with Darius Battiwalla, Organ

Saturday, 21st March, 7·30pmLindley Methodist Church, East Street, Lindley

featuring works by:Elgar • Harvey • Howells

Ireland • Loosemore • LottiMessiæn • Poulenc • Stravinsky

featuring works by:Elgar • Harvey • Howells

Ireland • Loosemore • LottiMessiæn • Poulenc • Stravinsky

Spring Concert 2015

Conductor: Alexander Douglas • Registered Charity Nº 507768

£10per person(includes drinks)

Sunday, 17th May 2015Afternoon & evening (2pm –7pm) atHuddersfield Methodist Mission

Pay at the door or, to avoid disappointment, book in advance. For more information please visit our website:

www.HuddersfieldSingers.comor telephone 01422 822342 (Ruth Wilson, Secretary, The Huddersfield Singers)

featuring the gospel ensemble AINE,finalists in the BBC Songs of PraiseGospel Choir of the Year 2014

A choral workshop directed byAlexander Douglas

Come and Sing ...Special Event

Conductor: Alexander Douglas • Registered Charity Nº 507768

Everyonewelcome!

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ALEXANDER DOUGLAS, CONDUCTOR

Alexander Douglas is increasingly becoming known as one of the UK’s most versatile choral directors, working across a wide spectrum of musical genres and in a variety of contexts. Having worked nationally as a choral animateur, he served as Music Director for the Blaenau Gwent Chorale before being invited to be chorusmaster for a major community oratorio project for Welsh National Opera. He then graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with an MA in Choral Conducting and relocated to Manchester. He gained invaluable real-world experience of directing a large chorus as the ABCD Conducting Apprentice with the Bradford Festival Choral Society last season, during which time he was appointed as the conductor of the Huddersfield Singers. He is also the Music Director of the Aletheian Ensemble (a chamber orchestra), the Veritas Orchestra (a jazz orchestra), AINE (a gospel choir which reached the final of the BBC Songs of Praise Gospel Choir of the Year Competition 2014—as shown in the pictures on this page) and the professional chamber choir Voces Laus Deo. He is also very active as both a composer and an arranger. As a theologian, Alexander is the outgoing Advisor for Music and Worship Ministries for the North England Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. More information can be found on Alex’s personal website: http://alexanderdouglas.wix.com/info

AcknowledgementsThe Huddersfield Singers would like to extend their thanks to the volunteers who have helped in the production of this concert by providing refreshments in the interval, selling tickets and programmes at the door, and being of general assistance behind the scenes. Their contribution has been invaluable.

£10per person(includes drinks)

Sunday, 17th May 2015Afternoon & evening (2pm –7pm) atHuddersfield Methodist Mission

Pay at the door or, to avoid disappointment, book in advance. For more information please visit our website:

www.HuddersfieldSingers.comor telephone 01422 822342 (Ruth Wilson, Secretary, The Huddersfield Singers)

featuring the gospel ensemble AINE,finalists in the BBC Songs of PraiseGospel Choir of the Year 2014

A choral workshop directed byAlexander Douglas

Come and Sing ...Special Event

Conductor: Alexander Douglas • Registered Charity Nº 507768

Everyonewelcome!

4

TONIGHT’S GUESTS

Darius Battiwalla, OrganDarius was born in Islington, London. He began to play the piano by ear at a very early age, later taking up the cello and finally the organ, and became organist at St Mary, Islington when he was 13. He studied music at Leeds University, graduating with first-class honours, then took postgraduate diplomas in organ (with distinction) and piano accompaniment from the Royal Northern College

of Music, where he won prizes on both instruments. He also completed a MusM in performance at Manchester University. Darius has appeared as organ soloist with the London Philharmonic and Hallé Orchestras, and is a regular organist and pianist for the BBC Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. As a pianist he gives regular chamber concerts with members of the Manchester orchestras and Goldberg Ensemble, including BBC broadcasts. On the harpsichord he has played continuo with many UK orchestras, and performed and broadcast harpsichord concertos. Darius has been music director of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus since 1997, prior to which he was chorusmaster of Leeds Philharmonic Chorus. He is acting chorusmaster to Huddersfield Choral Society and works as a visiting chorusmaster with other choirs, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and the Netherlands Radio Choir. As an arranger, Darius has had works performed regularly by the CBSO and Chorus, RLPO and Chorus, the Black Dyke band, Huddersfield Choral Society and the Northern Sinfonia, and has had them broadcast on BBC Songs of Praise and recorded by Doyen, Naxos and Signum Records. In recent years Darius has been increasingly in demand as a silent film accompanist on both organ and piano. After a sell-out performance of Nosferatu in 2009 at the Sheffield Festival, he has accompanied Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the organ, and on the piano has played for the premières of the newly-restored Helen of Four Gates. He plays for a monthly series of films with piano accompaniment at the National Media Museum. Darius has also been a teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music for the last decade, tutoring in organ, continuo and organ improvisation.

