£1.50

CANTORUM CHOIR

PRESENTS

GLORIA!

CHORAL WORKS

by

John Rutter

Bob Chilcott

Michael Tippett

with

SOUNDING BRASS

Music Director — Elisabeth Croft

Saturday 10th October 7:30 pm

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Cantorum Choir is a dedicated and talented choir of approximately forty voices, based in Cookham, Berkshire. Under the directorship of Elisabeth Croft, the ensemble continues to earn itself a reputation as one of the leading chamber choirs in the area. The choir boasts a wide-ranging repertoire and performs professional-quality concerts across the year. At the Choir of the Year 2014 auditions, Cantorum ‘grabbed the judges’ attention’ and were a Choir of the Day, earning full marks for Technical achievement and Musicality: ‘A truly beautiful performance.’ Cantorum was subsequently placed fifth nationally in the Adult Choir category.

CANTORUM CHOIR

Patron

Ralph Allwood MBE

Sopranos

Julia Bentley-Dawkes, Jill Burton Louise Evans, Kirsty Janusz Sandy Johnstone, Julia Millard Hilary Monaghan, Joy Strzelecki Deborah Templing, Philippa Wallace Altos

Celia Armstrong, Bridget Bentley Jami Castell, Sarah Evans Anne Glover, Angela Plant Elspeth Scott, Chiu Sung Lorna Sykes, Gill Tucker

Tenors

Anthony Dowlatshahi Philip Martineau, Peter Roe Malcolm Stork, John Timewell Basses

Derek Beaven, John Buck Arthur Creswell, Gordon Donkin David Hazeldine, Ed Millard Paul Seddon

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Elisabeth Croft (née Toye)—Music Director

Elisabeth is a graduate of Birmingham University and also of the Royal Academy of Music, where she won the 2004 Michael Head Prize for English Song and the 2005 Arthur Bliss Prize for Twentieth Century Music. In 2008, she won the A.E.S.S. Patricia Routledge National Prize for English Song and has subsequently built a busy and successful career as a professional soprano, vocal coach, and choral trainer. She has for some years been working with Berkshire Maestros (The Young Musicians Trust) and is currently director of Berkshire Young Voices, the county training choir. She is also a regular tutor for the National Youth Choirs of Wales.

Jozef Janik (Piano)—Asst. Music Director

Jozef has a BA in music from Zilina Conservatoire, and a Postgraduate Diploma with MA in Music from the Royal Academy, where he studied with Patsy Toh. He has given concerts in Austria, Sweden, France, Poland, England, Japan, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. His list of awards includes First Prize in the International Piano Competition in Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. Recent concert venues feature The Forge in Camden, St. James Piccadilly and the Paris Conservatoire.

SOUNDING BRASS

Trumpet Kevin Ransom, Andy Smets, Adam Denman, Dominic Field

Horn Jess Cooper, Alex Stead

Trombone Rob Croft, Howard Beagley, Mark Cardy

Euphonium Mark Lowe

Tuba James Baker

Percussion Nathan cole, Alice Angliss

Organ/Piano Jozef Janik

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Gloria! Elisabeth Croft — Director Jozef Janik — Piano/Organ

Sounding Brass

Cantate Domino ‘O sing unto the Lord a new song’ John Rutter

A Prayer of Saint Patrick (St Patrick’s Breastplate) John Rutter

Suite No. 1 in E¨ for Military Band Gustav Holst

Chaconne

Intermezzo

March

Jubilate ‘O be Joyful’ Choir & Brass Bob Chilcott

Jubilate

Song The text here is the poem ‘Prayer’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844—1889) Soloist: Julia Millard Soprano

Be ye sure

O go your way

Be thankful

For the Lord is gracious

Interval

Dance, Clarion Air Michael Tippett

The text is a poem by Christopher Fry celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II Soloists: Kirsty Janusz Soprano, Angela Plant Alto, Philip Martineau Tenor, Ed Millard Bass

Gloria Choir & Brass John Rutter

Gloria

Domine Deus, Rex caelestis Soloists: Philippa Wallace Soprano, Deborah Templing Soprano, Elspeth Scott Alto

Quoniam tu solus sanctus

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John Rutter needs almost no introduction. One of the most successful and popular composers of recent years, he is known all over the world especially for his Christmas music, enthusiastically sung by choirs of all shapes and sizes—including our own. In Rutter, we find sheer pleasure in music.

Rutter was born in London in 1945 and received his first musical education as a chorister at Highgate School. He went on to study music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he wrote his first published compositions and conducted his first recording while still a student.

