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South London Singers Silver Jubilee Season ends in style
The South London Singers with piano accompanist David Thorne receive their applause for an item in their Jubilee concert. Musical director John Nightingale joins in the clapping.
On 30 June 2007 the South London Singers closed its Silver Jubilee season of concerts with a triumphant concert of music for voices and strings, featuring the baritone Julian Empett and the Hammig String Quartet. The programme included part sons by Elgar, arrangements of popular songs by the string quartet, and the first performance of Salt Water Songs, a cycle of songs for voices, piano and string quartet by Geoffrey Lawrence. The well-attended concert was followed by a Jubilee buffet.
It was a fitting end to a most successful season, which had begun on Saturday 2 December 2006 in St George's Church, Beckenham, with a performance of Britten's Saint Nicolas. For this we were joined by the tenor soloist Andrew Staples, the Ex-Bromley Youth Chamber Orchestra, the Bromley Youth Music Trust Percussion Ensemble, the Holst Chamber Choir from James Allen's Girls' School and boy soloists from Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, Lewisham. The programme also included Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens, as well as Corelli's Concerto Grosso in D and Schubert's Fantasie in F minor for piano duet.
The Jubilee Season continued on Saturday 17 March with a Musical Grand Tour of 19th-Century Europe, featuring Liszt's wonderful Missa choralis alongside works by Schubert, Grieg, Dvořák and others. on Saturday 21 April, we took part in a "Proms Extravaganza", performing everything from "Land of Hope and Glory" and "Jerusalem" to the "Anvil Chorus", and what a great time we had with our good friends the Lewisham Concert Band.
But it is our June concert that still rings in the memory. One of our audience members that night, Cliff Watkins, wrote the following review of it, originally published in the autumn newsletter of the British Light Music Society. It is reproduced here in edited form with Cliff's permission.
An evening of quality music
"Songs for a Summer Night", the South London Singers' Silver Jubilee Concert held at the Methodist Church in Beckenham on Saturday 30 June 2007, was superb in every way, reinforcing the claim that they are the leading chamber choir in the area. As well as the 30-strong choir, the concert featured the baritone Julian Empett and the Hammig String Quartet; David Thorne provided impeccable piano accompaniment and the ensemble was conducted by John Nightingale.
A selection from John Rutter's cycle of British folk-song arrangements, The Sprig of Thyme, opened the programme, followed by three rarely heard part songs by Edward Elgar, the 150th anniversary of whose birth fell this year – "The Snow" and "Fly, Singing Bird", both for ladies' voices, and "Spanish Serenade", for full choir, the first line of which, "Stars of the summer night", suggested the title for the whole concert. All three songs were accompanied by piano and two violins, allowing every voice and note to be heard – very different from the full orchestral treatment of Elgar that one hears at the Proms, but just as rewarding.
At the summer buffet following the concert, a celebratory cake was cut to mark the South London Singers' Silver Jubilee. Four long-serving stalwart members of the choir officiated at the cake-cutting (clockwise from left): Mary Cook, SLS chair and second soprano; David Jackson, SLS treasurer and second tenor; Richard Bradley, publicity officer and first tenor; and Richard Cracknell, first tenor.
Fast-forward about 100 years from the composition of these part songs to our own time for the next item, which was the première of Salt Water Songs, a cycle of settings for voices, string quartet and piano by Geoffrey Lawrence. This was a very demanding and "meaty" work, composed especially for the South London Singers, for whom Geoffrey sings bass; and Geoffrey clearly brought to bear his thirty years' experience as a choral singer in this skilful interpretation of poems by Masefield, Shakespeare and Allan Cunningham.
Two works by Eric Coates, uncrowned king of British light music and a genius at creating memorable "signature tunes", began the second half of the concert. These were anticipated with great interest, seeing that the programme indicated that the works in question – "By the Sleepy Lagoon" (forever now associated with "Desert Island Discs") and "Knightsbridge March", which was long ago linked to the 1950s weekly show "In Town Tonight" – were to be played not by a full orchestra, but by the Hammig String Quartet. In the event, the Hammig captured every resonance and range of tone in such a way that it was easy to close one's eyes and imagine nostalgically that one were listening to a 40- or 50-piece concert orchestra.
The magic continued with the South London Singers' and David Thorne's successful treatment of Carey Blyton's demanding madrigal-like piece "What then is Love?", with its sensitivity in the use of dialogue and its skill in imitative part-writing.
The concert ended with the chamber version of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs, featuring Julian Empett. The entire company performed with the blend of ardour and mysticism required by this work, bringing the evening to a rousing close with the triumphant "Antiphon", setting the familiar text "Let all the world in every corner sing".
Cliff Watkins
For full details of our concerts this year, please click here.