Temple Church in Concert Monday 12th Dec

[ardcarp]

Temple Winter Festival 2016: The Temple Church Choir, with harpist Catrin Finch.

Live from the Temple Church, London
Presented by Martin Handley

Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
Britten: Hymn to St Cecilia

8.15: Interval

8.35: Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
Britten: The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard
Wallton: Coronation Te Deum

Catrin Finch (harp)
Rebecca McChrystal (percussion)
Greg Morris (organ)
Temple Church Choir
Temple Singers
Roger Sayer (director)

The Temple Church Choir and the Temple Singers share the stage for a concert celebrating the 90th birthday of HM The Queen and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Two iconic works of Benjamin Britten are featured, including a truly seasonal offering from the choristers and harpist Catrin Finch in the Ceremony of Carols. The two choirs join forces to perform Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.

[ardcarp]

A big sing for relatively small forces! The three Britten items were the best for me, the two well-known ones being given the ideal treatment, viz a professional adult choir for Hymn to St C and enthusiastic trebles for the Ceremony. I must say I had not even heard of The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. Quite a cheeky little piece, and beautifully sung by the T&B of the Temple Choir.

The organ, harp and percussion (really played by one pair of hands?) version of The Chichester Psalms worked better than I expected...and Greg Morris did an amazing job. I missed the full orchestral colour more (surprisingly) in the RVW which seemed to lack its cocoon of warm strings; and no organ stop can really stand in for those wind solos. Full marks to the BBC for excellent sound, and to the Temple Church for daring to do all this live on air.

The concert:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084vsfk

[LeMartinPecheur]

Wierd programming???

Not this concert in itself, a delightful selection of LMP and Mrs LMP favourites (though not necessarily both of us at the same time).

What I mean is that there's another Ceremony of Carols tomorrow night when we'll also hear BB's Hymn to the Virgin, which itself gets another performance on Friday evening.

Is this deliberate? - it doesn't look like traditional R3 programming at all. Not that I'm complaining mind, but we do gather some in the R3 audience don't like BB quite as much as we LMPs do

[ardcarp]

Not this concert in itself, a delightful selection of LMP and Mrs LMP favourites (though not necessarily both of us at the same time).

What I mean is that there's another Ceremony of Carols tomorrow night when we'll also hear BB's Hymn to the Virgin, which itself gets another performance on Friday evening.

Is this deliberate? - it doesn't look like traditional R3 programming at all. Not that I'm complaining mind, but we do gather some in the R3 audience don't like BB quite as much as we LMPs do

Yes that is weird. Hopefully the Finchley Children are singing The Ceremony and not the BBCS. But the latter are doing the wonderful choral variations 'A Boy Was Born'.

[DracoM]

They made Ceremony sound fun. Real BOYS, and plenty of different soloists. Procession out magical. Such confidence in a live broadcast. Nicely engineered too.

Recently heard a local performance [a] with girls and broken voiced boys, and [b] they did not process out despite being in a church.

Erm.............weird on both counts.