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A Celebration of Spring
March 10th 2007
Venue: St. John's Church Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead (Start 7.30pm)
(click here
for map)
Zadok the Priest
George Frideric Handel
Gloria
Antonio Vivaldi
INTERVAL
( Soft drinks are available )
O Be Joyful in the Lord
Ralph Vaughan Williams
(The Hundredth Psalm)
Suite from ‘Les Misérables’
Claude Michel Schönberg
Easter Hymn from ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’
Pietro Mascagni
(top)
Soloists
RHIAN MAIR LEWIS (Soprano) graduated from the Royal
Welsh College of Music and Drama and is currently studying at the Royal Academy
of Music with Beatrice Unsworth and Audrey Hyland, supported by the Josephine
Baker Trust. Her many awards include the Bryn Terfel Scholarship, the Osborne
Roberts Scholarship (Blue Riband), the John Fussel Memorial Prize, MBF Music
Education Award, the Ryan Davies Memorial Award, Pantyfedwen Scholarship and the
Thomas and Elizabeth Williams Scholarship.
Her roles at RWCMD included Lidocka in Paradise Moscow by Shostakovich, the
young vixen in The Cunning Little Vixen by Janáček and Beattie in The Ten Belles
by Von Suppé. Also in excerpts: Gretel in Hansel und Gretel by Humperdinck,
Pamina in The Magic Flute and Elsie in The Yeoman of the Guard. At the RAM she
sang Ophélie in excerpts from Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas, Erisbe in Ormindo by
Cavalli and in Italy Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi by Bellini. She also
sang Zerlina in Don Giovanni as understudy for British Youth Opera. She has sung
in Italy, Spain, America, Ireland and many venues in England and Wales, and also
in the presence of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Buckingham Palace
reception to celebrate British music.
Her oratorio work includes Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C Minor, Schubert’s Mass
in C Major, Fauré’s Requiem, Rutter’s Gloria, Handel’s Messiah and In Praise of
Mary by Geoffrey Bush. Rhian has taken part in master-classes with Larissa
Gergieva, Thomas Quasthoff, Roger Vignoles, Robert Tear, Donald Maxwell, Suzanne
Murphy and Gillian Knight.
ANNA HUNTLEY (Alto) was born in Teesside in 1982 and attended the Junior
Department at the Royal Academy of Music for four years before joining the
senior RAM as a Full Foundation Scholar, graduating in 2006 with First Class
Honours, the highest mark for singers in her final recital and the Mary Burgess
Award for Academic Achievement. Anna continues to study with Beatrice Unsworth,
Clara Taylor and Audrey Hyland on the RAM’s postgraduate course. The most recent
of her numerous awards and prizes are the Hampshire Singing Prize, the Oxford
Recital Award, an MBF Education Award and the Michael Head Prize for English
Song at the RAM.
Anna is a regular oratorio soloist, most recently including Handel’s Samson at
Canterbury Cathedral, Bach’s Cantata 198 with Jonathan Manson at the RAM and the
Mozart Requiem with Andrew Nethsingha in France. Concert highlights include
Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Colne Philharmonic Orchestra,
Manuela in De Falla’s El Sombrero De Tres Picos at St John’s Smith Square and
recitals at St Martin-in-the-Fields and in the Winchester Festival. In this
academic year Anna is the mezzo-soprano soloist in the RAM’s prestigious ‘Song
Circle’ concerts. Stage roles to date include Isabella (L’Italiana in Algeri),
Rosina, Cenerentola and Cherubino in scenes for the RAM Summer School in Italy
and more recently Sesto (Giulio Cesare) for the RAM Opera Tableaux.
This September Anna will take up a place at the Royal College of Music’s
Benjamin Britten International Opera Studio as a Sir Thomas Allen Scholar.
