day.  The choral works are sung in 5 different languages. An organ solo is also included. A more detailed description of the choral music is given below:

  • Brahms: A German Requiem. Movement IV (sung in German). How lovely is thy dwelling place.  Completed when Brahms was 33 in 1866-7. A peaceful and exceptionally beautifully piece of music.
  • Bruckner: Locus Iste. A sacred motet composed in 1869. Begins with Mozartian phrases, but soon introduces characteristic Brucknerian progressions. A key structural points the bass part is deliberately isolated.
  • Faure: Cantique de Jean Racine. Written by the nineteen-year-old composer in 1864-5 it contains serene flowing melodies with rich harmonies.
  • Ola Gjeilo: Sunrise mass, The Ground. Gjeilo is a Norwegian composer who was born in 1978. The music is based on a beautiful Melody. The Ground conveys a sense of  having arrived at the end of a Mass: reaching a kind of peace and strength at the end of the Mass; to have reached a kind of peace and grounded strength.
  • Elgar: Ave Verum Corpus. Originally written in 1887 while Elgar was organist at St George’s Church in Worcester as a setting of the Pie Jesu, in memory of William Allen, Worcester attorney for whom Elgar worked as a fifteen-year old.
  • Rachmaninoff: Bogorodyitse Dyevo. A tribute to Theotokos (‘God Bearer’ – the Orthodox name for Mary, mother of Jesus), making it similar in concept to the ‘Ave Maria’ of the Roman Catholic tradition. It is sung in the Russian Orthodox choral style, full of drama and Rachmaninov’s signature emotional and compositional inventiveness.
  • Rutter: The Lord bless you and keep you. Composed it in 1981 for the memorial service of Edward T. Chapman, the director of music at Highgate School, London, with whom he had studied when he attended the school. It is a slow, gentle and solemn meditation with lush, sonorous and tonal harmonies.
  • Rutter: A Gaelic Blessing. The piece was commissioned by the Chancel Choir of First United Methodist Church in Nebraska. It is characterized as slow-paced and of a gentle flowing nature.
  • Karl Jenkins: Armed Man, Agnus Dei. The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace was commissioned by the Royal Armouries to mark the transition from one millennium to another. After the traumas of war the Agnus Dei brings the hope of peace. It is a beautiful setting of part of the Latin Mass: ‘Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world …’.
  • Handel: Zadok the Priest. Composed for the coronation of King George II in 1727. One of Handel’s best-known works, it has been sung prior to the anointing of the sovereign at the coronation of every British monarch since its composition.
  • Arcadelt/Dietsch: Ave Maria. The most well known work of Dietsch may be the Ave Maria he presented in 1842 and attributed to Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer Jacques Arcadelt.. Dietsch presented the work as a discovery of a four-voice Ave Maria by Arcadelt, when in fact it was Dietsch’s own arrangement of Arcadelt’s three-voice chanson Nous voyons que les homme.
  • Parry: Jerusalem.  Parry set William Blake’s words to music, ‘And did those feet in ancient time’. It was first sung on 28 March 1916 at a Fight for Right meeting. The Fight to Right movement was formed to reinforce British resolve during the first world war. It is now sung during the last night of the Proms and is the hymn of the Labour Party.
Report
This concert was a great success and was well received. The choir and the audience enjoyed the wonderful acoustic of Rochdale Parish Church as we sang sacred works from round the world finishing with audience participation in a rousing rendition of Jerusalem. Click here to view the concert programme which contains further  information about the choir, the composers and the works.
Nigel P Wilkinson Conductor
Philip Lowe Organist

Tickets: £5.50 (children under 16 are free). Tickets are available at the door: