We are delighted to host the chamber choir from King’s College School in Wimbledon for a concert on Wednesday, 23 October at 7.30pm.  Conducted by Daniel Phillips and accompanied by organist Will Ford, the 45 singers of the boys’ choir will perform a set of both sacred and secular pieces.  Admission is free, so come early to nab a good seat!

ABOUT THE CHOIR:

King’s College School was founded in 1829 as the junior department of King’s College and moved to its present site on Wimbledon Common in 1897.  In 1912, King’s College Junior School was opened.  Today, the two schools educate some 1400 pupils.  Music was well established at King’s in the 1920s and has flourished in recent years. The school boasts a particularly strong choral tradition.

The trebles of the chamber choir are all pupils at King’s College Junior School; the altos, tenors, and basses are drawn from the senior school. Currently, there are about 45 boys in the choir. The chamber choir has won a reputation for itself in London and has performed on tour both in the UK and abroad.  In recent years, their travels have taken them to sing in the Duomo in Florence, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Notre-Dame in Paris, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.

Back at home in the UK, the choir regularly sings Evensong in the cathedrals of St. Paul’s, Winchester, Chichester, Salisbury, Guildford, and Southwark; as well as in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace.  The past few years have also seen the choir perform in Tewkesbury Abbey, St. John’s Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, and the Royal College of Music.

In addition to a number of carol services each year, the choir performs a popular Christmas concert at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly. Together with the King’s Choral Society, they have also taken part in joint performances of Handel’s Messiah, Duruflé’s Requiem, Britten’s St Nicolas, and Mozart’s Requiem.

The choir records regularly: its most recent CD, Light above light, was released in 2018 to great acclaim and, this November, the trebles will be taking part in the highly prestigious Wimbledon International Music Festival.

For more information about the choir, click here.

The Gaudete Singers return to Saint Bartholomew’s this Saturday for a concert of beautiful nineteenth century Romantic sounds from the German and Austrian traditions.

Tickets on the door: €20; concession €15; students €5 with ID, all including a glass of wine or soft drink afterwards.

Mendelssohn is often considered the greatest child prodigy after Mozart. He began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six years old.  At age eight, he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin and probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine. He was also a prolific composer as a child, and wrote his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was 13.

“His exposure to Bach led to a fondness for learned counterpoint as well as to his conducting the St. Matthew Passion in 1829 – an immensely influential performance that took Bach out of the exclusive hands of specialists and into a more general public consciousness. He began to perform throughout Europe as a conductor and as a pianist to great success. In 1829, he made his first trip to England where his composing and playing found a rapturous audience. Indeed, one can say that Mendelssohn dominated English music in the 19th century as completely as Handel had done in the 18th.” —Steven Schwartz

The influence of Bach can be heard in the two works in this concert that were written near the end of his short life. The Drei Psalmen were composed in 1843/4 and Die Deutsche Liturgie in 1846. Both works were composed for church services in Berlin Cathedral using a simpler style of church music for the new order of worship in Prussia.

Brahms was also influenced by Bach and the Two Motets were published in 1878 with a dedication to the great Bach scholar, Philipp Spitta.

Warum ist das Licht gegeben? was composed during the summer of 1877, at a time when the composer was putting the finishing touches to his Second Symphony. The first performance was given in Vienna on 8 December 1878.  O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, in four parts, was composed earlier, between 1863 and 1864.

Rheinberger is probably the least known of the three composers and his Abendlied is likely the best known piece performed in this concert. Rheinberger was also something of a prodigy and began playing the organ and composing at the age of seven.  At 12, he was admitted to the Academy of Music in Munich where he studied with Franz Lachner, a close friend of Franz Schubert, and by the age of 15 he was gainfully employed as an organist.  He spent 33 years as professor of counterpoint and organ at the Royal School of Music in Munich where the Drei geistliche Gesänge were composed in 1855.

We hope to see you this Saturday, and please join us for a glass of wine after the concert (included in the ticket price).