Magnificat - St. Mark’s Church, Broomhill, 28th June 2025

"The initial impact from the choir was quite overwhelming & brought tears to my eyes. It was a wonderful sound and it got the concert off to a great start." 

A comment from an audience member at our recent concert entitled Magnificat.

We started our concert with Sue Hughes’s joyful setting of Psalm 100 and followed this with three reflective sacred pieces:  Crux fidelis by Sarah MacDonald; My Hiding Place by Lydia Jane Pugh; In Paradisum from Faure’s Requiem, in memory of one of our founder members, Heather Morris, who died recently.  This was her favourite piece.

The centrepiece of the concert, which concluded the first half, was Bach’s Magnificat.  We were delighted that Darius Battiwalla was able to accompany the choir on the organ and were amazed at his ability to make the organ sound like a Baroque orchestra!  The taxing solo and ensemble parts were taken by choir members, and particular mention should be made of Becky Lambert, who sang 2 arias in the Bach and contributed also in the second half with a spine-tingling descant in Winter Stars.

The second half of the concert comprised old favourites from the Chorale repertoire, alongside entries from last year’s composition competition.  Finzi’s My Spirit sang all Day, As Torrents in Summer by Elgar, The Pasture by Randall Thompson and Stanford’s The Bluebird.  Hannah Robertson sang the solo here, in her last performance with The Chorale before going to Cardiff in September to take her vocal studies further.

As well as a reprise of the winning and second place entries (Winter Stars by Jon Uribarri and Greet again the Mountain by Greg Harradine), we also included A Voice in the World by Stella ter Hart and Innisfree by Edmund Joliffe.  These pieces scored very highly in the judging and we were very pleased to have the opportunity of performing them.

Fiona Lander’s The Simple Things was our encore, on a night that was warm both meteorologically and in the reception of our audience.