On Friday night, a full audience in Speech Hall enjoyed a spectacular concert of choral and orchestral music, featuring the combined forces of the School Choir, the Prep School Choir, Cranleigh Choral Society and the Merriman Orchestra.
The vast array of singers both looked and sounded resplendent in the opening number, Hubert Parry’s “Blest Pair of Sirens”. This gave the concert a wonderful opening for the full orchestra and chorus, as the piece has firmly established itself as one of the finest and most beloved examples of English choral music of the 20th century. The choirs demonstrated excellent diction of Milton’s text, and really fine tuning, in which they exemplified the exhortation in the text to “keep in tune with heaven”!
This year we have enjoyed a bumper year of Upper Sixth musicians, and it seemed entirely fitting to feature some of them (Patrick A., Richard E., Charlie M. and Maisy B.) as soloists in a variety of concerto and choral movements.
First up was Richard E. Like Parry, Sergei Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto has established itself as one of the most beloved of 20th century concertos, especially with its ravishingly beautiful second movement, full of broad, sweeping melody. Richard coped effortlessly with the more complex, harmonically unsettled and technically demanding middle section, and created an impressive sense of partnership between soloist and orchestra.
To end the first half of the concert, Charlie M. performed the first movement of the lesser-known Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber. This movement starts with an idyllic pastoral scene, an orchestral march with pounding timpani beat, and finally moves to a playful scherzo section. The orchestra (which unusually features a piano) plays a big part rather than just an accompanying role, but Charlie was able to soar high above it with great improvisatory freedom.
The second half consisted entirely of music from “across the pond.” Patrick A. started by performing all three movements of Elizabeth Raum’s Concerto for Bass Trombone. The commanding opening statements were delivered with great authority, and the first movement continued with a real sense of drama. By contrast, the second movement was lyrical and melodic, and the rhythmically taut final movement was notable for its prominent use of the castanets.
At the same time last year, and in the same venue, the school witnessed the huge success that was “West Side Story”, and to round off this concert, the choir and orchestra performed the Chichester Psalms by the very same composer, Leonard Bernstein. The brash and jazzy first movement, in which the chorus enunciated the Hebrew psalm texts with great clarity, was more reminiscent of the glitzy swagger of New York and Broadway than of the genteel city of Chichester! Then in the beautiful second movement, Maisy B. took centre stage as soloist, and sang the text of Psalm 23 with great sensitivity, clear diction and excellent tuning, before the whole choir and orchestra finished with the melodic and memorable third movement.
Huge congratulations go to the soloists (each of whom performed very impressively from memory), to the massed choirs and orchestra for their majestic sound, and finally to the indefatigable Dr. Andrew Thomas, who put together the whole programme and trained all of the many musicians taking part.
It was a most enjoyable evening demonstrating Cranleigh music at its very best.
Mr P Scriven, Teacher of Music and Organist
