Frodsham & District Choral Society present ‘Lead Kindly Light’

Frodsham and District Choral Society concert poster

 

Saturday 18th November 2023

4pm – St Laurence’s Church, Frodsham, WA6 6AD

‘Lead Kindly Light’

 Autumn Concert

with

Howard Kane – Conductor

Andrew Millinchip – Accompanist

Heather Buckmaster – Soprano

Joseph Buckmaster – Tenor

‘’Stars in Our Eyes”

For our next programme of music, “Lead Kindly Light” we certainly are star-struck by some celestial music. Mozart was a child superstar prodigy and the movements we have selected from his Vespers contains the beautiful “Laudate Dominum” for solo soprano and chorus.

James Agee’s poem, “Sure on this shining night” is performed in beautiful settings by Samuel Barber and Morten Lauridsen, two supernovas of American music.

Another composer who lit up the firmament of 20th century American music was Leonard Bernstein, and we shall have, “Glitter and be Gay” from his operetta, “Candide”

Puccini’s tragic hero in “Tosca”, Cavadarossi, sings of the shining stars as he makes his way in the early dawn to face a firing squad. In “La Boheme” the love duet, “O soave fanciulla” Rodolpho refers to Mimi as, “Oh, sweetest vision with moonlight bathing your pretty face. This will be sung by our starry-eyed lovers, Heather and Joe. (Don’t worry, they’re married – to each other!)

Our main work is Howard Goodall’s “Eternal Light” which was imagined as a choral / orchestral / dance piece, in cooperation with the Rambert Dance Company. One of his ideas was that the stage could be flooded with an effervescent light, refracted by crystals and the tears of the Lacrymosa and ‘Drop, Drop, slow tears’ movements would be expressed by hundreds of slowly descending glass tears.

Join us in our musical cosmos and we hope you find the musical contents as awe-inspiring as we do.

Do join us on Saturday 18th November at 4pm at St Laurence’s Church for this delightful concert.

Tickets are now on sale, or you can pay at the door. Tickets £12 under 16s free.

From:

Dandelion, 19 Church Street, Frodsham

Whitmore and White, 72 Main St, Frodsham, WA6 7AU

Tilly Patel 07971 606409

Sara Midwood 07974 698433

Review Comments from our Spring Concert 2018 from Roderic Dunnett, Church Times, April 2018:

The Vaughan Williams work was given an exquisite performance, beautifully calibrated and stylishly varied’

There was a fine virility and attractive vivacity to “The glorious company of the Apostles”, and the contrasting syncopations in the organ, arguably rather operatic in flavour’

Whether a great work or not (Elgar would not have employed constant repetitions in the same lumbering manner), the Te Deum is unashamedly and justifiably celebratory. With their undoubted verve, vigour, and high spirits, the Frodsham choir made it a spirited experience’

And the full choir, coasting blithely through the section “Go through the gates”, felt on top form, especially with the upper voices’ fade to pianissimo which concludes the section, matched in reverse by the ascent from serenity to rapture (“But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise”

Morag Bragger

Chair – Frodsham and District Choral Society