Here comes another busy Choral year!

Mar 21 2008 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

AFTER a high-profile year which saw them sing for the Queen and take on three overseas trips – including a moving visit to Japan – it is difficult to see what was left for Huddersfield Choral Society to tackle.

But the society has found fresh challenges and looks set to have a busy summer in which the world-renowned choir will sing the world premiere performance of a new work, make a return trip to a music festival in Reims, sing in an open-air prom in Huddersfield and make a trip to Liverpool to join in the city’s Capital of Culture celebrations.

First in this exciting schedule is the performance on May 9 in Huddersfield Town Hall of Agamemnon’s Tomb, a new work by Burnley-born composer John Pickard.

The piece, receiving its first performance, was commissioned by the society and is a setting of part of Sacheverell Sitwell’s poem written in 1933.

Pickard says: “It is a kind of Requiem, though not in any sense a religious work. Instead it is a meditation on mortality and the memorialising of the dead.”

At a recent rehearsal he told the choir: “There are only two great themes in life. Love and death - and you’ve got death!”

The concert, which is part of the Kirklees concert season, also includes Walton’s Coronation Te Deum and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Martyn Brabbins conducts the Orchestra of Opera North.

Next in the diary for Choral members is a trip to France. It is almost four years since the singers first made the trip to Reims to sing Rachmaninov’s Vespers under Martyn Brabbins in the great basilica of Saint-Remi as part of the Flâneries Festival.

They are delighted to have been invited back, this time to sing the Brahms German Requiem in the festival’s prestigious opening concert on June 20 with Moshe Atzmon and the Orchestre de Bretagne.

Little more than a week later the choir will be back in front of a Huddersfield audience, but outdoors rather than indoors.

After the huge success of last year’s People’s Proms – part of celebrations to mark last year’s visit to the town by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – Kirklees Council has decided to hold another gala Prom concert.

It will be in Greenhead Park on June 28 and more details are expected to be announced soon.

Finally, the Choral Society will travel to Liverpool to take part in the city’s European Capital of Culture 2008 celebrations.

It will join the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir for a performance of the Verdi Requiem under Vasily Petrenko in the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral on September 27.

Judging by the electricity generated among the singers and audience members when the young Russian conductor appeared in Huddersfield with the choir last autumn this should be a concert not to be missed.

For details of all concerts and events, go to http://www.huddersfieldchoral.com