Conductor: Philip Honnor • Registered Charity Nº 507768

Summer Concert 2009

20th Century Choral Music

For this concert, the Huddersfield Singers will be joined by AURIN Girls’ Choir, currently on tour from Hungary, and Nick Walker, trombone KirkleesYoung Musician 2009 finalist

Saturday, 20th June 2009, 7·30pm St Stephen’s Church, Lindley, Huddersfield Do you have a MUSICAL EAR?

Is singing PIANO your FORTE? “Blow Your Own Trumpet”

“Playing by Ear” Perhaps you have the VOICE OF AN ANGEL?

Do you prefer “Singing by Ear” BEETHOVEN to the BEATLES? “Earwig van Beethoven” If so, you should join

The choir is always very keen to welcome new members of all voice parts. If you have a good voice and some ability to sight-read, come along to a rehearsal. The Huddersfield Singers offers:

Challenging and exciting music High musical standards Three annual concerts Friendly, enthusiastic singers Varied and rewarding repertoire, A wide range of social events from mediæval to modern music

The choir meets at 7:30pm on Monday evenings at: Huddersfield Methodist Mission, 15 Lord Street, Huddersfield HD1 1QA

For more information, please contact the Choir Secretary, Christopher Hartley, on (01484) 713084 or visit our Web site: http://www.HuddersfieldSingers.com/ Bookings 100 Club Wedding? Celebration? It’s much easier to win Special service? than the National Lottery!

If you have a special event to arrange, The 100 Club is a fun way to support the Huddersfield Singers and possibly win some cash! Pay £1 per week for an entry ticket. Numbers are drawn monthly and three prizes awarded:

1st: £50 2nd: £25 3rd: £15

can provide you with that all-important The Club gives a valuable boost to choir vocal element to make your event even funds, and enables us to present more more special, whether you require the exciting programmes with fine guests. full choir or a smaller ensemble taken Please join; the more participants there from its ranks. are, the bigger the prizes can be!

For more details, contact the Secretary, For more details, contact the Treasurer, Chris Hartley, on (01484) 713084 John Broscombe, on (01924) 495785

Acknowledgements

The Huddersfield Singers would like to extend their thanks to the volunteers who have helped in the production of this concert by providing refreshments in the interval, selling tickets and programmes at the door, and being of general assistance behind the scenes. Their contribution has been invaluable.

Financial support towards the cost of this concert is gratefully acknowledged from Kirklees Council, Yorkshire Arts (Arts Council England) and Making Music TONIGHT’S FEATURED GUEST

László Durányik, Conductor, Aurin Girls’ Choir László Durányik studied musicology at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and conducting at Hungarian Education Institute, both in Budapest, Hungary. From 1991 to 1994 he conducted the Cantemus Boys’ Choir in Nyíregyháza. He is the founder of the Miraculum Children’s Choir, the Aurin Girls’ Choir and the Aurin Female Choir, and has conducted them since he started teaching at the Kodály School in Kecskemét. Since 1997 his choirs have collected twenty-four first prizes in several European competitions, and have made concert tours in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. He has given lectures at international Kodály seminars and worked as a guest conductor in Australia, South Korea and Scotland. His work was rewarded with a Kodály prize in 2005 and a Csokonai prize in 2007. TONIGHT’S INSTRUMENTALISTS Nick Walker, Trombone

Finalist in the Mrs Sunderland Festival Kirklees Young Musician of the Year 2009

Nick began playing at the age of eight and has won many First Prizes in the Haydn Wood and Mrs Sunderland music festivals, including winning the Mrs Sunderland Open Age Brass category three years in a row and attaining the highest mark of all classes in the Haydn Wood festival. Nick is currently the solo trombone player with the Rothwell Temperance Brass Band, which distinguished itself recently by winning this year’s Yorkshire Regional Contest (beating the likes of Brighouse and Rastrick, Black Dyke and Grimethorpe), qualifying for the National finals of Great Britain for the second consecutive year, and winning this year’s Grand Shield (see photo). Nick is involved in a very busy contest schedule for the rest of the year, performing at venues such as the Corn Exchange, Cambridge, the Royal Albert Hall, London and the Symphony Hall, Birmingham.

