A Service for Epiphany Jan 28th 2015

[DracoM]

A Service for Epiphany Jan 28th 2015
Choir of King's College, London [Archive from Jan 2009]



Order of Service:


Hymn: Why, impious Herod (Veni redemptor)
Bidding Prayer

Reading: Matthew 1: 18-25
A boy was born (Britten)

Reading: Yet if His Majesty our Sovereign Lord (Thomas Ford)
Lullay, Jesu (Britten)

Reading: Bethlehem Down (Bruce Blunt)
Herod (Britten)

Reading: Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity (John Milton)
Jesu, as thou art our Saviour (Britten)

Reading: Matthew 2:.1-12
The three kings (Britten)

Reading: Journey of the Magi (T S Eliot)
In the bleak midwinter (Britten)

Reading: Colossians 1: 15-20

Prayers

Noel! (Britten)
Blessing
Hymn: O worship the Lord (Was lebet)


Organ Voluntary: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 739 (Bach)



Organ Scholar: Ashley Marshfield
Director of Music: David Trendell

[ardcarp]

The whole of Britten's A Boy was Born. Yippee! No mean sing. I wonder if the repeat is a tribute to David Trendell who sadly died recently?

[DracoM]

Indeed, that is how it is billed, I gather. As you rightly say, it looks a heck of a sing.

[ardcarp]

Very much looking forward to Wednesday's broadcast....but we're not still in the Season of Epiphany are we? I stand to be corrected...

[Magnificat]

Very much looking forward to Wednesday's broadcast....but we're not still in the Season of Epiphany are we? I stand to be corrected...

ardcarp

Yes we are until Candlemas in CoE anyway -this coming Sunday. Some Protestant churches celebrate the Epiphany up to Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent!!

VCC.

[ardcarp]

Thanks. I'd be glad to hear the Britten any time of the year!

[DracoM]

What a feast! Fine singing, fine balance, and good mix of trad and other readings. Terrific sops, barely a vibrato in sight. Made my afternoon!

[ardcarp]

Mine too. Words like poised. controlled, paced are hardly enough to convey the professionalism of it all. They almost made it sound easy. So often the 'Nowell' goes off at such a lick the wheels nearly come off. But not here. What a great loss David Trendell is. He clearly had a gift. And the readers were excellent too. I wonder if someone had coached them? They all read with great clarity and at a speed to be heard in that generous acoustic.

[Roger Judd]

Absolutely - brilliant singing and direction - I was riveted - the whole hour a joy from start even unto the end thereof. What a huge loss to music David Trendell's all too early death was.
RJ

[Simon Biazeck]

What a great loss David Trendell is. He clearly had a gift.

I attended his funeral in KCL chapel and they sang like this throughout and then during the organ voluntary they all filed past him to light a candle as we watched - devastating. There were 2000-odd in attendance and they opened the hall below in which I'm told they served champagne during the sermon! He would have loved that - he was quite a bon viveur! He was one of the those choral directors who seemed to achieve their sound without saying a great deal or by flapping (never helpful!), but by sheer force of intellect, musical originality, and and innate understanding of what singers need. Vale.

[DracoM]

I don't often do this, but I have to say I am surprised.
Did this CE attract the same level of appreciation back in 2009?

[ardcarp]

I don't think I heard it. (I might have been away in Norway.) I'm sure I would have remembered it, not least because the Britten is a piece that has always interested me greatly.

[mopsus]

I don't often do this, but I have to say I am surprised.
Did this CE attract the same level of appreciation back in 2009?

Yes, it was appreciated then. 'one of the finest live Wednesday broadcasts I have heard' said one of the regulars.
The thread is archived here.

[DracoM]

Thanks for the link, mopsus.

[ardcarp]

Yes thanks. I obviously did hear it at the time! Oh well, at my age