TONIGHT’S GUESTS

Heather Heighway, SopranoHeather graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class Honours in 2013. She has already sung a wide range of roles in operas by Monteverdi, Purcell, Mozart, Offenbach, Strauss, Bizet, Janáček, Léhar and Weill, and has been a soloist in many choral works. Heather has won numerous prizes, including a recital prize at the Mrs Sunderland Festival in Huddersfield, and she was the Chester Young Musician of the year in 2011. Whilst at the Conservatoire, Heather won The Reginald Vincent Lieder Prize, took second place in The Edwards Brooks English Song Prize and was a finalist in the Mario Lanza Opera Prize.

Rowan Maurice, BaritoneRowan first began singing in 2008 and soon caught the ‘choral bug’. He is an undergraduate music student at Huddersfield University where he continues to pursue his interests in piano playing and composition. His singing teacher is Andrew Slater.

FREE PHOTOBOOK SOFTWARE

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Wedding? Celebration? Special service?

can provide you with that all-important vocal element to make your event even more special, whether you require the full choir or a smaller ensemble taken from its ranks.

For more details, contact the Secretary, Ruth Wilson, on (01422) 822342

Much easier to win than the National Lottery!

The 100 Club is a fun way to support the choir and maybe win some cash! Pay £1 weekly for a ticket. Numbers are drawn monthly and three prizes awarded:

1st: £50 2nd: £25 3rd: £15

The Club gives a valuable boost to choir funds, and enables us to present more exciting programmes with fine guests. Please join; the more participants there are, the bigger the prizes can be!

For more details, contact the Treasurer, Pete Smith, on (01924) 848624

Bookings 100 Club

“Playing by Ear”

“Earwig van Beethoven”

“Blow Your Own Trumpet”

“Singing by Ear”

WHY NOT JOIN

?The choir is always very keen to welcome new members of all voice parts. If you have a good voice and can sight-read, come along to a rehearsal. The Huddersfield Singers offers:

Challenging, varied music

Three annual concerts

High musical standards

A friendly atmosphere

Rehearsals take place on Mondays, 7:30pm at Huddersfield Methodist Mission, HD1 1QA

For more information, please speak to a choir member or find full details on our website:

http://www.HuddersfieldSingers.com/

Do you have a MUSICAL EAR?

Perhaps you have theVOICE OF AN ANGEL?

Is singing PIANO your FORTE?

Do you preferBEETHOVEN to the BEATLES?

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PROGRAMMEChoir

Great is the Lord (Psalm 48), op. 67 (1912)* ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Sir Edward ElgarO Lord, increase my faith ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Henry LoosemoreCrucifixus etiam pro nobis for 8 voices ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Antonio Lotti

*with Rowan Maurice, Baritone

Soprano Solo

Laudamus te from Mass in C minor, k427 ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Wolfgang Amadeus MozartHeather Heighway, Soprano • Darius Battiwalla, Organ

Choir

Pater noster (1926, rev. 1949) ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Igor Stravinsky

organ Solo

Six Organ Sonatas, op. 65: No 1 in F minor: i Allegro ‥ ‥ Felix MendelssohnDarius Battiwalla, Organ

Choir

Remember, O Lord (2002)*† ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Jonathan HarveyLike as the hart desireth the waterbrooks (1941)* ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Herbert Howells

with *Heather Heighway, †Catherine Styring and †Lynne Ninkovic, Sopranos

✯ INTERVAL ✯

Choir

Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence, fp97 (1938–9) ‥ Francis Poulenc i: Timor et tremor iii: Tenebræ factæ sunt ii: Vinea mea electa iv: Tristis est anima meaBaritone Solo

