MTS Musicians Play at Joint Concert at The Merchant Taylors' Hall
The annual concert at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall took place on Monday evening, bringing together around 80 musicians from MTS, the Prep School, and St John’s. The concert was attended by residents of the Company’s almshouses, staff, parents, and friends.
Two of the performances in Monday’s concert will be featured in our Celebration of English Music’, this year’s Joint Concert on Monday 25th March. One of these was the opening piece, Vaughan Williams’s Variants on Dives and Lazarus, the tune often sung to ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say’. It was a delight to hear Ben Perahia playing the harp in this piece. The Guitar Ensemble from St John’s then played two contrasting pieces, first an arrangent of Vivaldi’s Winter, and then of the Shaker melody Lord of the Dance. This was followed by chamber musicians from the Prep School who played Mr Stuart’s masterful arrangements of a Bach fugue and a Tchaikovsky waltz with great skill. Taylors’ Brass delighted the audience with the warmth of its tone in a splendidly antiphonal arrangement of Clarke’s The Prince of Denmark’s March, perhaps most often played at weddings.
A small and select group of singers from the Prep School sang two short works, first Elgar’s charming As torrents in Summer, words which were fortunately not apt for the delightful weather which we enjoyed. The second, an old German Christmas carol, was sung at great speed, but without forsaking clarity. The music of the Gallic Denes Agay, performed by the MTS Wind Quintet, was probably the most adventurous of the evening, and the Five Easy Dances were played with great excitement and conviction. Another woodwind ensemble followed, this time hailing from St John’s. The Single Reeds, comprising clarinetists and saxophonists, played two lively works, both arrangements of music for the stage or screen.
The Merchant Taylors’ Piano Trio followed, and despite the mislabelling in the programme, contained a flute, a violin, and a piano. Krish, Kian, and Kaihan, three music scholars, performed two movements of a Telemann sonata. The penultimate ensemble to perform was the massed choirs of the three schools, involving most of the musicians present at the Hall on Monday evening. Together with Jai Elangovan as soloist, the choirs performed one of the spirituals from Tippett’s oratorio A Child of our Time. The evening then closed with three contrasting pieces sung by the MTS Chamber Choir, beginning with Ola Gjeilo’s The Rose. An effective, lyrical and enchanting piece, this was one of the highlights of the concert, enhanced by the string quartet who played from the gallery above. Will Todd’s anthem Exalt us in your love allowed the trebles another opportunity to display their lyrical singing before Satin Doll, which closed the concert, put the basses in the spotlight.
