Amici Chamber Choir

Night and Day: American choral music

Conductor: Jeremy Haneman

Programme to include some or all of the following:

The Amici Chamber Choir, with guest conductor Duncan Aspden and organist Christian Wilson, performed a beautiful programme of European music for Passiontide at St John the Baptist Church, Pinner on Saturday 21 March 2009.

In the first half, the choir sang Renaissance motets by composers from Italy, Spain and the UK. Some of these pieces are well-known – for example, Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ – while others are less frequently performed, including ‘Trahe me post te’, an early motet by Francisco Guerrero, conjoining a prayer to the Virgin Mary with the eroticism of the Old Testament Song of Songs. Purcell’s ‘Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei’, taken from Psalm 3, featured solos by Giles Clayton and Jeremy Bryans.

Christian performed two organ solos: Variations on a well-known chorale by Sweelinck and, in the second half, Max Reger’s ‘Benedictus’.

The music moved forward three hundred years in the second half, starting with the well-known ‘Os justi’ by Bruckner and two motets by Rheinberger, with a solo from Giles Clayton. The choir then moved into the distance to perform R Vaughan Williams’ ‘O vos omnes’, featuring the undulating melodic style and ‘medieval’ harmonies well-known from the later ‘Mass in G Minor’. The choir then processed forward from the darkness to the quasi-chant of Salieri’s ‘De profundis’ to achieve a fortissimo blaze of light, finishing the concert with the pianissimo of Bruckner’s ‘Christus factus est’.

The 27-strong Amici Chamber Choir, with its guest conductor Jeremy Haneman, gave a highly successful concert of works by Bach and Haydn in St James’s Church, Piccadilly on 29 November 2009. This wonderful Wren church, with its Grinling Gibbons carvings, provided the perfect venue.

The programme opened with the well-known chorale Jesu, joy of man’s desiring from JS Bach’s Cantata 147, played on the organ by Anthony McCarthy and accompanied by the choir. Anthony then gave a spirited rendition of Bach’s Concerto in G major (after Vivaldi). This was followed by the Bach motet Jesu, meine Freude. Jeremy took the choir and the audience on a spiritual journey, starting with the love of Jesus, passing through the fear of earthly terrors and temptation and on to the renunciation of earthly pleasures and resignation to the love of God. The choir sang the chorales unaccompanied, while Anthony provided a light accompaniment to the complex contrapuntal settings of the words of St Paul in his Letter to the Romans. The trio of soloists – Susan Devlin (contralto), Adam Tunnicliffe (tenor) and Ørjan Hartveit (bass) – took the fugato portraying the Spirit at a truly spirited pace. As the journey drew to a close, the choir sang ever more piano, creating, at the close, an almost tangible sense of calm stillness.

In complete contrast, the choir, solo quartet (now including soprano Sonya Prentice) and organ performed Haydn’s ‘Maria Theresa’ Mass. This glorious setting of the Latin Mass allowed organ, choir and soloists to display a range of styles, reflecting the moods of prayer, thanksgiving and belief implied by the various parts of the Mass.

The Amici Chamber Choir has benefited enormously from Jeremy’s training during the autumn of 2008 and members all wish to thank him for his painstaking work, which culminated in a lovely event that was warmly received by the 145 people in the audience.

Lamentoso – Music for Passiontide

Guest Conductor: Duncan Aspden
Organist: Christian Wilson

Guest Conductor: Jeremy Haneman

There is a facebook event here.

Guest Conductor: David Bray
Piano / Organ: Andrew Earls

And other works by Maxwell Davies, Swingle, Sterndale-Bennett, Coleridge-Taylor, Bray and Skempton

Guest Conductor: Tansy Castledine

This was the farewell concert for our musical director, Gary Peacock, who left us after being our conductor for the past 14 years. During this time he has guided the choir through many successful performances both in the UK and abroad. The members of the Amici Chamber Choir would like to extend their warm good wishes for his future musical activities.

Music for a Summer Evening
Guest Conductor – David Bray

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Also, works by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.

More printer-friendly versions of the poster can be found in black and white.