Orchestra
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Violin
Jane Faulkner (leader)
Anna Jenkins
Melanie Hamer
Jeremy Isaac
Maureen Parrington
Helen Ashcroft
Rosie Le Good
Jerome Woodwark
Oboe
Rebecca Heathcote
Rosie Clifford |
Viola
Pip
Worn
Anna Maguire
Hannah Larkin
Double Bass
Caroline Maguire
Trumpet
James Fussey
Nigel Gibbon |
Cello
Anna Beryl
Rachael Maguire
Harriet Allen
Timpani / Percussion
Jim
Beryl
Organ & Keyboard
Nicholas King |
(top)
Programme Notes
‘The anthems in confusion: all irregular in the music’. Certainly not a
comment on the singing of the Chipperfield Choral Society, but contained in a
scribbled note by the Archbishop of Canterbury on his service sheet at the
Coronation of King George II in 1727, following the performance of the four
anthems Handel wrote for the service.
The event itself was apparently a splendid occasion but the choirs seem not to
have covered themselves in glory. Some musical items were sung at the wrong time
‘by the negligence of the choir’ and caused chaos. Five of the ten boys in the
Chapel Royal Choir had left a month before with broken voices and sopranos from
an Italian Opera Company (popular in London at the time) were drafted in as
replacements. Their wobbly vibrato-riddled tone did not blend and they had
problems with pronunciation; all in all, a recipe for disaster. There should be
no such problems tonight and in any event it is highly unlikely a critical
Archbishop will be present.
Zadok the Priest is probably the most popular of Handel’s four coronation
anthems. The opening was clearly intended to make an overwhelming effect and it
thrillingly succeeds. The slow build-up of sound throughout the orchestral
introduction leads to an impressive outburst with the choir’s initial
full-bloodied entry. The mood is suitably festive throughout all three sections
of the anthem and in the second part ‘And all the people rejoic’d’, the
orchestra joins in the fun with a dance-like accompaniment against the choir’s
more sober rhythms. The final section, ‘God save the King’, continues the
celebratory theme and after a few irrepressible bars of joyful semiquavers for
all the voice parts in turn, Handel brings the festivities to a close with
repeated Allelujahs and Amens.
In spite of its dubious first performance, the magisterial power and extrovert
excitement of Zadok confirmed it as a favourite during Handel’s lifetime and to
this day it is one of his most performed pieces. It has most certainly stood the
test of time and has been included in all coronation services since its
composition.
Soloists:- Rhian Mair Lewis – Soprano
Anna Huntley - Alto
Gloria in excelsis Deo Chorus
Et in terra pax hominibus Chorus
Laudamus te Duet
Gratiamus agimus tibi Chorus
Domine Deus, Rex coelestis Soprano solo
Domine Fili unigenite Chorus
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei Alto solo and Chorus
Qui tollis peccata mundi Chorus
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris Alto solo
Quoniam tu solus sanctus Chorus
Cum Sancto Spiritu Chorus
Vivaldi is well known as a composer of instrumental music, especially concertos
and sonatas, and he appears to have written hundreds of them for all sorts of
instruments. His involvement with sacred music began in 1703, when he was
appointed as the violin tutor at the Ospedale della Pietà, a residential
institution in Venice for orphaned or abandoned girls. The orphanage seems to
have had a fine reputation for all things musical and specialised in the musical
training of those girls who showed aptitude. Competent instruction was expected
and concerts at the Pietà were a focal point in the social calendar of the
Venetian nobility. Vivaldi would have learnt much about choral music by playing
in the orchestra and accompanying the masses and motets of the choirmaster,
Francesco Gasparini. When Gasparini left in 1713, Vivaldi succeeded him and his
new responsibilities prompted him to write some fine choral pieces.
The Gloria (RV 589) is one of two settings that Vivaldi is known to have
composed. It is certainly a brilliant and extrovert piece and would probably
have been written for performance in the chapel of the Pietà, though for what
event is uncertain. It is more than likely to have been composed to mark a
significant event in the Pietà’s liturgical calendar, perhaps Easter or the
institution’s patronal festival.
Vivaldi chose the bright key of D major for the opening movement Gloria in
excelsis Deo but thereafter there are many typically Baroque contrasts, not only
in key but also in texture, rhythm, dynamics and in the forces used in the
different sections. In addition to some memorable melodic lines for both choir
and soloists, there are also imaginative harmonic progressions that for the time
were quite daring. Another noteworthy feature can be heard especially in the
spacious, slow-moving second movement, Et in terra pax, which employs not only
colourful harmonies but also wide-ranging changes of key.
