- BCC perform at the Melrose Music Festival 7 Sept 2024
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Date Posted: Tue, 6 Aug 2024
The Borders Chamber Choir performs at the Melrose Music Festival, 7 September, 2024
As September fast approaches, so too does the newly re-launched Melrose Music Festival, at which we’re delighted to have been invited to perform. Not only does this give us a considerable platform in our first season as a choir; it also provides us with another opportunity to select an ambitious programme – and, of course, perform it to our customarily high standards. So please join us at Melrose Parish Church on 7 September for a programme packed with some of the most stunning music ever written, including Mozart’s heart-wrenching Requiem and Vaughan Williams’s spellbinding Mass in G Minor. And alongside both of these pieces, we’ll be presenting some shorter pieces of Renaissance polyphony from Scottish composers.
Mozart’s Requiem (1791) is an exceedingly popular work – indeed, it’s unlikely that anyone out there hasn’t heard its famous ‘Lachrymosa’ movement at least in the context of a film or two! Of course, Mozart died before this masterwork could be completed, and so a number of editions exist. While Franz Xaver Süssmayr’s completion (1792) tends to be the version most known to date, we’ll be performing Richard Maunder’s edition (1988), which does away with much of Süssmayr’s inventions, instead re-orchestrating movements and completing others based on a combination of manuscript sources and a rich knowledge of and deep appreciation for Mozart’s works. The result is a truly moving testament to music’s power to express fear, pain, suffering, and – eventually – release. We are delighted to be joined by the Borders Chamber Orchestra for this piece, as well as a team of four tremendous soloists in Rosie Lavery (Soprano), Catherine Backhouse (Mezzo), David Lee (Tenor), and Jonathan Kennedy (Bass).
As well as the Requiem, we’ll be performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G Minor (1921). Vaughan Williams sets the words of the mass using two four-part choirs, alongside a semi-chorus of soloists. This (amongst other things) enables Vaughan Williams to build some of the textures and harmonic features that listeners tend to know from earlier works, such as the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910). While Vaughan Williams is responsible for arranging some of the greatest hymn tunes we have to this day and for editing the English Hymnal, he was by no means a Christian. And yet, his approach to setting the words of the mass creates a passionate, powerful, and at times ethereal expression of devotion – to music, perhaps. Again, we are delighted that Rosie Lavery, Catherine Backhouse, David Lee, and Jonathan Kennedy will be providing our solo quartet.
From reading this post, you can probably tell that we’re very excited to be bringing you this music. And that’s true. Added to that, once again, it’s a joy to be rehearsing it and to be discovering these pieces together. For some members of the BCC, this has been the first time they’ve come into contact with Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G Minor – and judging by their reactions to it, audiences at the Melrose Music Festival are in for a treat!
Please visit https://www.melrosemusicfestival.co.uk/borders-chamber-choir-borders-chamber-orchestra to book your tickets.
- Melrose Music Festival Preview Concert
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Date Posted: Sun, 5 May 2024
Melrose Music Festival Preview Concert, 11 May, 2024
Following hot on the heels of our performance of Bach’s St John Passion, we’re taking part in the Preview Concert for Melrose Music Festival. This year sees a re-launch of the Festival under the Artistic Directorship of our very own Director, Robert Marshall, and May’s concert will showcase some of the musicians and music that will be performing in September. To top things off, Sir James MacMillan will talk to us all about the power of music and music-making.
Our very own contributions to this concert will consist of MacMillan’s stunning piece, A New Song, some spell-binding sixteenth-century Scottish polyphony, the Swingle Singers’s arrangement of Bach’s Air on a G String, and leading all of the performers combined in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s beautiful A Serenade to Music. And, from our rehearsals so far, it’s shaping up to be a wonderful concert that will have many of us very excited about participating in the Festival programme in only a few months’ time.
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For more information, see: www.melrosemusicfestival.co.uk
- Looking back to our Bach St John Passion concert
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Date Posted: Sun, 5 May 2024
J. S. Bach, St John Passion
Our inaugural concert saw the Borders Chamber Choir teaming up with the Borders Chamber Orchestra and five professional soloists to perform J. S. Bach’s formidable St John Passion. While the performance took place shortly before the three hundredth anniversary of the piece’s first performance in Leipzig on 7 April 1724, it’s hard to believe that it was only two and a half months into our regular schedule of weekly rehearsals! This was surely an ambitious project, and that ambition certainly paid off: from the first notes of the opening chorus, “Herr, unser Herrscher,” to the final chords of the closing chorale, the whole performance was an exciting, engaging, and moving testament to the power of Bach’s music and the joy of music-making.
Tom Raskin’s Evangelist was a compelling and touching guide through the story of the passion, and Georgie Malcolm (Soprano), Judy Louie Brown (Alto), Chris Elliott (Tenor), and Jon Stainsby (Bass & Christus) each enraptured choir and audience alike with their poignant renditions of Bach’s music. It goes without saying that it was a pleasure and a privilege for us to be joined by such excellent soloists for our first ever concert!
It was also a delight to welcome such a large crowd to a packed Melrose Parish Church! With five minutes to go before the baton was due to fall, keen concert-goers were still queuing down the hill, but we managed to pack everyone in eventually. We were simply over the moon that Bach’s music was able to reach so many people – and to hear from them just how much our performance of the St John Passion moved them and had them looking forward to more. While you’ll have to wait until April 2025 until we perform Bach’s St Matthew Passion, fortunately, we’ve got plenty of exciting music (Mozart’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G Minor, and much more!) coming up in our concerts between now and then…
