How can I keep from singing?
14 September 2020
Covid-19 and our
2020 programme
March to December 2020
The choir were only twenty days away from their eighty-fifth
anniversary concert when the lockdown was declared in England, and
all of our live choral activities came to a halt. In 2020 we
therefore lost our first ever performance of Beethoven’s Missa
solemnis, a performance of Bach’s St John Passion with
English Touring Opera, a performance of Bruckner’s Mass in E
minor alongside his ever-popular motets, and a visit to sing
Choral Evensong in Southwell Minster. The two final events of the
year - a performance of Handel’s Messiah and a Christmas
Concert with Rushden Town Band have been rescheduled for 2021. The
choir is committed to creating space in our 2022 and 2023 plans to
perform the Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner, which we lost.
|
|
|
Whilst we were not able to sing any live concerts in 2020 (our
only “performance” was Choral Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral,
Oxford, in January, and its associated “dry run” Choral Evensong at
St Matthew’s Church, Northampton, the night before), our Musical
Director quickly geared us up for Zoom singing, and we explored
music which was quite unlike what we would normally sing. We may
have been separated, but we were not silenced.
A whole sequence of songs by Herbert Howells was our mainstay of
the summer term, with additional Zoom session with experts in
Howells’s music - including academics, conductors, instrumentalists,
and singers - and in the autumn term we continued to expand our
Howells repertoire, though our principal focus was on Italian music
of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries - by Corelli,
Leonarda, and Vivaldi.
Full details of what we achieved in these unprecedented
circumstances may be found in the various news items of 2020 |