Sue Ogden, Piano Sue started piano lessons at the age of eight. She completed a ba (Hons) in Music at Huddersfield Polytechnic in 1978, then took a pgce and has since taught in various educational establishments in the Huddersfield area. She is currently Music Co-ordinator at Honley Junior School. Sue has worked with a number of local choirs over the last twenty years, as regular and guest accompanist, as well as supporting local amateur dramatic societies. Sue has been the Huddersfield Singers’ regular accompanist for several years.

Christine Stanton, Piano Christine was the Huddersfield Singers’ accompanist for a number of years, and she continues to work with the choir frequently. She is a graduate of the Royal Manchester College of Music and was until recently the Head of Music at Crossley Heath School, Halifax. PROGRAMME

Choir Five Childhood Lyrics John Rutter i Monday’s Child (traditional) ii The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (Edward Lear) iii Windy Nights (Robert Louis Stevenson) iv Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (traditional) v Sing a Song of Sixpence (trad. words and melody)

Choir with Sue Ogden, Piano Singing by Numbers Robert Chilcott 1 Sing we now Merrily (Thomas Ravenscroft) ii The Singing of Birds (from the Song of Solomon) iii Hey down a down! (Thomas Ravenscroft) iv Cruet MacNightshade (Spike Milligan) v Sing you now (Thomas Ravenscroft) vi Everyone Sang (Siegfried Sassoon) vii Hey down a down! / (Thomas Ravenscroft) Sing with thy Mouth

Nick Walker, Trombone with Sue Ogden, Piano Concertino from 12 Concertini, op. 45 Lars-Erik Larsson

Choir with Sue Ogden and Christine Stanton, Piano duet Nonsense (Seven Poems of Mervyn Peake) Richard Rodney Bennett 1 Of Pygmies, Palms and Pirates ii Aunts and Uncles iii Lean Sideways on the Wind iv O here it is! And there it is! v How fly the Birds of Heaven? vi The Men in Bowler Hats vii The Dwarf of Battersea ✯ INTERVAL ✯ Sacred music For the Beauty of the Earth John Rutter Al Shlosha d’Varim Allan E. Naplan Alma Redemptoris Mater Miklós Kocsár Psalm 150 Zoltán Kodály Ave Maria György Orbán Mundi Renovatio György Orbán

Nick Walker, Trombone with Sue Ogden, Piano Air and Variations on Annie Laurie Arthur Pryor

Secular music in English and Hungarian Away from the Roll of the Sea Irish traditional Scarborough Fair English traditional Scherzo János Vajda Nagyszalontai Köszöntõ (‘A Birthday Greeting’) Zoltán Kodály Zöld Erdõben (‘Amid the Oak Trees’) Zoltán Kodály Villõ (‘The Straw Guy’) Zoltán Kodály Bolyongás (‘Wandering’) Béla Bartók Tûz (‘Fire’) Jószef Karai Szellõ zúg (‘Breeze’) Lajos Bárdos Egyetem−Begyetem (‘Hippity−Hoppity’) Zoltán Kodály Sárkõzi Karikázó (‘Dance from Sárkõz’) Jószef Karai PROGRAMME NOTES John Rutter: Five Childhood Lyrics John Rutter, one of Britain’s most prolific and best-loved choral composers, was born in London in 1945. He studied at Clare College, Cambridge and, while still a student, wrote his first published compositions and conducted his first recordings. Apart from a brief period as Director of Music at Clare College (1975−79), Rutter has devoted himself totally to the composition and conducting of choral music, forming a professional chamber choir, the Cambridge Singers, and a recording label, Collegium Records, to record his works.

