BRITISH CHORAL CLASSICS Symphony Hall, Birmingham
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BRITISH CHORAL CLASSICS Symphony Hall, Birmingham Sunday 1 August 2021, 3pm Simon Halsey – Conductor Julian Wilkins – Organ CBSO Chorus Handel Zadok The Priest 5’ Bainton And I Saw a New Heaven 5’ Wallen Peace on Earth 3’ Price Air and Toccato, from Suite No.1 for Organ 5’ Weir My Guardian Angel 2’ OUR CAMPAIGN FOR MUSICAL Ireland Greater Love Hath No Man 6’ LIFE IN THE WEST MIDLANDS Coleridge-Taylor Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis 7’ These socially-distanced concerts have Leighton Ite, Missa Est, from Missa de Gloria, Op.82 5’ been made possible by funding from Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund, Balfour Gardiner Evening Hymn 6’ plus generous support from thousands of Parry I Was Glad 6’ individuals, charitable trusts and companies through The Sound of the Future fundraising campaign. It’s time to sing! There’s no more glorious sound than a great chorus raising its voice in joyful celebration, and it feels like a lifetime since our By supporting our campaign, you will play world-class CBSO Chorus last sang for you in Symphony Hall. Well, they’re your part in helping the orchestra to recover back: reunited for the first time in 17 months, as Simon Halsey conducts a from the pandemic as well as renewing the concert spanning four centuries of British music in all its pageantry, poetry way we work in our second century. Plus, and roof-raising splendour. Be there, and feel the thrill. They will be joined all new memberships are currently being matched pound for pound by a generous by organist Julian Wilkins who will also give a solo performance of Florence member of the CBSO’s campaign board. Price’s Air and Toccato from Suite No.1 for Organ. Support your CBSO at cbso.co.uk/future You are welcome to view the online programme on your mobile device, but please ensure that your sound is turned off and that you are mindful of other members of the audience. Any noise (such as whispering) can be very distracting – the acoustics of the Hall will highlight any such sound. If you use a hearing aid in conjunction with our infra-red hearing enhancement system, please make sure you have collected a receiver unit and that your hearing aid is switched to the ‘T’ position, with the volume level appropriately adjusted. Audiences are welcome to take photographs before and after the concert, and during breaks in the music for applause. If you would like to take photos at these points please ensure you do not use a flash, and avoid disturbing other members of the audience around you. Please note that taking photographs or filming the concert while the orchestra is playing is not permitted as it is distracting both for other audience members and for the musicians on stage. Keeping you safe: Please ensure that you are following all of the covid-safe measures that are in place, facebook.com/thecbso including: arriving at the time indicated on your ticket, wearing a face covering whilst in the building twitter.com/thecbso (exemption excluded), keeping a social distance from other audience members and staff, following signage and/or guidance from staff, and using the hand sanitising stations provided. Thank you. instagram.com/thecbso Supported by Supported by 1 BRITISH CHORAL CLASSICS “And all the people rejoiced!” Nothing tops the sound of Organ music doesn’t only belong in church, either. Florence Price choral music when you’re in a mood to celebrate – and the grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas at the turn of the century, but re-union of our Chorus with you, our audience, after too when she headed north to Boston to study music, she passed many months of anxiety and silence, is definitely a cause herself off as a Mexican. It simply made life easier to pretend that for celebration. she wasn’t what she was: an African-American, and one of the most extraordinary (and original) of 20th-century American composers. An outstanding organist and pianist, she later moved For the coronation of King George II on 11 October 1727 Handel to Chicago – where she played the organ in churches and was commissioned to write four new Coronation Anthems, and cinemas across the city. She was a brilliant improviser and her rumours were soon circulating. The rehearsals were kept secret, Suite No.1 for Organ (1942) probably began as an improvisation to prevent them from being mobbed by crowds of fans. before taking its final form, with this haunting Air and the brilliant Toccata as its last two movements. You can’t really blame Handel for wanting to guard his big surprise. Imagine the impact of hearing this music for the first time! For the Judith Weir