Merchant Taylors' Musicians host A Celebration of English Music
This year’s Joint Concert took place on Monday in the Great Hall. The programme, entitled A Celebration of English Music, included performances of works by Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, and Michael Tippett.
In a change to previous years, the concert featured performances by the Joint String Orchestra (of Merchant Taylors’ and St Helen’s) in the first half, and the massed choir in the second.
Whilst digesting the voluminous programme notes, the audience of around 200 enjoyed a splendid evening of music. The concert opened with Holst’s three-movement Brook Green Suite, a work with much variation of mood, using a wide range of colours and timbres. This was followed by the first of three works by Vaughan Williams in Monday’s concert, his Fantasia on Greensleeves. It was wonderful that this work gave solo flautists from both MTS and St Helen’s an opportunity to play with an orchestra. Elgar’s inimitable Nimrod followed, and though in the slightly less luxuriant key of C major, this gave the string players a chance to show their mettle in a serenely quiet start and end to the work. The first half of the concert ended with Vaughan Williams’ complex Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus. Based on the well-known folk melody of the same name, the variants are technically demanding, and were played with great musicality and conviction.
Following the interval, the choir, conducted by Joan Stubbs, triumphantly opened the second half with Elgar’s Give unto the Lord. This rousing anthem gave way to the Five Spirituals arranged by Michael Tippett which followed. The choir was energised and engaged throughout, and gave a thoroughly enjoyable performance. The final work sung was Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs. Welcoming back Harrison Robb OMT as baritone soloist, the choir of 180 sang the songs with infectious enthusiasm, especially in the last song, Antiphon.
