A Gala Celebration!
Our Gala concert on Sunday 16th October in the Cadogan Hall celebrates our Music Director Peter Broadbent’s 75th birthday and his award of an MBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours.
In two of the featured works, current JCS singers will be joined by former members to sing the Messe pour double Choeur by Frank Martin and movements from Francis Poulenc’s Figure Humaine.
The Martin work is a very personal setting of the Mass and one of the greatest of the 20th Century, which the Swiss composer wrote at the time of the birth of his son but which was not performed for 40 years after its completion. Poulenc’s Figure Humaine is one of the greatest secular works of the 20th Century, an extraordinary setting of words by Paul Eluard written during the Nazi occupation of France. Set by the composer in what seems to have been a white heat of inspiration in 1943, we will perform the two final movements, culminating in the great cry of “Liberté”.
The first part of the programme is an eclectic mixture of styles with pieces which in some cases have a particular resonance for the Singers or mark relationships with composers or the history of the JCS.
The opening piece – O Come, Let Us Sing to the Lord – will be the world première of our own commission from our first-ever Composer-in-Association, Zoe Dixon.
Michael Tippett’s Dance, Clarion Air – his contribution to A Garland for the Queen that celebrated Elizabeth II’s Coronation – has been sung by us several times and was requested by one of our Singers in this Platinum Jubilee Year.
Paul Reade, who died far too young 25 years ago, wrote two song-cycles for us in our early years. On some Island was part of the programme when we won what was then the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition in 1990.
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s inventive and moving Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae, commemorating the tragic loss of the ferry ‘Estonia’, was much appreciated by the choir and struck a chord with audiences too, here at home and – understandably and particularly – in Sweden when we performed there in 2019.
Peter’s championing of Hungarian music has been recognised for some years, and one of their finest contemporary composers of choral music, György Orbán, also 75 this year, is represented by a very fine psalm setting.
In 2016 JCS and two other choirs commissioned Toby Young to write a piece, and he had thoughts of something related to dance. This grew into a Suite of six pieces – Dancing Star – whose text was in some way connected with dance and was first performed by JCS in St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden with a group of dancers. Each piece has a subtitle of the form of an 18th century dance, and the final piece – described as a Bourrée – is a driving and passionate setting of a poem by Maya Angelou.
The Three London Songs written by Bryan Kelly to words by John Fuller are witty and sometimes acerbic commentaries on life in the 1960s, and Fruit Machine makes a lively and joyous ending to the half.
Book your tickets at Cadogan Hall here.
The concert starts at 6.30 pm to allow more time for conviviality at the end!