The Five Childhood Lyrics were composed and first performed in 1973. They show clearly the approachable style and light touch which have made Rutter’s music so popular, both in England and all over the world. Monday’s Child builds up chords from a single note in the tenor before other parts introduce the melody, the opening music returning at the end. The Owl and the Pussy- Cat opens quietly but builds to a considerable climax, as does Windy Nights, with its unremitting irregular rhythms. Like the first item, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John begins with building-chords before a lyrical solo is ushered in over humming in the choir. In the final Sing a Song of Sixpence, a syncopated figure in the lower parts introduces the well-known melody, which is then given in canon (sopranos and tenors) as well as in augmentation canon (sopranos and basses) and double augmentation (basses) before the exciting conclusion.

Robert Chilcott: Singing by Numbers Hailing from Plymouth, Bob Chilcott (born 1955) sang in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, both as a treble (he was the treble soloist in the 1967 King’s College recording of the Fauré Requiem) and later as a tenor when an undergraduate. Subsequently he was a member of the King’s Singers for twelve years, before leaving in order to concentrate on composition and conducting.

In the suite, Singing by Numbers, commissioned by the Midland branch of the Association of British Choral Directors in 1995, Chilcott has attempted to produce a group of pieces that are ‘fun, easy to perform,’ and which includes ‘as many vocal scorings as possible within its short length.’ Thus the first three items are largely in one and two parts, while the fourth is in six, as is Everyone Sang, an impressive setting of the well-known Siegfried Sassoon poem. The final item, Hey down a down!/Sing with thy Mouth, combines two earlier numbers to make Singing by Numbers end as it began.

Richard Rodney Bennett: Nonsense Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (born 1936) began composing in childhood. Taught first by Elizabeth Lutyens, who encouraged an interest in the avant- garde, Bennett was later left unsatisfied by the more traditional composition teaching of the Royal Academy of Music. He regularly attended the Darmstadt Summer Schools, run by Boulez and Stockhausen during the fifties, as well as becoming Boulez’s pupil for two years.

One of the most versatile of all British musicians, Richard Rodney Bennett has composed concert music (three symphonies and over two hundred other works), film and television music (more than fifty scores), as well as being a composer and performer (as pianist and singer) of jazz and cabaret songs for half a century. He was knighted for services to music in 1998.

Nonsense was composed in 1979 but was not performed until 1984, when it was premièred in Chester by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain under Michael Brewer, with Bennett himself and Susan Bradshaw (a fellow student of Boulez) as the piano duettists. It is a suite of seven poems taken from A Book of Nonsense (published posthumously in 1972) by the English author and illustrator, Mervyn Peake (1911−68).

As might be expected, the composer uses Nonsense as pretext to demonstrate his vast talent for aœectionate parody: Delius’ sliding chromatic harmonies (number 1), sentimental Victorian harmony (numbers 2 and 5), Romantic piano writing à la Rachmaninov (number 3), the Edwardian waltz (number 6) and even the Tango (later stages of number 6).

—Philip Honnor SIMPSON WOOD CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Winter Concert: Saturday, 5th December 2009, 7·30pm St Paul’s Hall, University Campus, Queensgate, Huddersfield Vivaldi • Purcell • Bach • Buxtehude featuring Rebecca Robertson, Trumpet: Kirklees Young Musician 2009 together with Robert O’Connell, Baritone and Instrumental Ensemble Vivaldi: Gloria • Purcell: Rejoice in the Lord alway • Bach: Cantata BWV22 Easter Concert: Saturday, 27th March 2010, 7·30pm St Paul’s Hall, University Campus, Queensgate, Huddersfield Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor Joint event with Reigate Grammar School Parents’ & Friends’ Music Society

THE HUDDERSFIELD SINGERS

President Conductor Accompanist John Horrocks-Taylor Philip Honnor Sue Ogden Vice Presidents Richard Barker Hilary Pollard Gordon Sykes Pam Cooksey Heather Powell Bob Whiteley Mike Green Philip Powell

Seasonal Patron Registered Charity Mr J. G. Sykes Nº 507768 Web Site http://www.HuddersfieldSingers.com/

Booklet design: Richard Hallas • [email protected] • www.hallas.net • (01484) 460280 Booklet printing: Crawfords the Printers • [email protected] • www.crawford-print.co.uk • (01704) 544701