Dear Supporter,
January 2024 saw Harlow Chorus beginning rehearsals for their spring concert on Saturday 13 April at St John's Church, Epping and, fittingly for the new year, are singing three works entirely new to the Chorus.
This is not to say that the main item is new – Ethel Smyth's majestic Mass in D was premiered in 1893 at the Royal Albert Hall but, just possibly because the composer was a woman, its second perfromance, in a revised form, wasn't until 1924 whereupon it enjoyed quite a revival. George Bernard Shaw remarked to the composer that 'It was your music that cured me for ever of the old delusion that women could not do man's work in art...Your Mass will stand up in the biggest company! Magnificent!' And indeed it is. Sadly, post WW2, the Mass was again forgotten until its American premiere in 1993 and then became known all over the world. It was recently performed at the 2022 BBC Proms. Ethel was one of England's foremost Victorian composers and the first female composer ever to be honoured with a Damehood. She was also a prominent Suffragette, credited with teaching Emmeline Pankhurst how to throw stones! And served two months in Holloway in the early 1920s.
The first half of the concert features two choral works. The Lord is My Light (Psalm 27) by David McGregor is heard for the first time tonight and is the winning entry in Harlow Chorus' Young Composer competiton 2022. Scored for mixed choir and strings, his piece is written with a quiet intensity, almost hypnotic in places. David has already won several awards and his music has been performed in cathedrals and concert halls across the UK. Paul Mealor's Shadows of War, intense, reflective yet uplifting, is a brief setting of the Mass liturgy and poetry by Grahame Davies written in 2016 to commemorate the Battle of the Somme, 1916-2016. Towards the end you may become aware of a strange sound effect as some members of the orchestra circle their fingers on the rims of tuned wine glasses. Paul Mealor is one of the most 'performed' living composers and has written music for some of the most important UK occasions including the Royal wedding and King Charles' coronation.
The Bishop's Stortford Sinfonia will accompany all these works and will also play a short orchestral piece, Holst's Green Brook Suite written in 1933 for the junior orchestra at St Paul's Girls School at Brook Green, Hammersmith.
We hope you can join us to enjoy this feast of music. Concert tickets @£15, under 18s £5, are available online at www.ticketsource.co.uk/harlowchorus and from our Box Office on 01277 362440 or email tickets@harlowchorus.org.uk
with best wishes
Val Brockbank on behalf of Harlow Chorus
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