Chipperfield Choral Society
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Chipperfield Choral Society
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April 1st 2006Venue: St. John's Church Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead (Start 7.30pm) ProgrammeMessiah George Frederic Handel
SoloistsLucy Crowe (Soprano) Lucy Crowe was born in Staffordshire and studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers included Beau-ice Unsworth and Clara Taylor. She received the Royal Overseas Gold Medal in 2002 and the Second Prize at this year's Kathleen Ferrier Awards. Lucy is a Wigrnore Young Artist. She has sung with the English Concert under Andrew Manze in Poland and Belgium, Dido and Aeneas with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Richard Egarr at the Barbican and at the BBC Proms, Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony with the City of London Sinfonia under Richard Hickox, Messiah under Trevor Pinnock in Canada, Harry Christophers in Japan and Sir David Willcocks at the Royal Albert Hall and Gounod's Messe Solennelle in St Sulpice, in Paris, also under Sir David Willcocks. At the Aldeburgh Festival she sang Galatea in AClS and Galatea under Richard Egarr, Britten's Plmse we Great Men with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, and Mendelssohn's Lobgesangunder Paul Daniel. She recently toured Italy and Portugal with Trevor Pinnock and sang with the English Concert at Wigrnore Hall and in Malaga. Operatic engagements include Susanna in Le Nozze di Fig-am for Garsington Opera; Michal in Handel's Saulfor Opera North; dle Early Earth Operas (an education project) with English National Opera; Mitridate with the Classical Opera Company; the title role in The Cunning Little V'ixen with British Youth Opera; Narcissa in Haydn's Philemon und Baucis in the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival under Trevor Pinnock and Juno in Purcell's The Fairy Queen for, the London Bach Festival at the Linbury Studio, Covent Garden. Lucy has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, St Martin in the Fields, the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, the Chelsea Arts Club and the National Portrait Gallery. She has also performed Wo!fs ltaliemsches Liederbuch at the Belfast Festival with Julius Drake.. Her current operatic engagements include Susanna for Opera North and her first Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier for Scottish Opera. Anna Huntley (Contralto) Anna Huntley is currently in her fourth year at the Royal Academy of Music were she studies with Beatrice Unsworth and Clara Taylor on a full Foundation Scholarship She will be continuing her studies there next year on the postgraduate course. Anna has received numerous awards and prizes, notably 'the Hampshire Singing Competition, the Oxford Recital Award, the City of Birmingham Choir's National Singing Award and, most recently, tlIe Michael Head Prize for English Song and the- Arthur Burcher Prize at the RAM. Anna performs regularly as soloist in oratorio, her most recent performances having included Handel's Samson at Canterbury Cathedral, the Bach Cantata 198 with the Jonathan Manson Ensemble at the RAM, and the Mozart Requiem with Jonathan Willcocks. Stage work to date includes Isabella (L'Italiana in Algen) and Cherubino for the RAM Summer School Opera Scenes in Italy, Rosina (I1 Barbiere di Sivlg1ia) in scenes for the Jackdraws Trust and Amrelina in Trial By Jury Young opera. Concert highlights have included Mahler's Liedereines fdhrenden Gesellen with the Cohle Philharmonic Orchestra, Manuella in De Falla's El Sombrero de tres Picas at St John's Smith Square, a concert tour of New York and a solo recital in the Winchester Festival. Garda Thor Cortes (Tenor) Gardar Thor Cortes was born in Iceland and studied at the Reykjavik School of Singing, the Hochschule fur Kunst und Musik in Vienna and London's Royal Academy of Music. At the RAM his roles included Florville in I1
signor Brosclllno and Fenton in FalstafJ: His other engagements have included
Jose in Carmen Negra, Curly in Oklahoma!, The Young Man in Dokadu via and the
Italian Tenor in Der Rosenkavaher for the Icelandic Opera, Tony in West Side
StOlyat the National Theatre, Reykjavik, Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera in
London, Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte for Co-Opera Ireland, Rinmiccio Gianni
Schicchifor Nordurop Opera and in a Verdi Gala at The Anvil, Basingstoke. His
concert repertoire includes the B Minor Mass, St Nico1as, the Dvotak. and Verdi
Requiems, Messiah, Ehjah, Puccini's Missa di G1oria, Rossini's Petite Messe
Solenne1le and Stabat Mater and Saint-Saens's Christmas Oratorio and Les Noces.. His debut solo album Cortes is now available on
Plan B and was the highest selling disc in Iceland last Christmas. This season's
engagements include Don Ramiro in La Cenerento1a for the Icelandic Opera, The
Duke of Mantua in Rigo1etto for Opera Nordfjord, Eljjah at the Dorking Halls and
the Rossini 5mbat Mater at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea. After singing with the choir of Tewkesbury
Abbey, Alex went up to St John's College Cambridge, where he was a choral and
academic scholar. He then won an Entrance Scholarship to the Royal Academy of
Music, where he studied with Mark Wildman and David Lowe. Whilst at the Academy
he won numerous prizes, including the Sir Arthur Bliss Song Prize, the Mario and
Grisi Recital Prize, a Star Award from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust,
and the prestigious lan Fleming Award from The Musicians' Benevolent Fund. Orchestra
