Double Triumph for Calne Choral
Saturday’s concert in St Mary’s school chapel was a concert in two distinct halves. The Haydn Mass in B Flat Major, with which the audience was familiar, was performed by Calne Choral and an orchestra of professional musicians. This choral work and Hadyn’s last Mass was written during the Napoleonic occupation of Vienna in 1802, and sadly the composer did not live to experience it.
The second half featured the work of one of Britain’s leading choral composers, Bob Chilcott, and was written in 2010.
Chilcott’s Requiem is an elegy for the modern day, a truly sublime and uplifting choral work focusing on the reflective and consolatory side of the Mass for the dead. Soprano, Ellen Arkwright, a former music scholar at Marlborough College, now studying at the Trinity Laban Conservatory in Greenwich, did full justice to the Pie Jesu, the emotional heart of the work.
Baritone James Newby, a fellow student, and tenor Tom Castles from Chichester Cathedral also gave fine performances.
The Calne Choral summer concert on July 11 will be a Gilbert and Sullivan extravaganza featuring all the well known and loved choruses from the various shows. This will be a break from tradition and an evening not to be missed.
Carole Browne
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