Why do the nations from Messiah, hwv56 (1741) ‥ ‥ George Frideric HandelRowan Maurice, Baritone • Darius Battiwalla, Organ

Choir

Greater love hath no man (1912) ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ John Irelandwith Heather Heighway, Soprano and Rowan Maurice, Baritone

organ Solo

Prière in C sharp minor, op. 20 ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ César FranckDarius Battiwalla, Organ

Choir

O sacrum convivium! (1937) ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Olivier MessiænGive unto the Lord (Psalm 29), op. 74 (1914) ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ ‥ Sir Edward Elgar

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Until relatively recently, the origins of Lent – known as Tessarakosti in Greek and Quadragesima in Latin, for “the Forty” – were believed to be

self-evident. Many of the theology handbooks of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries confidently claimed that Lent was established by the apostles themselves or in the immediate post-apostolic period at the latest. They assumed this season of fasting was closely connected with preparation for Easter baptisms—a practice likewise considered to be of apostolic foundation and observed everywhere throughout the Church since its earliest days. It may not come as any real surprise to learn that this notion is now increasingly under dispute; ‘disagreement’ and ‘religion’ frequently go hand in hand. But one thing that’s indisputable is that the festivals of Lent and Easter have been a catalyst for the creation of an extraordinary body of sacred music. Great is the Lord was completed towards the end of 1910 and bears more than a passing resemblance to Elgar’s Violin Concerto. Two of its themes are virtually quotations from the concerto’s first movement and finale. Perhaps for this reason, Elgar delayed submitting the work to Novello’s until after he had finished adjusting it in March 1912. When he sent it for publication, he described it as “gigantic … which I fear will be commercially not much to you.” The work was first performed in Westminster Abbey, conducted by Sir Frederick Bridge (the organist at the Abbey), on 16th July 1912 at a service to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Society. Almost all of Henry Loosemore’s known music is sacred, consisting of two Services and a few separate Service items, together with some thirty anthems; two short secular pieces complete the catalogue. Loosemore’s organ book was discovered by Thurston Dart in 1959 in New York Public Library among a collection of manuscripts assembled by the nineteenth-century American philanthropist, Joseph W. Drexel. One direct result of Dart’s discovery was the realisation that two anthems, O Lord, increase our faith and Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, previously unquestioningly attributed to Orlando Gibbons, were in fact composed by Loosemore; a convincing measure of his ability. Antonio Lotti is most famous for the eight-part setting of Crucifixus being performed tonight, although it is not generally known that this ‘motet’ actually comes from a larger work: the Credo in F for choir and orchestra, found in a manuscript in Dresden. Lotti lived and worked in Dresden from 1717–19, though the work was probably written earlier, in Venice. For this

9

section of the Credo, the continuo alone backs the choir; the remaining instruments are tacet, and the choir doubles to eight parts. The excerpt’s modern popularity comes from its publication in an 1860 compilation, Musica sacra, by Franz Commer. As for the Credo in F itself, it is actually a movement from a complete mass found in Prague: the Missa Sancti Christophori. Pater Noster was in fact the first of three sacred choruses that Stravinsky wrote for Russian Orthodox liturgy at the time of his return to this church (c. 1926). Stravinsky’s own language regarding his later Mass in E minor gives some indication of the piety that he felt in writing such music, and my response to the question concerning why he may have sanctioned a Latin version of those choruses is broadly along the same lines as the reason why J. S. Bach chose to write and collate the music we now know as the Mass in B minor—to point away from denominational territorialism and parochialism to something exponentially more universal but still indisputably ‘Christian’. Jonathan Harvey wrote Remember, O Lord for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It sets a text from the Leonine Sacramentary with specific-yet-abstruse harmonies utilising modes of darkness and opaqueness that call to mind the famous Pauline statement of ‘seeing through a glass, darkly,’ resulting in a uniquely intense, majestic atmosphere. This piece was written as a contemporary counterpart to Howells’ Behold, O God, Our Defender, written for the coronation fifty years earlier. However, our first half closes with another Howells motet. Like as the hart (words from Psalm 42) is the third of a set of four 1941 motets based on psalm texts. The opening melody, full of longing and wistfulness, is a brilliant, rhapsodic expression of the text, and the middle section, begun by the sopranos, has a truly plaintive nature. The piece is in a developed ternary form. It was the a cappella style, following the choral/orchestral surrealist cantata Sécheresses of 1937, that Poulenc fully settled into with his Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence in the second half of 1938 and early 1939. The third and fourth motets in Poulenc’s ordering were written first, and they are the more stylistically progressive. Tenebræ factæ sunt is a collage of abrupt mood-shifts. These include the sopranos’ stark chromatic descent on the words “exclamavit Jesus,” the angular, similarly chromatic phrase for “Et inclinato capite” first heard in the tenors, and the tight set of descending parallel chords for the word “ait”. In the fourth motet, Tristis est anima mea, Poulenc is particularly responsive to the text, creating a hushed, fleeting disquiet for “Vos fugam capietis” (marked ‘Vif et inquiet’ and ‘mystérieux’), rare semiquaver

