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Golden Jubilee Celebrations | St Albans Chamber Choir with Wormser Kantorei

When
Saturday April 27, 2019 at 19:30
Where
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban, St Albans
Tickets
£25, £20 and £15 (£5 for young persons in full-time education)
Phone for tickets: 01727 890290
Phone lines open: Monday to Friday: 10am to 4.45pm, Saturday: 10am to 3.45pm. Sunday: 1pm to 5pm
Other Sources: Cathedral Box Office (located in the South Transept)
Book Online
Tickets "at the door" - until sold out
  1. Mass in C, 'Coronation' K 317 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  2. Dona nobis pacem - Ralph Vaughan Williams
  3. Coronation Anthem: Zadok the Priest HWV 258 - George Frideric Handel
  4. The Innumerable Dance: An English Overture - William Alwyn

St Albans Chamber Choir and Wormser Kantorei celebrate 50 years of choral collaboration in the magnificent Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban. The partnership, which first started as a town-twinning arrangement between St Albans in Hertfordshire and Worms in Germany in 1969, has continued uninterrupted ever since, with biennial concerts being performed alternately in the two cities.

Mozart’s Mass No 15 in C major, K 317, later known as the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass), was first performed on Easter Sunday, 4 April 1779 in Salzburg Cathedral. The 23-year-old Mozart had just taken up the post of court organist and composer to the exacting Archbishop Colloredo, and was required to write a missa brevis (short Mass), but with full orchestral accompaniment and four soloists. His response was to create a 30-minute masterpiece capable of filling a huge cathedral and creating an atmosphere of great joy.

Vaughan Williams served with the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Western Front in World War I. He wrote the cantata Dona nobis pacem (Grant us peace) in 1936 amid widespread anguish that the worsening political situation in Europe would lead again to war. His passionate, heartfelt plea for peace features texts from the Mass and the Bible and also poems by Walt Whitman, himself a hospital volunteer during the American Civil War, and a speech given in the House of Commons in 1855 by John Bright in an attempt to prevent the Crimean War.

Zadok the Priest is undoubtedly the most popular of the four anthems which Handel composed for the coronation of King George II and Queen Caroline in Westminster Abbey on 11 October 1727. The words, from the Book of Kings, have been sung at every English coronation service since that of King Edgar in Bath Abbey in 973, and Handel's setting has been sung at every British one since 1727. The famous introduction builds and builds until the trumpets and choir burst onto the scene with a triumphant outpouring of joy.

Alwyn’s The Innumerable Dance: an English Overture (1933) is a tone poem for orchestra in praise of Spring. The score is prefaced by some verses from William Blake’s epic poem Milton, the ‘Grandest Poem’ ever written, including the line 'every tree and flower and herb soon fill the air with an innumerable dance' - Blake’s vision of nature in all its glory.

St Albans Chamber Choir has been a major contributor to the musical life of the St Albans area and further afield for 60 years, delighting audiences with music from the last six centuries and winning awards for its innovative programming. This extensive repertoire and a cappella performances are the Choir’s hallmarks, and, under the direction of its inspirational Musical Director John Gibbons, the choir continues to explore new repertoire, often bringing its audience little-known compositions ranging from modern performances of early works to new commissions from contemporary composers (such as Jonathan Rathbone, Tarik O’Regan and Alexander L'Estrange, whose 60th anniversary commission, The Prophet, was performed by the choir in February).

The Wormser Kantorei is an oratorio choir founded in 1955 by Tobias Ihle. It has performed all the major choral works from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 to Tippett’s A Child of our Time, with the works of JS Bach being particular favourites. It regularly performs with professional orchestras. Stefan Merkelbach has been its Musical Director since 2000.

The link between the two choirs began in 1969 with a town-sponsored visit to Worms by the Chamber Choir. This was followed by a visit to St Albans in 1971 by the choir now known as the Wormser Kantorei, and the first joint concert in what has become the longest-established link in St Albans’ town-twinning programme.

For fifty years the two choirs have met and made music together every other year, alternately here and in Germany, and there are many friendships between individual choir members that have been running nearly as long. Among the many memorable concerts that the joint choirs have given, that of 1985, the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II, was particularly significant: Britten’s War Requiem, written for the bombed and rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, was performed in the bombed and restored Trinity Church in Worms, the two orchestras conducted by the two conductors whose own personal friendship did so much to establish and nurture the first 25 years of the partnership: Tobias Ihle and Richard Stangroom.

Today the link is stronger than ever and we celebrate fifty years of music-making together with a concert conducted by both current Musical Directors.


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