Sheffield Bach Choir dedicated their latest offering to the memory of Dr Simon Lindley, their previous Music Director and well known organist and conductor. Conductor Philip Collin shared reminiscences and accolades from Dr Lindley’s colleagues and members of the choir.
The concert was a wonderful programme of paired works, each pair featuring a well-known and popular piece alongside a lesser-known work by the same composer.
Audience members were treated to Handel’s wonderful coronation anthem Zadok the Priest followed by the lesser known The King shall rejoice, also written for the crowning of King George II.
Two settings of The Spirit of the Lord were sung – a lesser known one by Norman Barnes, the founding conductor of the choir and music teacher at King Edward VII school, and the well-known setting of the same text by Edward Elgar, whose wonderful Nimrod from the Enigma Variations also featured on the programme by way of an organ piece played by cathedral organist James Mitchell. Later he was joined by Music Director Philip Collin in a fiendish piano duet rendition of Holst favourite Jupiter from The Planets, arranged by Peter Petrof.
J S Bach works also featured of course – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, which most people know, and Christ lag in Todesbanden, less well known but equally marvellous.
The concert ended with popular favourite Jerusalem by Parry following the beautiful Never Weather-Beaten Sail from his Songs of Farewell.
Sheffield Bach Society 