needs no introduction from us – the current Master of solemn anointing of the King, Handel begins with an orchestral the Queen’s Music is an old friend of the CBSO, and was our build-up like nothing that had been heard before. It’s still one of Composer in Association in the late 1990s. She composed this the most thrilling evocations of mounting excitement in all music, carol in 1997, and like Errollyn Wallen’s Peace on Earth, its and Zadok the Priest has been performed at every coronation seasonal message can apply to any time of year. As she explains: since. Naturally, it ends with general rejoicing: “Alleluia, Amen!” “My Guardian Angel is a carol, which celebrates the increased No-one does Alleluias quite like Handel. incidence of public appearances by angels at Christmas time. It is Still, you don’t always need fanfares to make an impact. Edgar a setting of short text by William Blake. The music of the carol is Bainton was an old boy of King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and based around a short alleluia; which may be performed by the his life was eventful – he spent the Great War in a German prison audience, whilst the choir weaves some 4-part counterpart camp. He wrote three symphonies, and founded the Sydney around it.” Symphony Orchestra. But in one short choral anthem, composed in 1928, he found a still, small voice of calm that continues to touch the hearts of church choirs and their congregations around the Anglican world. And I Saw A New Heaven finds deep comfort, rather than terror, in the Book of Revelation; this is music that speaks to listeners of all faiths, and none. Just as Errollyn Wallen’s carol Peace on Earth (2006) belongs both to Christmas, and to all times of year. “I was just improvising at the piano, and the music popped out”, she says. The words – her own – came later. And although they’re decidedly wintry, their message will appeal to anyone who’s come through a time of trial (whether a summer heatwave or something more malign) to a place of tranquillity and renewed hope. 2 The right combination of words and music has a way of finding its Gardiner’s much-loved Evening Hymn, a true evensong classic, own time and place. The anthem Greater Love by the Cheshire- composed in 1908 for the choir of Winchester College. Balfour born composer John Ireland dates from 1912, but it’s often Gardiner’s great-nephew John Eliot maintains the family’s musical assumed to be a response to the First World War – becoming tradition today. something of a fixture on Remembrance Sunday. The quiet But we’re not going softly into the night: we’re ending, as we dignity and swelling emotion of the music probably has started, with a great shout of choral joy – one of those pieces something to do with that; as has Ireland’s poignant choice of around which the whole nation celebrates. “I Was Glad when words. Like And I Saw A New Heaven, it’s long transcended its they said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord” – and roots. as C Hubert Parry lifts his choir’s voices to the heavens, it’s hard That same year, 1912, saw the premature death of one of not to feel….well, what, exactly? This great anthem, created in Ireland’s most brilliant fellow-students at the Royal College of 1902 for the coronation of King Edward VII and performed (with Music. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor had been born in Holborn, the Zadok The Priest) at every coronation since, somehow manages son of a farrier’s daughter and a medical student from Sierra to mingle pride, hope, nostalgia, tenderness and grandeur in a Leone. If the mixed-race, illegitimate Coleridge-Taylor experienced single soul-stirring arc of song. Music, in other words, that prejudice on the streets of Victorian London, his early talent as a transcends time and place even as it speaks straight to the heart, musician won him welcome and acclaim at the RCM. now and for always. “Indisputable!” scribbled his (and Ireland’s) teacher, Charles Villiers Stanford under the column headed “Progress” on his 1895 term report. Coleridge-Taylor’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in F Programme note © Richard Bratby set two central elements of an Anglican evensong to music that glows – and leaps – with imagination and life. But then, the Anglican choral tradition is nothing if not a broad church: capable of embracing composers as diverse as the mixed-race Coleridge-Taylor, the modernist Yorkshireman Kenneth Leighton and the public schoolboy (and eventual Dorset pig-farmer) Henry Balfour Gardiner. Ite, Missa Est, the thunderous organ postlude of Leighton’s Missa di Gloria (written for Dubin Cathredral in 1980) ends (in Leighton’s own words) with “a massive acclamation”.