His compositional career has embraced both large and small-scale choral works, orchestral and instrumental pieces, a piano concerto, two children’s operas, music for television, and specialist writing for such groups as The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and The King’s Singers.

His larger choral works, Gloria (1974), Requiem (1985), Magnificat (1990), Psalmfest (1993) and Mass of the Children (2003) have been performed many times in Britain, North America, and a growing number of other countries. Cantorum performed the Mass of the Children recently with one of the Taplow choirs. We also took the Rutter Requiem to Venice with us in 2006.

In 1980, Rutter formed his own vocal group, the Cambridge Singers, as a professional chamber choir primarily dedicated to recording. He continues to divide his time between composition and conducting. He has guest-conducted or lectured at many concert halls, universities, churches, music festivals, and conferences in Europe, Africa, North and Central America and Australasia.

In 1996 the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred a Lambeth Doctorate of Music upon him in recognition of his contribution to church music, and he was honoured in the 2007 Queen’s New Year Honours List, being awarded a CBE for services to music.

The text Cantate Domino is from Psalm 98, ‘O sing unto the Lord a new song’, used in evening services as an alternative to the Magnificat. Because of its exhortation to get up and sing, this psalm has naturally attracted many choral composers. Most famous of all settings is the dance-like madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi (1567—1643), which Cantorum performed last summer. And so tonight’s version (taken from Rutter’s larger work Psalmfest) already feels intriguingly familiar to the choir, as Rutter pays homage not only to Monteverdi’s melody but also to the same run-and-skip rhythm of the Renaissance galliard. Interestingly, though, Rutter adds an extra dimension to the material in the form of a direct plainsong quotation ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ near the end of the piece. Enjoy!

A Prayer of Saint Patrick is a very simple yet profoundly moving setting of some words from the early Irish poem known as Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.

The following note on Rutter’s thrilling Gloria is taken (with permission) from the composer’s own website:

‘Gloria was written as a concert work. It was commissioned by the Voices of Mel Olson, Omaha, Nebraska, and the composer directed the first performance on the occasion of his first visit to the United States in May 1974. The Latin text, drawn from the Ordinary of the Mass, is a centuries-old challenge to the composer: exalted, devotional and jubilant by turns. Rutter’s setting, which is based mainly on one of the Gregorian chants associated with the text, divides into three movements roughly corresponding to traditional symphonic structure. The accompaniment is for brass ensemble with timpani, percussion and organ—a combination which in the outer movements makes quite a joyful noise unto the Lord, but which is used more softly and introspectively in the middle movement. The composer later made a version with full orchestra.’

LOUISE LUEGNER © Collegium Records www.johnrutter.com

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Bob Chilcott has been involved with choral music all his life, first as a chorister and then as a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. Later, he sang and composed music for twelve years with The King’s Singers. His experiences with that group, his passionate commitment to young and amateur choirs, and his profound belief that music can unite people, have inspired him both to compose full time and, through pro-active work-shopping, to promote choral music world-wide.

Jubilate is a medium scale concert work for brass and choir that uses as its text a combination of the ancient words of Psalm 100 and the inspirational poem Prayer by the strikingly innovative Victorian poet Gerard Manley

Hopkins. The piece is set within a lyrical frame which supports both the exciting and extrovert passages of public rejoicing as well as those sections of more intimate, personal praise. Jubilate is dedicated to Simon Carrington, a close colleague of Chilcott’s in The King’s Singers, and his University of Kansas Chamber Choir. Gustav Holst (1874—1934) enjoys the distinction of having composed one of the best known and most popular orchestral pieces in the repertoire: The Planets suite. In his life, by contrast, he preferred a degree of seclusion from fame—spending much of his time privately, composing and teaching at St Paul’s Girls’ School in a post he held from 1905 until his death in 1934. He also taught at Morley College, the ground-breaking and still on-going project in Waterloo dedicated to working class adult arts education. Holst’s musical persona was formed under the all-pervasive influence of Wagner and Richard Strauss, but he was also animated by the current of folk-inspired nationalism that ran through late nineteenth century European music. This enthusiasm, most powerfully characterised by Bartok’s folk song collecting work in Hungary, had of course its own flowering in Britain through Vaughan Williams and the English Folk Song and Dance Society. Holst’s English folk influences can be distinctly heard in tonight’s piece—but so, too, can his interest in textures perhaps drawn from Ravel and from his own speciality in the sound of brass—he was a trombonist of note in his own right. The First Suite for Military Band was composed in 1909 and remains a firm favourite.

