OUR CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMNIST LIZ LEATHERDALE, FOUNDER AND OWNER OF COLCHESTER CLASSICS, BRINGS YOU HER PICK OF JUNE”S CLASSICAL MUSIC EVENTS IN, AND AROUND, COLCHESTER.
June is bustin’ out all over with concerts and festivals so here are a few coming up for you in and around Colchester to add to your diary.
If, like me, you have enjoyed the Classical Guitar Recitals run by Tim Pells at the Headgate Theatre, on Wednesday 14 June, at a lunchtime you can hear Tim as one half of a guitar duo with Andrew Allen at Lion Walk United Reformed Church. The following Wednesday at 1pm (21 June) Lizzie Gutteridge will be presenting medieval and renaissance music. Lizzie performed at last month’s Lexden Arts Festival, and more recently at the Medieval Festival in Castle Park. Ian Ray will accompany his cellist son, Oliver at the final Summer series concert on 28 June.
Admission is free to the lunchtime concerts with an opportunity to donate as you wish to the church’s chosen charities.
Cellist Anup Kumar Biswas founded the Mathieson Music Trust and School in India over 20 years’ ago with the aim of providing education for poor children, with a focus on music. This weekend there are two free concerts in Colchester with retiring collections in aid of this Music Trust. Both concerts include music by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Borodin and Jerry Noble and the performers are soprano Daniela Bechly, Anup Kumar Biswas and pianist and composer Jerry Noble.
The first takes place on Saturday in Christ Church, Ireton Road at 7pm and the second is at 3pm on Sunday 11 June in Lion Walk United Reformed Church. Telephone (01206) 618944 for further details.
Philip Prior is the Director of Music at St Peter ad Vincula, Coggeshall and on Saturday from 7.30pm his fancy footwork and hands can be viewed on large TV screens as he performs music by Bach, Elgar and Howells. Next month the Roman River Music Summer Festival takes place in this beautiful church and will be recorded by BBC Radio 3.
Admission: on the door is £7.50. Further information about each concert and also news on the Autumn Festival can be found here romanrivermusic.org.uk
In the summer months, many choral societies move away from large-scale works with orchestra to more informal music offerings, often with piano accompaniment. This month Colchester Choral Society, with its strong and stable conductor Ian Ray, are doing just that! Alan Bullard will be at the piano for many of Elgar’s popular part-songs and his charming early choral suite ‘Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands’. These beautiful choral songs use Elgar’s wife’s poems as the text and were inspired by their happy Bavarian holidays. During the concert, Ian Ray will pop to the piano and accompany Jessie Ridley in Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E minor – a work that was written at the same time as his elegiac and passionate Cello Concerto.
This Elgar concert feast takes place on Saturday 24 June at 7.30pm in St Botolph’s Church, Colchester. Tickets: £15 from Manns Music or www.colchesterchoralsociety.co.uk
Also on the evening of June 24, Tiptree Choral Society presents a delightful summer concert of music for everyone, to suit all ages and tastes. This concert, conducted as always by our Musical Director Malcolm Boulter and accompanied by our regular accompanist David Leveridge, is full of items the choir loves to sing. Many have in fact been suggested by choir members, so come along to St Luke’s Church at 7.30pm on June 24th and enjoy sharing with us a special selection of some of our favourite melodies. Elgar’s Aeterna (Nimrod), Faure’s Cantique de Jean Racine songs from shows.
Tickets £10 from 01206 734625 or on the door.
Chris Phelps, who conducts the Colchester Symphony Orchestra and the chamber choir, the Kelvedon Singers, also conducts Suffolk’s Hadleigh Choral Society who will be performing a selection of light music including Bernstein’s West Side Story at Hintlesham Church on Saturday June 17.
Further information (01473 652566) and www.hadleighchoralsociety.org.uk
Witham Choral will be at Witham United Reformed Church on 10 June for a Come and Sing version of John Rutter’s popular and beautiful Requiem. Singers will rehearse at 3pm (£10) and then enjoy a strawberry tea. The performance (which also includes Parry’s I was Glad) is at 7pm (audience £5).
Telephone 01376 513713 for details www.withamchoralsociety.org.uk
On the afternoon of 17 June there is a summer afternoon recital of new clarinet music and song settings by Essex composers of words by Tolkien, Barrett Browning, Blunden, Blustin, Hardy, St Luke and the Taylor Sisters of Colchester. Music will be performed by Tim Torry (baritone), Charles Hine (clarinet) and Alan Bullard (piano).
This takes place at 3pm in the Castle Methodist Church, Maidenburgh St, Colchester CO1 1TT Free entry, retiring collection. Full details on: https://colchesternewmusic.com/2017/05/26/the-pale-enchanted-gold-17-june-2017-recital-programme-announced/
On Sunday 18 June at 3pm , pianist Philip Smith will be presenting a programme of Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms at St Botolph’s Church, Colchester. This concert is in aid of the Tower Restoration Fund for this beautiful church.
Admission is free.
The ancient Essex town of Maldon is famous for the Hythe, home to many of the remaining Thames barges, and of course, its sea-salt, loved by chefs around the world, but did you know that since 2007 there has been an annual Music Festival? This year’s festival has a Russian theme to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The St Peter’s Singers (now re-named Chorus Anglicanum) sang Rachmaninov’s Vespers in the festival’s first season and this year will open the festival with the same piece on 24 June. This haunting work, also known as ‘All-Night Vigil’, is based on liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church: it is a quiet, reflective and deeply moving and is for unaccompanied choir. If you are looking for a CD of the Vespers, Colchester Classics would highly recommend the Grammy Award- winning recording by the Phoenix Chorale and Kansas City Chorale (Ring 0800 999 6994).
For more details on this years’ festival which runs from 24 June and until 8 July please visit the Festival’s website.
The old historic seaport, Harwich, also has its own Festival which begins on the 22 June and ends on 2 July 2017 with a Last Night of the Festival Proms with favourites such as the Henry Wood Fantasia on British Sea Songs and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Harwich and Dovercourt Choral Society and the Colchester Philharmonic conducted by Patrick McCarthy. Robert Atchison (violin) and Francis Rayner (piano) from the London Piano Trio return to play Brahms and Debussy Sonatas. There are also concerts by Royal Academy of Music organist, Edward Kemp-Luck and a performance of Il Matrimonio Segreto by Cimarosa from the Pop-up Opera touring company.
Full details www.harwichfestival.co.uk
If you have a forthcoming concert of classical music, you would like previewed, contact Liz Leatherdale on 0800 999 6994.
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Liz Leatherdale