The third movement, Laudamus te, is a brisk duet for the two soloists and
displays Vivaldi’s love of quickfire bursts of imitation. It contrasts radically
with the harmonically severe sound of the brief Gratias agimus that follows. The
fifth movement, Propter magnam gloriam, reveals Vivaldi’s mastery of
counterpoint (a keenly alert choir is needed here!) and then comes one of his
most lovely and well-known pieces. Domine Deus is a beautifully crafted solo for
soprano with an obbligato oboe accompaniment that all self-respecting oboists
yearn to play at some time or other.
The skipping dance-like accompaniment to Domine Fili adds yet another dimension
to this varied work and the following aria, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, features a
relatively new device for the time of choral interruptions to what would
normally have been music for the soloist alone. There is more audacious,
forward-looking harmony in the Qui tollis and a final aria, Qui sedes, takes us
to a shortened repeat of the opening music for Quoniam tu solus sanctus.
The last movement, Cum sancto spiritu, is a fine double fugue. Vivaldi
‘borrowed’ this from a Gloria by a contemporary composer, Giovanni Maria
Ruggieri, though he did take the trouble to rework it and reduce it from its
original setting for eight-part double choir to a more manageable four-part
format. It suffers little because of this and provides a fitting conclusion to a
stimulating work that has become a firm favourite with choirs the world over.
In Vaughan Williams’s music, two significant influences can often be found:
hymnody and folk song. In the early years of the 20th century he was invited to
edit the music for a new hymnbook The English Hymnal, later for an enlarged
edition of Songs of Praise and also, for good measure, The Oxford Book of
Carols. Almost at the same time he and Cecil Sharp undertook the daunting though
fascinating task of collecting English folk songs that were in danger of being
lost to posterity through increasing industrialisation and the migration of
country folk from rural locations to towns and cities. Consequently, and more
often than not, hymns and folk music inevitably became synonymous with the name
of Vaughan Williams and his music.
It is no surprise therefore that in 1953 for the coronation of our present queen
in Westminster Abbey, Vaughan Williams composed a special setting of a hymn tune
he knew well, the ‘Old Hundredth’, perhaps better known by many as the tune to
the hymn ‘All People that on Earth do Dwell’. The tune itself dates back to 1551
when it first appears in the Geneva Metrical Psalter, but the text Vaughan
Williams uses here is that of Psalm 100, ‘O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands’,
to which he composed this music in 1929 for the Leith Hill Music Festival, an
event with which he was associated from 1905 until 1953. However, the tune is
often heavily disguised and used in such subtle ways that to find it visually,
let alone to hear it aurally, is challenging, and often involves considerable
musical detective work.
Following a short but majestic orchestral introduction, the choir launches into
a stately setting of the psalm’s opening verse ‘O be Joyful in the Lord’. The
famous tune is very elusive in this initial rather ornate music, but it makes a
more definite appearance, though still very heavily veiled, in the imitative
vocal lines of the second verse ‘Be ye sure that the Lord he is God’. In the
third section, ‘O go your way into his gates’, the tempo is unexpectedly more
relaxed and serene, with a good deal of unison choral singing. Here there are
easily recognizable passages in which fragments of the hymn tune can be clearly
heard at one time or another.
A short pastoral-like orchestral interlude, with definite echoes of folksong,
leads to a tranquil section ‘For the Lord is gracious’, in which almost all
references to the hymn tune seem to have disappeared completely, but after the
original opening orchestral music introduces the final section, ‘To Father, Son
and Holy Ghost’, the tune bursts forth in full ceremonial splendour and a final
fortissimo ‘Amen’ brings the piece to a suitably affirmative end.
At the end of the day
I dreamed a dream
Castle on a cloud
Do you hear the people sing?