Programme NotesHandel, unlike his great contemporary Bach, was a much-travelled mall of the world. Born in Germany, the son of a 63-year-old barber/surgeon and much younger mother, he quickly developed early musical talent, much against his parents' wishes. At the age of 18 he enjoyed a spell as a violinist in the opera orchestra in Hamburg, where amongst other things he fought a duel with another composer over a musical disagreement (both survived!), and then travelled to Italy (the birthplace of opera) where he thoroughly assimilated the art of opera composition. Returning to Germany, he accepted the post of Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover but only on condition that he was allowed to visit England where he discovered a city ripe for Italian opera. After a short time back in Hanover, Handel was again in England in 1711 composing operas, mainly on Italian libretti, and became ever more successful musically and fmancially, so much so that he decided to adopt British citizenship, thereby giving us the opportunity to claim him as one of our greatest national composers. Musical trends however are notoriously unpredictable and 18ili century opera audiences were certainly not immune to the fickle nature of changing fashion. For various reasons Italian opera lost its appeal and, following distasteful rivalry between competing opera companies, Handel shrewdly turned to producing concert works in English and ill oratorio fonn. By adding dramatic choruses to the operatic forms of recitative and aria, all the vocal fonus in which he excelled were brought together and enabled him to maintain his position as England's leading composer. For the unwary, Handel is in danger of being regarded as a one-work composer. It is certain that Messiah is recognized by countless thousands as one of the most popular compositions in his entire output and yet he contributed to every musical genre current in his time. However from the time of his death in 1759 to the early 20ili century, his reputation rested largely on a small number of orchestral works and especially his oratorios. Of the latter, Messiah remains supreme to this day, though others, including Saul and Israel in Egypt, are justifiably well regarded. By the summer of 1741, several attempts had been made to revive the public's flagging interest in opera but nothing Handel did was successful and with some relief he accepted an invitation ITom the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to give a series of concerts in Dublin. With his confidence somewhat restored, Handel began work on two oratorios, Messiah and Samson, and Messiah was performed as the climax to the 1742 Dublin season. It was received with great acclaim and such was its reception that a second performance was demanded. Apart frorn the excellence of Handel's music, the libretto by Charles Jennens, a man of letters and amateur musician, contributed greatly to the work's success. Jennens was one of the first of the composer's supporters to understand the dramatic potential of oratorio and for Messiah he selected texts from the Authorized Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. By skilfully combining Old and New Testament texts, his highly original conception was to justify the doctrine that Jesus Christ was truly the Messiah promised by the Hebrew prophets. Therefore the first part of the work recalls the prophecies of Christ's coming, the Annunciation and the Nativity, part two is concerned with Christ's suffering and resurrection, and part three celebrates Christ's redemption and the immortality of the Christian soul The fundamental story of Jesus's mission, subtly told through the Old Testament texts that predict it, is neither directly narrated (except in the description of the Nativity) nor dramatized and unlike many other oratorios, Messiah does not have a plot featuring named characters. Handel's music, supposedly written in 24 days, is based on solid harmonic and contrapuntal foundations, but the sheer sonority of massed forces marks key points and is an essential element. Typical are the choruses in which thematic motives are developed into extended structures through the power of plain diatonic harmony, (e.g. 'Hallelujah' and 'Surely he hath borne our griefs'). Again unlike Bach, who seemed able to compose a convincing fugue on the most unpromising of subjects, Handel needed a strong initial musical theme to bring out the best in him. The fugal movements ill Messiah, of which there are many, are most strikingly effective and successful when constructed on a dramatic and ear-catching initial musical subject (e.g. 'And with his stripes' and 'He trusted in God'). Furthermore, in the work overall there is a well-considered allocation of recitatives and arias for the soloists and choruses to appropriate portions of the text but of these, the chorus is a dominant central feature, for which choral societies throughout the land have always been grateful. Following the enthusiastic reception of Messiah in Dublin in 1742, it was introduced to London in 1743 in the Lenten season of concerts at Covent Garden Theatre. It met with a distinctly hostile reception. A prime reason seems to have been the fears of a moral but influential minority who strongly disapproved of works based on the scriptures being performed as secular entertainment. Handel, bitterly disappointed, made a number of attempts in subsequent years to revive London's interest in it but it was not until after 1750 that regular performances of the work took place. These were mostly charitable performances for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital of which Handel was a governor and very gradually the concert-going public began to change its opinion of the work. Today it seems strange that this fine work should have taken such a time to be recognized as one of the greatest oratorios ever written. Future generations certainly saw its worth and Messiah almost became a national institution, especially during the 19" century when it was increasingly performed with mammoth forces, probably to its detriment. But it certainly inspired Haydn on hearing it to proclaim Handel as "The master of us all" and many will concur with that opinion. There is without doubt a substantial body of people who firmly believe that Messiah will forever maintain its position as the greatest and most popular choral work ever written and after weeks of exciting rehearsals, during which all the wonderful attributes of this great work have gradually been discovered and revealed, there are few singers tonight in the Chipperfield Choral Society who would disagree. Alan Taylor For More Information Contact:
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