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melismas on “et ego vadam,” and the only instance here of nine-part divisi writing on the final page. The first two motets, Timor et tremor and Vinea mea electa, create their own finely articulated moods, though within more modest musical parameters. So much of what was to become Poulenc’s trademark choral style is established here: the sharply-defined dynamic contrasts, phrase-by-phrase block-like shifts from one textural grouping to another; a persistently unsettled metre, with 3

4

or 54

bars regularly cutting across an apparently flowing 4

4

; and distinctive, often ingenious chord progressions. Timor et tremor, appropriately, is edgy and dark, while Vinea mea electa contrasts the tender opening (marked ‘excessivement doux’ on its return) with the anguish and outburst of “ut me crucifigeres” (sung with calm resignation) going into “et Barrabam dimitteres” with its sudden forte. Greater love was written in 1912 when John Ireland was organist of St Luke’s, Chelsea. Ireland orchestrated the anthem in the early 1920s, but it is usually performed in its original version with organ accompaniment. The work frequently changes mood: it opens with a broad melody before the tempo quickens to an early climax and the music settles into a treble solo at “Who his own self.” A baritone picks up the theme and the music quickly moves into a dramatic fanfare passage before reaching its thrilling climax. The final section gently sustains the tension, which is only relaxed in the choir’s final phrase. O sacrum convivium! is Latin prose attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas. One need not be Roman Catholic to appreciate the fervour with which Messiæn sets this text (his only archetypal ‘motet’), not least because it may be understood in a wider dimension in the context of ‘Communion’ as opposed to ‘Eucharist.’ Many of Messiæn’s hallmarks are in evidence, not least rhythmic and metric complexity and his concept of ‘modes of limited transposition’. His use of the subdominant is especially effective, as is his choice of key. Give unto the Lord was commissioned by (and dedicated to) Sir George Martin, organist of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, for a festival to mark the 200th anniversary of the Sons of the Clergy in St Paul’s Cathedral, 30th April, 1914. A setting of Psalm 29 scored for chorus, orchestra and organ, it is an exuberant work and a positive note on which to end our music-making for this evening. The form is not conventional or cyclical; the episodes are set each according to their mood, and although some have argued that it is not quite up to Elgar’s usual standard, I suggest that some of what we perceive in a score is dependent on the nature of the realisation(s) that we hear. —Alexander Douglas

Huddersfield Grammar SchoolThe co-educational school for girls & boys age 3 to 16

Tel: 01484 424549 | www.huddersfield-grammar.co.uk Follow us on facebook

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NEXT CONCERT: SUMMER 2015

Programme design: Richard Hallas Richard@Hallas.net • www.hallas.net • (01484) 460280

Programme printing: RiverDigital Ltd info@riverdigital.co.uk • www.riverdigital.co.uk

THE HUDDERSFIELD SINGERS President Conductor Accompanist Laurence Jones Alexander Douglas Sue Ogden

Vice Presidents Pam Cooksey John Horrocks-Taylor Philip Powell Philip Honnor Hilary Pollard Gordon Sykes Heather Powell

Registered Charity Nº 507768

Web Site http://www.HuddersfieldSingers.com/

NIGHT DAYLauridsen Nocturnes, plus light arrangements by Ward Swingle

and Pete Churchill • Featuring the Kirklees Young Musician 2015

Sunday, 28th June 2015 at 7:30pmSt Paul’s Church, Armitage Bridge, Huddersfield