On my own
Bring him home
Finale
Les Misérables is a tale of life and death at the barricades of political and
social revolution in 19th-century France. The musical, adapted from Victor
Hugo’s novel of the same name, sets out to redefine the limits of music theatre,
as does Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes and Stephen Sondheim’s musical
Sweeney Todd. It tackles universal themes of social, domestic and individual
despair, and the score by Claude-Michel Schönberg consists of marching songs,
songs of love, war, death and restoration, all portraying musical invention and
variety. In tonight’s concert not all of those themes are to be found in the
medley of seven songs taken from the complete score, but they do give a good
representation of the story from its beginning in 1815, when the main character,
Jean Valjean, is released on parole after 19 years in prison, through the failed
student revolt in 1832 at the barricades in Paris, to his eventual death and
redemption some years later.
Les Misérables opened in 1985 at the Barbican Theatre in London. Its success as
a musical is derived from the strength of the theatrical adaptation of Victor
Hugo’s novel published in 1862. It focuses on the wretchedness of the homeless,
downtrodden poor and their unjust oppression by the privileged and more powerful
members of society. The novel, and consequently the musical, also deals with
other issues, particularly those of crime and punishment, redemption, the
validity of fighting for freedom, and above all, the tyranny of prejudice.
The musical extracts in this evening’s medley are: -
At the end of the day. Factory workers and the unemployed sing of their hard
lives and the struggle to survive grinding poverty.
I dreamed a dream. Fantine, a factory worker, is dismissed for having an
illegitimate child. She mistakenly believed that love would never die but now,
forsaken by her lover, she feels her life is a living hell. She dreams of what
might have been.
There is a castle on a cloud. Fantine has died and her illegitimate daughter,
Cosette, who has been lodged for five years with a cruel foster family and
subjected to abuse and virtual slavery, yearns for a better life and
circumstances in which someone will love and care for her. Valjean, through
affection for Fantine, promises to do this.
Do you hear the people sing? Students and angry citizens sing a rousing song
declaiming that they will no longer tolerate being treated as slaves. They call
for others to join them at the barricades and fight for a new life.
On my own. Eponine, the indulged and cosseted daughter of Cosette’s abusive
foster parents, surprisingly changes sides and decides to join the insurrection,
mostly because of her infatuation with a student. She sings of her love for him
but feels it is not reciprocated. In the battle at the barricades, she is killed
and her loved one is shot and wounded.
Bring him home. Valjean escapes into the Parisian sewers and prays that he may
be able to deliver the wounded man to hospital and that he may live.
Finale. Valjean, now an old man, is approaching the end of his life and tells of
his part in all the past events. He begs forgiveness for his trespasses and
entreats all to love one another. The march-like music of ‘Do you hear the
people sing’ returns, but now the text expresses the hope that the poor will be
freed from poverty and enjoy a more just and rewarding future.
Cav and Pag – or more accurately Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci – are two
short operas, nowadays nearly always performed as a double bill and therefore
inevitably paired in people’s minds like salt and pepper or Gilbert and
Sullivan. The composers Mascagni and Leoncavallo were both Italian and their
operas were first performed in the early 1890s, Cavalleria in Rome and Pagliacci
in Milan. Both are concerned with realistic portrayal of rural life.
Cavalleria Rusticana is a one-act opera set in a Sicilian village and the time
is Easter Day 1890. It is a story of swift action and intense emotion; of
passionate love, betrayal and deathly retribution, and it inspired Mascagni to
compose what has remained his only significant achievement. The hot blood of the
story courses through the music, though Mascagni includes quieter passages that
make the passionate scenes all the more effective.
In the opera the function of the Easter Hymn is to provide a splash of local
colour and confirms the religious devotion of the Sicilian character. In the
church the choir intones the ‘Regina Coeli’ and the villagers outside in the
square join in with ‘Allelujahs’. Then they kneel and Santuzza, a village girl,
whose betrayed love for a young soldier is the trigger for the eventual tragedy,
joins the singing of the Resurrection hymn ‘Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto’ (
Oh sing praises, for the Lord is risen.). The famous melody that Mascagni
conjured up for this scene has become one of the best known in the entire
operatic repertoire and it is strange that he was never able to equal this
achievement in anything else he wrote.
(top)
For More Information Contact:
Chipperfield Choral Society
Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, UK
Tel:
FAX:
Internet:
Secretary@chipperfieldchoral.co.uk
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