Sir Michael Tippett (1905—1998) was one of the most prominent British composers of the later twentieth century, often spoken of in the same bracket of excellence as Benjamin Britten. He is best known for his first opera The Midsummer Marriage and for the pacifist oratorio A Child of Our Time, into which he introduced a series of haunting North American spirituals to replace the more conventional chorales. The Child of Our Time spirituals have become deservedly popular as a separate performance piece, and Cantorum has sung them on several occasions. Tippett, like Holst, was strongly involved with Morley College, where a bombing raid after his appointment in 1941 meant that he was responsible for overseeing a complete

‘rebuilding’ of music there. In 1944, encouraged by Britten and Pears, he found recognition and an audience with his first symphony, a break-through which heralded a lifelong and substantial output of large scale works. We are concerned tonight, however, with an exquisite miniature. Following the death of King George VI, the Arts Council of Great Britain commissioned ten composers to contribute to a set of madrigals (modelled on Thomas Morley’s 1601 collection The Triumphs of Oriana made for Elizabeth I at the close of her reign) entitled A Garland for a Queen. They were to celebrate the opening of Elizabeth II’s reign and her coronation in 1953. Dance, Clarion Air is Tippett’s stunningly beautiful offering, set to a poem by his friend Christopher Fry (now, ironically, most famous for the title of his verse play The Lady’s not for Burning). The sounds of this madrigal are of the air on the waves (around Britain), which, as it dances with the bright stones on the shores, creates a crown that shines in a new dawn.

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A note on this year’s chosen charities

Cantorum Choir endeavours to support two specially chosen charities each year with a donation from our proceeds. The aim is usually to make the choices of particular relevance to the area or to members of the choir. This year we are pleased and proud to be supporting:

The Sepsis Trust and The Navakiran Orphanage, Nepal The following was written by Philippa Wallace, a member of Cantorum’s soprano section, who proposed that we support The Sepsis Trust in memory of her mother, Marianne Stork.

Our dear friend and Cantorum Choir founder member Marianne Stork died from Sepsis in September 2013. The illness known as the 'silent killer' affects 100,000 people every year in Britain and kills 37,000—considerably more than breast and bowel cancer combined. In fact, Sepsis kills approximately 20% of those taken into hospital intensive care. But despite the fatal consequences, it often goes undetected until it is far too late for treatment to be effective. Sepsis occurs when a bacterial infection triggers a violent response from the immune system. The body begins attacking its own organs, which, if not recognised quickly, can lead to rapid failure of the heart, liver, lungs or kidneys. According to research, an estimated 12,500 lives could be saved each year if symptoms were spotted earlier. If identified soon enough, the condition can be treated with antibiotics and intravenous fluid. Your donation would support the radical rethinking of the way we research and diagnose this devastating condition.

The Navakiran Orphanage Proposed by Bridget Bentley from the Alto section, who writes:

The Navakiran Orphanage in Nepal was initially set

up with the help of a group of school girls from

High Wycombe and their teacher, a friend of mine, who went out to Nepal to participate in the building

project. Since then, Nepal has suffered a number of devastating earthquakes and the orphanage

was badly damaged. The Rotary Club in Marlow, in partnership with the Rotary Club in Khatmandu,

has been busy organising events locally to support re-building work, and Cantorum's contribution will

be very gratefully received.

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Future Cantorum Concerts:

Date: Saturday 12th December 2015

Event: The Ultimate Christmas Concert

Venue: Holy Trinity Church, Cookham SL6 9SP

Date: Saturday 19th March 2016

Event: J S Bach: Mass in B Minor (with Orchestra)

Venue: All Saints Church, Marlow, SL7 2AA

Date: Saturday 25th June 2016

Event: Summer Concert

Venue: Holy Trinity Church, Cookham SL6 9SP

Grateful thanks are due to:

Jenny Knight The Stationery Depot, Cookham Rise Parade All others who have helped in the production of this concert

And thanks to you, our audience, for your continued support

If you would like to become a friend of Cantorum Choir, please email us: info@cantorumchoir.org.uk

If you or your organisation would like to consider sponsoring Cantorum Choir in some way, then please call us on: 07711 056661 to discuss the various options

You can also follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/cantorumchoir and on Twitter: @CantorumChoir

Help Cantorum Choir just by shopping online

Give as you Live is an award-winning fundraising platform for charities. Simply shop with your favourite stores, and a donation from the retailer will be made to Cantorum Choir without costing you a penny extra. Compare prices and shop at thousands of leading stores like Amazon, Expedia and John Lewis. https://www.giveasyoulive.com/charity/cantorumchoir

www.cantorumchoir.org.uk

info@cantorumchoir.org.uk

Registered Charity no. 1136210

This year the choir is supporting:

THE SEPSIS TRUST

THE NAVAKIRAN ORPHANAGE, NEPAL