Bromley Philharmonic Choir gives four concerts each year. The dates, venues
and programmes for the current season are given below.
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here.
AUTUMN CONCERT — Sunday 16th October 2011
Venue: Christ Church URC, Tudor Way, Petts Wood
(Map) FAURÉ Requiem RUTTER Magnificat
The Fauré Requiem is one of the cornerstones of the choral repertoire, and is as satisfying to perform as it is to listen to. Originally written following the death of his father, it was subject to regular revision during the composer’s lifetime. It is surprising to realise that the work did not achieve its current level of popularity until the 1950s, some thirty years after the composer’s death.
John Rutter’s initial inspiration for his Magnificat was another great masterpiece – that of J.S.Bach, though he has also revealed that he found the task of following in Bach’s footsteps a somewhat daunting prospect. Rutter incorporates three extra elements into the standard Latin text. Particularly memorable is his haunting setting of the beautiful 15th century poem, ‘Of a Rose, a lovely Rose’ .
CHRISTMAS CONCERT — Sunday 11th December 2011
Venue: Christ Church URC, Tudor Way, Petts Wood
(Map) FINZI In Terra Pax Carols for Choir and Audience
Our seasonal concert will include carols for choir and audience, as well as a complete performance of Gerald Finzi’s In Terra Pax, a Christmas Scene in music. Finzi, one of the Choir’s early Vice-Presidents, wrote this beautiful work near the end of his life, and commented after its first performance, “I did rejoice to think that agnostics, Roman Catholics, Anglo-C’s, Jews, Chapel, and Church of England were all gathered together, seeing a beautiful sight, listening to decent music and with all their ridiculous differences dropped for at least an hour.”
SPRING CONCERT — Saturday 10th March 2012
Venue: St.Augustine's Church, Southborough Lane, Bickley
(Map) VIVALDI Gloria PERGOLESI Stabat Mater
Two core works of the baroque period make up our Spring concert this season, but by two very different composers. Vivaldi, the ‘Red Priest’ was one of the most prolific composers of his age, completing many hundreds of concerti, operas and sacred music. Many of his choral works, including the Gloria were written for performance by the pupils at the Ospedale della Pieta, an orphanage at which he taught music from 1703.
Giovanni Pergolesi, on the other hand, had a tragically short life (he died of tuberculosis at the age of 26) and so his catalogue is relatively small. However, his fame led to many works by others being ascribed to him. Other perhaps than his opera La Serva Padrone, the Stabat Mater is his best-known composition: first printed in 1749 (13 years after the composer’s death), it became the most frequently published musical work of the eighteenth century.
SUMMER CONCERT — Saturday 9th June 2012
Venue: Hawes Lane Methodist Church, West Wickham
(Map) ‘TRANSATLANTIC EXCHANGE’ BERNSTEIN Chichester Psalms LAMBERT The Rio Grande and music by GERSHWIN
This concert is built around two great twentieth-century choral masterpieces with a jazz influence. American composer Leonard Bernstein wrote his
Chichester Psalms in 1965, commissioned by the then Dean of Chichester Cathedral, Walter Hussey.
English composer Constant Lambert set Sacheverell Sitwell’s poem Rio Grande in unashamedly jazzy style, with a fiendishly difficult solo piano part and a multitude of percussion.
To complete the programme, we include some music by one of the undisputed jazz greats who crossed over to more serious music too,
George Gershwin.
