Choir Blog – Page 5 – Sheffield Bach Society

Bach Festival

A BACH FESTIVAL
Saturday 16th November 2019, 7.30pm, Sheffield Cathedral

The Bach Choir, conducted by Dr. Simon Lindley, presented Bach’s beautiful Christmas Oratorio on Saturday 16 November in Sheffield’s Anglican cathedral, along with the well-known Cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, calls the voice to us), also known as Sleepers Wake. Soloists Stephen Liley, Philippa Hyde, Lucy Appleyard and Quentin Brown sang the solo movements with lyrical passion, and the National Festival Orchestra played Bach’s beautiful music marvellously well, as always. The evening really did prove to be a great way to start Christmas early! The concert was generously supported by Betty Grimsley.

Beautiful Brahms

BRAHMS FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday 5 October 2019, 7.30pm, Sheffield Cathedral

On Saturday 5 October the Bach Choir presented a programme devoted to Brahms, featuring his magnificent German Requiem, the Academic Festival Overture and two beautiful motets. Rising Sheffield star Ella Taylor sang the soprano solos with precision and accuracy – and immense power, filling the cathedral with a superb soprano sound. Acclaimed bass Alex Ashworth sang with drama and immense feeling, and the choir’s huge enjoyment accompanying the two soloists was clearly heard in their rendering of the choruses. Sally Robinson’s National Festival Orchestra played with verve and style, ably conducted by Dr Simon Lindley. The concert was generously supported by soprano Jane Ginsborg.

Family re-unite to sing in memorial concert

15 September 2019 Sheffield Telegraph

Five members of one family will come together to sing the Brahms Requiem with Sheffield Bach Choir in Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 5 October. Jane Ginsborg, Professor of Music Psychology at the Royal Northern College of Music, is thrilled to sponsor the concert in memory of her parents Alexandrina (Andy) and Bernard Ginsborg, who died in 2013 and 2018.

‘At their own request, no funeral or memorial service was held for them,’ explained Jane. ‘They were great music lovers, however – what better way to celebrate their lives than with a concert?’

Jane’s sister Hannah, a philosopher, will sing in the choir, flying in from Oakland, California (via Berlin), where she recently performed the Requiem with her local choir. Jane’s husband George Nicholson, Professor of Composition at the University of Sheffield, will be there to support, not only as much-beloved son-in-law but also as President of Sheffield Bach Society.

Jane and George’s son Leo, a concert pianist, will travel from London where he accompanies the Forest Choir in Walthamstow. He and their daughter Ruth, who plays and teaches violin and piano, and is the choir’s own accompanist, plan to join Jane and Hannah to sing with the choir.

‘My mother claimed she couldn’t sing, but my father had a wonderful singing voice, which he used at home in the traditional songs of Jewish festivals,’ said Jane. ‘So it’s great that my sister and I, and Leo and Ruth, can come together to sing with the Bach Choir in their memory’.

Andy and Bernard were the grand-daughter and son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. They met at Reading University where she studied economics and psychology, and he studied physics. They were keen concert-goers in Edinburgh, where they lived for many years.

‘We would often go with our parents to concerts at the Usher Hall, following scores while we listened to the music,’ said Jane. ‘There were trips to Glasgow to see Scottish Opera, and we went to the Edinburgh Festival every year, a tradition George and I have kept up ever since. It’s hardly surprising that Hannah and I became musicians!’

The choir will be conducted by Dr Simon Lindley, with the National Festival Orchestra and two superb soloists – rising Sheffield star soprano Ella Taylor, winner of the Lesley Garrett Opera prize and former BBC Chorister of the Year, and internationally acclaimed bass Alex Ashworth.

‘Music, the opportunity to hear it and to make it ourselves, was one of the most precious gifts our parents gave us,’ said Jane. ‘We are so grateful to have been able to pass it on to our children too.’

Read the original article as it appeared in the Sheffield Telegraph

Golden Anniversary concert a success

Dr Simon Lindley celebrated his 50th concert with Sheffield Bach Choir at their annual offering for the Broomhill Festival in St Mark’s Church on 22 June 2019. The audience enjoyed a lively evening in a programme that Simon Lindley 3 couldn’t have been more different from Simon’s first concert with the choir – a performance of Mendelsson’s St Paul in their 60^thanniversary season in 2009.

The programme featured American Serenade by the late Donald Hunt, who wrote the orchestration specifically for the Sheffield Bach Choir and featuring individual numbers for shows such as High Society, Porgy and Bess and Show Boat – songs that went down very well with the audience, some of whom were clearly singing along. Also well received were arrangements of American classic songs, newly orchestrated by the choir’s President George Nicholson, Professor of Composition at Sheffield University, who displayed obvious enjoyment on hearing his orchestration played with such verve by Sally Robinson’s wonderful National Festival Orchestra.

The evening ended with John Rutter’s popular Feel The Spirit, sung with lively enthusiasm by the choir and by talented mezzo soprano Joanna Gamble – and by the audience, who joined in with great gusto in an encore of the final chorus ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’.

Simon’s Golden date

Sheffield Telegraph Thursday 13 July 2019

Dr Simon Lindley always enjoys conducting Sheffield Bach Choir concerts, but is looking forward to their Broomhill Festival offering with special anticipation.

Simon Lindley 3 ‘It will be my 50th concert with Sheffield Bach Choir’ explained Simon, ‘My first concert was Mendelsson’s St Paul in 2009, full of show-stoppers but rarely heard, and a fine choice for what was the Sheffield Bach Choir’s 60^th anniversary season. A marked contrast to my 50^th concert with the choir, which features songs from the shows and John Rutter’s popular Feel The Spirit – always one to get people tapping their feet!’

Despite obvious expertise in church and choral music, Simon is equally at home with music from the USA, a familiarity augmented by regular trips to North Tampa, Florida to visit eldest son Nicholas, once a solo treble with the Bach Choir. ‘My two grand-daughters would feel right at home with the increasingly popular American Serenade by the late Donald Hunt, who wrote the orchestration specifically for the Sheffield Bach Choir’ said Simon. ‘It’s a celebration of the music of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, with individual numbers for smash hit shows such as High Society, Porgy and Bess and Show Boat. We’ll also present new arrangements of American classic songs specially orchestrated by our President George Nicholson, Professor of Composition at Sheffield University – as well as the Rutter of course – an infectious suite of spirituals featuring mezzo soprano Joanna Gamble.’

Simon is a highly distinguished organist with a long list of national positions with church music or organ trusts and associations, along with numerous awards and honours. For many years the organist and choirmaster at Leeds Parish Church, organist at Leeds Town Hall and music officer for Leeds City Council, half of his life has been based in Yorkshire where he has conducted numerous choirs including Sheffield Bach Choir and St Peters Singers in Leeds.

LET’S GO STATESIDE! Is the Bach Choir’s offering in support of the Broomhill Festival, which this year runs from 14^th to 28^th June and includes open gardens, a car boot sale, talks, a book sale, poetry readings, a litter pick, various children’s activities, a garden party and much more, together with numerous musical events. These include two lunchtime concerts, a Come and Sing version of Karl Jenkins’ Armed Man in aid of ASSIST on Sunday 16 June, Music for a Summer Evening at Westbourne School on Thursday 20 June in aid of the Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, and the Sheffield Sinfonietta playing Bach and Vivaldi in a free ‘Concert for Nepal’ on Friday 28th June.

Tickets for Let’s Go Stateside are available online at https://www.wegottickets.com/event/443664 or from Sheffield cathedral shop, or at the door.

Information about Broomhill Festival is available at http://www.broomhill-festival.org.uk/ and at Broomhill Library

Read this article on the Sheffield Telegraph website

Bach round the font

Visitors to Sheffield’s Anglican cathedral occasionally happen upon a rehearsal for that evening’s concert – but there’s an extra treat in store on Saturday 9 March 2019. Dr Simon Lindley will provide a short talk about Johann Sebastian Bach around Brian Hall’s wonderful stainless steel font, as part of Classical Sheffield’s third weekend festival.

The talk, from 6.15 to 6.45pm, will be free to festival pass holders, and follows an afternoon open rehearsal of the St John Passion for that evening’s 7.30pm concert by Sheffield Bach Choir.

“One of the themes of this year’s festival is Future Makers” explained Dr Lindley, “and I hope to persuade visitors that Bach was a future maker of the past – especially with his choral music. Opera was quite a new form in Bach’s time, but his Passions are amazingly dramatic and innovative, and there is no doubt that his music has had a huge influence on other composers – including, I’m sure, some of the young Sheffield composers who have written new works for the 2019 Classical Weekend festival.”

It is 50 years since Dr Lindley’s first involvement with the St John Passion when he played continuo in a performance at Westminster Abbey in 1969. He marked the occasion by meeting up with Sir Ivor Atkins grand-daughter Katherine O’Carroll in Leeds last month.

“Atkins, who was born 150 years ago, was the editor of the 1929 edition of Bach’s St John Passion which choirs, including ours, still use to this day.” said Simon. “He and Edward Elgar had collaborated on an edition of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1911, and he also produced a new edition of the Brahms Requiem in English. It was wonderful to meet up with his grand-daughter on my anniversary to discuss how we might mark his.”

Bach’s St John Passion will be given by Sheffield Bach Choir at 7.30pm on Saturday 9 March in Sheffield Cathedral, with the National Festival Orchestra led by Sally Robinson, Alan Horsey on continuo and featuring tenor Stephen Liley and bass Thomas Hunt as Evangelist and Christ respectively. The open rehearsal will start at 1.30p (soloists only) and from 2.30 with the full choir and orchestra.

Tickets, available from www.sheffieldbachchoir or on the door, must be purchased separately rather than via Classical Sheffield, but there’s a £5 discount for festival pass holders. The talk at 6.15pm is free.

Messiah raises record amount for charity

18 December 2018

The choir enjoyed an exceptionally successful performance of Messiah in Sheffield Cathedral on Monday 3 December 2018, with audience reporting it to be our ‘best ever’! Everyone appreciated the National Festival Orchestra’s confident rendition, and the power and accuracy of local soprano Ella Taylor. Counter tenor David Allsopp sang with wonderful sensitivity, and tenor David Brown and bass Quentin Brown gave excellent support.

This annual performance always features a retiring collection for the cathedral’s excellent Archer Project, which this year raised an amazing £1324.55, way higher than last year and quite probably the choir’s highest collection ever for this worthy cause. The choir is grateful to the audience members for their generous contributions.

The choir also sing carols at Waitrose, which raised £131 for choir funds as well as being a cheerful and fun event for all concerned. Thanks are due to everyone who turned out to sing, but a special thank you to David Sanderson for keeping us all in good order!

Here’s wishing all our supporters a very merry Christmas!

Messiah – reflections by Simon Lindley

1 December 2018, Dr Simon Lindley

So pretty nigh universal has its use become, it is scarcely credible to think that the first vocal score of Watkins Shaw’s edition of Messiah only appeared as recently as sixty years ago. It has, generally [though by no means completely] replaced the previous most popular edition, that of Ebenezer Prout printed in 1902 by the same music publisher, Novello & Company Limited, that brought to birth Watkins Shaw’s complete editionissued over a number of years and including full score, a companion compendium, miniature score and orchestral parts as well as a vocal score, the most recent re-incarnation of which appeared as recently as 1992. Not that Shaw’s was the first ‘hat in the ring’ in terms of striving faithfully to reproduce Handel’s intentions without things such as the ‘additional accompaniments’ so beloved by Mozart as well as his later successors.

Shaw’s precursors included John Tobin, Conductor of the London Handel Society who issued an edition for Barenreiter’s complete gamut of Handel’s works as well as earlier figures such as Westminster Abbey organist Sir Frederick Bridge and the vastly under-rated Oxford-based musicologist T W Bourne [1862-1948]. Bourne it was who, in many ways, paved the way for a greater degree of historical ‘authenticity’ and accuracy, decades prior to Dr Shaw’s intervention. Shaw insisted on the proper use of a continuo player to fill out the potential of the composer’s harmonies, written with the assistance of a kind of musical ‘shorthand’ in the form of a system known as ‘figured bass’ in which the intervals that were printed with a number above the cello and bass line advised the player clearly of the composer’s harmonic requirements on important chords as much as less prominent points.

Significant recordings include a trail-blazing EMI LP under Sir Charles Mackerras with the youthful Dame Janet Baker among the soloists being joined by fledgling Nottingham-born counter-tenor Paul Esswood as well as numerous pioneering performances here in the Cathedral by Sheffield Bach Choir under the informed and inspirational direction of the late and great Dr Roger Bullivant MBE, Conductor of the Bach Choir from 1960 until retirement around forty years later.

Though by far the best known of its composer’s many religious works, Messiah is actually the least typical of Handel’s many oratorios. This is due in the main to the special genius of his ‘librettist’ Charles Jennens, who was responsible for the imaginative compilation of the verbal text – a compilation which has, in itself, probably done almost as much to establish the work in the hearts and minds of successive generations as Handel’s music.

Messiah, truly, stands in a class of its own – in some ways as much almost a liturgical observance as a concert piece; not in the manner of the Passion oratorios from the Lutheran tradition, but more as a series of scenarios and reflective tableaux.

Handel was engaged extensively in the composition and presentation of oratorio in London for the last two decades of his life. His business sense and entrepreneurial energy seem to have captured the mood of the age. Had he remained stubbornly committed to opera composition, his twilight years would have been much less comfortable and his public far less appreciative. The keeping of precise financial records, receipt books and “word books” as the programmes of the day were known, during the course of the composer’s performances arranged for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital are of huge benefit to scholars in enabling us to ascertain which selections of the solo material were heard on which occasions.

It is extremely unlikely that the composer ever heard or performed the work wholly complete, though the Bach Choir and many other ensembles are known for presenting the work “cover to cover” to quote a West Riding descriptive of an uncut version of the composer’s magnificent score.

The Bach Choir is proud of, and profoundly grateful for, the considerable support provided each December to a now traditional retiring collection at the close of the evening in aid of the Cathedral’s acclaimed Archer Project for those undergoing difficult times in their lives.

Messiah will be performed in Sheffield Cathedral on Monday 3 December 2018. Go to the current season page for further details.

Armed Man

The Choir is looking forward to singing The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins in Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 17 November, with the National Festival Orchestra and soloists Nicola Hooke soprano, Hannah Mason mezzo soprano, Jeremy Dawson tenor and bass Thomas Asher. Jenkins wrote the work as a mass for peace, and many listeners find a live performance to be an extremely moving experience.

The work was a millennial year commission from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and its text was researched and devised by Guy Wilson, then Master of the Armouries. It was originally intended for another Yorkshire-based composer, Pontefract-born Philip Wilby, who had to decline owing to the demands of other commissions, so the task fell to prominent Welsh composer Karl Jenkins. He tackled the challenge with relish, drawing on the styles and ambiences of music from earlier periods in a very special and original manner.

The verbal text comes from a great diversity of sources: the traditional Latin Mass, the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, the Psalms of David, the popular medieval French song, L’Homme Armé that provides the impetus for the work’s English title, Dryden, Mallory, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the final book of the bible, the apocalyptic Revelation to St John the Divine; also featured are verbal extracts of Guy Wilson’s own devising and far Eastern poets.

Jenkins draws on the French folk melody of the title, Palestrina’s “parody” mass inspired by the secular song as well as Eastern originals in melody. Perhaps the most appealing number emotionally speaking, the Benedictus, has become a real favourite, as has the beautiful Agnus Dei.

The Spirit of England, Elgar’s great war-time choral trilogy, uses three texts of Laurence Binyon – The Fourth of August, To Women and For the Fallen. The latter contains the immortal brief stanzas used at so many acts or remembrance all over the English-speaking world:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn;
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning: we will remember them.

The same text is utilised by organist-composer Mark Blatchly in his setting for upper voices entitled For the Fallen, which ingeniously incorporates the evocative music of The Last Post.

Chair’s 5th anniversary

22 October 2018

It’s five years this October since Chris Walker was elected as Chair of Sheffield Bach Choir – and he isn’t likely to forget the date! ’Our eldest daughter gave birth to our first grandchild Elizabeth a few hours earlier.’ said Chris, ‘I dashed to the AGM straight from the hospital – if I hadn’t been standing for Chair I might have played hooky I think!’

chris walker 1 Chris was born in California USA but came to Sheffield to study dentistry in 1978 and decided to stay, working at busy practices in Rotherham, then Wombwell. ‘I fell in love with the rural feel to the city and being able to escape to somewhere wooded or green so easily.’ Now retired, he has an allotment near Ecclesall library, sits on five committees, and helps look after Grade 2* listed St James’ Church, Norton.

He joined the choir almost by chance. ‘I was moaning about work-life balance to my Dad, he happened to know someone in the choir and before I knew it I’d auditioned and was in!’ Chris remembers that first audition, given by Dr Roger Bullivant, who heard Chris sing, then took out an old envelope, drew a bass clef and five lines, scribbled a few notes and barked “Sing that!” The choice of singing was no accident though, as Chris had been a boy chorister at Magdalen College Oxford – as was the choir’s current conductor Dr Simon Lindley. ‘I remember walking across Magdalen Bridge in cap and gown – they don’t do that anymore. I wonder how many tourists still have the faded photographs they snapped as we passed by!’

Some 35 years later Chris still enjoys singing bass in the choir. ‘I’ve loved singing the great choral works including an annual Messiah and our three year rotation of Bach’s St John Passion, St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor – maybe one of the greatest pieces ever written. There’s something special about singing with a professional orchestra in Sheffield cathedral, which has a lovely acoustic; it sends a shiver down the spine and you just can’t beat it! We’ve had a fair few younger people joining us recently but we’re still looking for new members so do give us a go!’

Chris is looking forward to the choir’s next concert, Lest we forget, featuring the Armed Man by Karl Jenkins as well as works by Elgar and Blatchly – but he’s anticipating quite an emotional sing. ‘Remembering the Great War is important, and the Armed Man is a good choice; Jenkins wrote it as a mass for peace.’ explains Chris ‘It’s a really popular atmospheric work and a joy to listen to, especially poignant for me as it was played at Dad’s funeral last year. He and Mum were great supporters of the choir and the Agnus Dei from this work was a particular favourite.’

The choir presents Lest we forget in Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 17 November at 7.30pm. Tickets from www.sheffieldbachchoir.org.uk; www.wegottickets.com, cathedral shop, or at the door.