May 30th

for The Hay Book Festival

at St Mary?s, Hay-on-Wye with Wrekin Brass
The programme included the larger, concerted works from the December programmne plus folk-songs.

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April 26th

in St John?s, Bishop?s Castle

MUSIC & POETRY (in aid of an African charity)

A semi-chorus from the choir with The Shrewsbury Consort of Recorders, Shrewsbury Handbells,
Severn Guitars and Harpscape,

2008

December 20th in St Mary?s. Shrewsbury

ISLAND OF SONG:

ELGAR TO TODAY

The Phoenix Singers of Shrewsbury

Conductor: Richard White

Saturday 28th April, 2007

St. Mary’s Church Shrewsbury, 7.30 pm

      The Phoenix Singers of Shrewsbury are to perform a unique collection of music, which aptly emanates from the one island of England, Scotland and Wales - (no disrespect to Ireland: they are in the tradition, if not the  geography). Elgar is being duly celebrated for his 150th  birthday. On this occasion there will be no pomp and circumstance. There will be performances of some of his more private works: “There is sweet music”,  “O wild west wind”, “My love dwelt in a northern land” and “Owls” (for which, interestingly, he wrote the lyrics himself).

        Too much Elgar might induce a musical surfeit, so the programme leavens his richness with a wide-ranging  overview of small-scale 20th century  choral music. ‘Today’ is represented by  Sally Beamish’s “Bird Year”  -  vivid settings of four of her own poems,  commissioned by Phoenix in 2006,  and now to be performed for the second time. (It chimes in well with Elgar’s “Owls”.) Paul Patterson wrote his ‘Kyrie’ for the International Choral Festival in New York in 1972. Its innovative tablature, requiring as well as unusual vocal sounds, both a pianist and an ‘inside-the-piano-pianist’,  using all manner of implements, is  testing the choir’s experimental powers, and is giving them much fun.

       Richard Lloyd, who composed the beautiful setting  of   W.R.Rodgers’ “Deep in the fading leaves of night”  (again commissioned by Phoenix) has specifically requested that he shouldn’t be classed in the ‘Contemporary’ category. He was formerly organist of Hereford and Durham cathedrals,  and feels more in tune with Howells, and perhaps William Harris, whose motet for double choir “Faire is the heaven” (1925) provides a prime example of the English cathedral music tradition.

“Let the florid music praise!”

    So starts the wonderful Britten song cycle “On this island”. The soloist is Shrewsbury-born  Ian Yemm, a longstanding favourite tenor soloist with Phoenix audiences, currently with Welsh National Opera. He is accompanied on the piano by the versatile and sensitve choir member, Pam Pickford. In lighter vein, the men sing Britten’s intriguing and mischievous “Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard”, in which Pam Pickford’s piano plays cat and mouse with the three-part male narrative. (Composed in 1943 ‘for Richard Wood and the musicians of Oflag VIIb - Germany’).

      On a more serious note, Bill Smallman plays the organ to accompany the choir in William Mathias’ thoughtful setting of the fourteenth century hymn “Ave verum corpus”, composed for the Pembrokeshire Youth Choir. Also he plays an arrangement of one of Elgar’s  “Dream children” piano pieces.

      The rest of the programme is a marvellous tableau of little gems - Stanford’s, “The Blue Bird”; Vaughan Williams’ energetic arrangement of Goerge Herbert’s “Let all the world”, accompanied by four hands on the piano (Pam Pickford’s and Sue Hindson’s); Holst's rumbustious arrangement of the folk-song “Song of the Blacksmith”; Frederick Delius’ unique and unexpected unaccompanied wordless pair of partsongs “To be sung of a summer night on the water”, the second with tenor solo.

       The words and buoyant music of Gerald Finzi’s setting of Robert Bridges’ “My spirit sang all day” encapsulate the tenor of this evening’s highly original concoction  of some of our island’s choral masterpieces. The programme  incorporates the less  well-known, and certainly less frequently performed, with old favourites: this is ‘a land of pure delight’.

Jointly with the Marches Community Choir and the Ludlow Orchestra, a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah in St John's Bishop's Castle.

Music of the British Isles

At Clungunford, Shrewsbury and Dolgellau: three performances of a programme, Music of the British Isles -

motets and part-songs by Byrd, Finzi, Holst, Mathias, Bernard Naylor, Parry, Peerson and Tippett,
A Verse Anthem by Gibbons, with strings,
Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor for double choir and solo quartet,
Arrangements of folk-songs from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Family Christmas concert with recorders, handbells and carols around the tree.

The choir and orchestra celebrated St Cecilias Day a little early in order to  keep clear of other events, with one of Purcell's St Cecilia Odes, Welcome to all the pleasures, Bernstein's Choruses from the Lark and Britten's St Nicolas.

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Music of the Americas

With the South American folk group Caliche and including Ramirez's Misa Criolla.

Music of the Two Elizabeths : A jubilee Christmas Concert

Including Britten's Choral dances from gloriana, and Christmas music from Weelkes, Byrd, Bennet, Finzi, Warlock and Mathias.

Music of the past ten centuries

From plainsong to Puer Natus, a work commissioned from Robert Sherlaw Johnson via much other music including:

With Orchestra  All the major works of J.S.Bach, some several times, and a number of cantatas.  Britten including Cantata Misericordium, Bruckner, Charpentier, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Purcell, Rawsthorne, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams and others.

With Incantation and with Caliche: South American music, including Ramirez: Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra