2007 - The Thirtieth Birthday of the Leicestershire Chorale

The first event in the celebration of the foundation of the Chorale was the Dinner for supporters held at Neville Holt Hall on Saturday 3rd February 2007 by kind permission of David Ross. After an appropriately fine meal and well chosen wines, the Leicestershire Chorale entertained their guests with good selection of classical and light-hearted items in the medieval entrance hall.

The Chorale was founded in 1977 largely by the efforts of Dr Andrew Fairbairn, the then Director of Education for Leicestershire and Rutland, who had himself been a choral scholar at Trinity College Cambridge. When he and others perceived the need for a choir which would provided in particular for teachers in Leicestershire, he took his ideas to Peter Fletcher, then the County Music Advisor and he agreed to be the first Musical Director of the Chorale. Peter had previously taught at Uppingham School and had acquired a remarkable reputation for getting the best music out of young people. He built on this reputation when he moved to become Director of Music for the Inner London Education Authority. Just before he died of cancer in 1996 Peter came back to St James the Greater, Leicester to conduct the Chorale in a remarkable performance of J S Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

Apart from Andrew Fairbairn, now the President of the Choir, only one singer remains from those early days, though others, in retirement, have helped with information. The very first rehearsal was held on 24th November 1977 in Hazel Street School in Leicester. Though most of the members were in education, it was never a requirement for membership, and members came from all parts of the City and the County. By March 1978 the Chorale was ready to perform its first concert: the programme of sacred motets by Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Schutz, Cavalli, Purcell and Bach was performed first in St Andrew’s Kegworth in the north of the county and then in St Marty de Castro, one of the oldest churches in the city. These composers have continued to appear prominently in Chorale’s programmes ever since.

While many say that the strength of the choir lies in music of the baroque period, the Chorale has always been willing to accept the challenge of modern and contemporary composers. Several pieces have been written for first performance by the Chorale. By May of 1978 pieces by Messiaen, Poulenc and Bruckner had been added to a repertoire, already wide enough to support a tour to Normandy, with concerts in Dieppe and Etretat. Such tours have helped to cement the twinning arrangements which Leicester has with this part of France. Foreign tours do much to promote bonding in a choir and have featured regularly in the thirty year history. In May 1979 further advantage was taken of twinning, this time for a tour in Saarland, including concerts in Dittingen Town Hall and Hochwoldchallen.

The Chorale has never been shy of hard work and within the first two seasons they had performed 15 concerts. Among the concert venues were the Cathedrals of Westminster (singing with the Cathedral Choristers), Lincoln and Leicester, and the choir visited several other cathedrals in the years that followed including Southwell, Norwich, Peterborough, and even Rouen. Tewkesbury Abbey, Beverly Minster, and Great St Mary’s Cambridge were other venues. However, in the main, the Chorale serves the county from which it takes its name and there is no town, nor many large villages, where the choir has not sung, even if most concerts have been performed in Leicester and Loughborough. Of all the churches St James the Greater has been most used because of its magnificent acoustic and its convenient location for many supporters.

Peter Fletcher continued to conduct the Chorale until 1984. By then excellent links had been established with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra and they had accompanied several Chorale performances. This was the beginning of the tradition unique among Chamber Choirs in the region to have a least one major work accompanied by orchestra in each season. Apart from the LSSO, the Chorale has worked with the Gabrieli Consort, Musica Donum Dei, Saraband, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and its own invited orchestra the Leicestershire Camerata, which is made up of players who work both in this region and in London.

“Motets, madrigals, masses, canticles, cantatas, chorals, anthems, oratorios and passions all form part of the repertoires of one of the most interesting and versatile choirs in the county” wrote Neil Crutchley of Leicestershire Chorale in the Leicester Mercury in 1990. Well before that date the choir had taken on some major challenges. They had recorded music by Tippett, mastered the complexities of a Stravinsky Mass and Copland’s Motet “In the Beginning”, and taken Britten Cantatas and Missa Brevis on tour in Europe. The first performance of a Bach Passion did not occur until 1981 when the St John was done in All Saints, Loughborough. Thereafter Passions and major oratorios came in close succession. The St Matthew was performed, again in All Saints, in 1982; Messiah, for the first time, at Christmas time in 1981; Tippett’s “Child of our Time” in 1982 and, of all works for a chamber choir, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in 1983. Before he retired as Music Director, Peter Fletcher, had steered the choir through Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the two major Requiems of Verdi and Brahms, all in 1984. His final work with the Chorale was the one he came back to in his final years, the wonderful B Minor Mass of J S Bach.

Various factors limit the ability of chamber choirs to perform major works of the kind undertaken by Chorale and mentioned above. First and foremost there is the matter of finance: putting on any work that involves a professional orchestra and soloists is likely to lose money. Ticket sales will go only a little way to meeting the costs. So choirs have to find sponsors and to undertake fund raising activities. The subscriptions paid by members just about meet the cost of rehearsals, including the fees of the conductor and the accompanist and the venue costs. In the early years the Chorale was supported as an adult education/teacher training activity by the education authority. When that support was ended the Chorale turned to a major fundraising dinner in the country houses of Leicestershire culminating in the event at Neville Holt in February 2007. These venues have generously been supplied free of charge by the owners. Equally important has been the generosity of many charitable trusts which have the promotion music among their objectives. Some local authorities have been helpful in supporting concerts in their area. Occasional crises have occurred and individual members have helped to keep the choir on the road.

List of Country House Concerts - Dinner Entertainment by Leicestershire Chorale

Date Country House
1991 - 15 February Quenby Hall, Hungarton
1992 - 8 May Noseley Hall, Billesdon
1993 - 14 May Stanford Hall, Lutterworth
1994 - 4 March Papplewick Hall, Nottinghamshire
1995 – 23 June Burrough House, Burrough-on-the-hill
1996 – 31 May Quenby Hall, Hungarton
1997 – 30 May Osbaston Hall, Market Bosworth
1998 – 22 November Quenby Hall, Hungarton
2000 – 5 February Whatton House, Loughborough
2001 – 3 February Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire
2002 – 26 January Schools Concert – no dinner
2003 - 14 February Launde Abbey, Loddington
2004 – 14 February Uppingham School Memorial Hall
2005 – 26 February Quenby Hall, Hungarton
2006 – 4 February Wartnaby Hall
2007 – 3 February Neville Holt Hall

Some of the major choral works can be sustained only if the choir has enough voice power. For some quality makes up for quantity but for works like Missa Solemnis and Verdi Requiem it helps to have a choir of say a hundred voices. The most recent performance of the Requiem was undertaken in the De Montfort Hall with a choir of 300 singers from a dozen or more schools supported by the Chorale and the Lutterworth Choral Society. This was the culmination of the first project undertaken by the Chorale in its “Youth finds a Voice” capacity. Andrew Fairbairn, who has been President of the British Federation of Youth Choirs, persuaded many sponsors that a major initiative was needed if the total demise of choral singing among young people was to be prevented. Peripatetic singing teachers were employed to go into schools in support of the music teachers to help prepare the young singers for this concert in January 2002. Initiatives have continue up to the present and on 25th February 2007 there will be a festival of choirs at the De Montfort Hall involving 4 adult and 4 school choirs.

When Peter Fletcher went to be Principal of the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff in 1984, the man selected to be the new Director of Music was Paul McCreesh, who at that time was a peripatetic cello teacher with the Leicestershire School of Music. This turned out to be an inspired appointment for Paul’s first love was choral music. He built up the choir in both numbers and quality; a May 1994 photograph of the performers of Handel’s Solomon in St James the Greater shows a rather bigger choir than the current 40 voices.
Paul McCreesh conducts Chorale in 1994

During his ten years in charge Paul developed the choir in many ways. The choir was auditioned every three years and became particularly well known for its performances of early baroque music. Works by Buxtehude, Allegri, Biber, Sheppard, Vittoria, Scheidt and Praetorius were performed, though within a broad repertoire. Some more unusual works including Handel’s Theodora and his Carmelite Vespers were given an airing. Slowly but surely McCreesh was developing a national reputation, partly as a result of his research and performance of these early works. He founded the Gabrieli Concert and the Players performed with the Chorale for several seasons, even combining for a BBC recording in 1992. The Consort was famous for its use of period instruments before many other groups began to take up the practice. Not surprisingly music of the Italian School and Purcell featured strongly, both his verse anthems and the “Fairie Queen”. McCreesh also introduced the Chorale to the challenging Bach Motets. For his last concert as director Paul conducted Handel’s Solomon. Despite his growing international reputation, he has been back to conduct and is now the patron of the choir.

With local government reorganisation, rehearsals moved from the Rowans (the former Collegiate Girls Grammar School) to the Knighton Fields Leicestershire Arts Centre and have now settled in the church of St Phillip’s in Evington Lane, Leicester, though choir members still travel for all over Leicestershire, with a significant number living in Rutland. The summer concerts provide an opportunity for the choir to sing in the villages of the county: Hallaton, Lyddington, Thurcaston, Pickwell, Long Clawson, Cossington, Old Woodhouse and Great Bowden have been among the venues in the last decade.

Following Paul’s departure, there was a brief interlude with John York Skinner in charge for the Chorale’s first performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and former conductors being invited back, before Jonathan Tilbrook was appointed in 1996, and became conductor for the next nine years. It has been one of the strengths of the Chorale that musical directors have stayed long enough to stamp their own character on the choir. Jonathan had studied conducting under Sir Charles Mackerras and in 1993 had been appointed Conducting Fellow at Nottingham University. He had been a chorister at St Albans Abbey and was much influenced by his time as assistant conductor with the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic. Under him the Chorale performed a good deal of music in foreign languages including Czech, Russian, and Polish as well as French, German and Spanish. Composers like Bartok, Martinu, Zalenka, Kodaly, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Lutoslawski were added to the repertoire. Some would say that the most exciting and demanding piece undertaken during this time was Stravinsky’s “Les Noces”. “Four grand pianos, a battery of percussion and months of preparation; that’s what our finest and most ambitious amateur choir, the Leicestershire Chorale, brought to their last concert. What other local choir would attempt Stravinsky’s ‘Les Noces’ as well as a commissioned work by Matthew King ‘Time Piece’, to celebrate the millennium.” wrote AF of the Loughborough Echo.

Jonathan brought an intense musicality to his performances. He made few concessions to the fact that the Chorale is not a professional group. Interpretations were as demanding as the music chosen. His Messiah in 1996 was considered by local critics to be among the most dramatic they had heard. He sought just as much precision in his performance of Bach whether in the St John and St Matthew Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, the Magnificat or the Motets. Much benefit was derived from Jonathan’s close association with professional instrumentalists and this showed in the quality of players asked to perform with the Leicestershire Camerata. Chorale was also fortunate in cooperating with the Fitzwilliam String Quartet. He was happy to continue the association of the Chorale with the Leicester International Music Festival started by Paul McCreesh. For the Festival, Chorale has performed King Arthur and the Fairie Queen, both by Purcell. Jonathan also took the Chorale to the Yorkshire Dales to sing in the Festival in Swaledale. Another way of spreading the name of Leicestershire Chorale has been to organise “Come and Sing” events, inviting schools and other choirs to participate; works so prepared included Beethoven’s Mass in C, Haydn’s Creation as well as the Messiah. Under his generous leadership the choir took music to private homes, weddings and villages and it has gradually developed a more light-hearted repertoire. For the dinners and functions the audience wants close harmony, folk song arrangements, madrigals and jazzy items, and these provide a good way for the choir to relax from greater choral challenges. Under this heading comes the Vespers of Claudio Monteverdi, first performed under McCreesh in December 1995 in the ideal acoustic of St James the Greater, it was given a new interpretation by Tilbrook in 1997 and will be the centrepiece of the birthday celebrations in November 2007.

Jonathan Tilbrook resigned from the Chorale because of the increase in demand for his services at the Trinity College of Music in Greenwich. After another rigorous selection procedure, Chorale chose Tom Williams as its conductor from January 2005. As the senior choral scholar at King’s College Cambridge he had been musical director of Collegium Regale. He combines a successful singing career with Exaudi, Polyphony and SIX8, with singing teaching at Uppingham School. It has taken him very little time to come to terms with the expectations and needs of a successful amateur choir, perhaps not surprising when he his father has been a well known choral conductor in Derbyshire and his further not only sings but accompanies choirs. Under his direction the Chorale has already won the prize for the Best Classical Performance of the Year awarded by the Mercury. The photograph below shows Tom with his singers at an informal summer concert in 2005.

Leicestershire Chorale with Tom Williams 2005

Tom has had some success in addressing the major problem facing most choirs, which is an ageing membership. The Chorale has benefited from an influx of younger voices in all parts and with its current youth programme, which includes choral scholarships for students; it hopes that the process will continue. It is already clear that he intends to expand the choir’s repertoire even further. The Church of Holy Cross Priory has an acoustic to rival that of St James, and it was ideal for “A stirring performance of the Vespers” of Rachmaninov. The Mercury went on to describe the performance as “sonorous, passionate and colourful – a tour de force of choral agility”. It reported that all eyes were on Tom Williams who produced a superbly balanced tapestry of sound, with wide-ranging dynamics, good attack and glowing tome – underpinned by the splendid basses who came near to the ‘organ pedal’ sonority of their Russian counterparts. It is most pleasing that the Bass section has doubled in number.

In the short period of two years Tom has conducted works by composers as varied as Handel (Messiah), Lauridsen, Whitacre, Britten (Ceremony of Carols), Skempton, Sullivan, Vaughan Williams, Gabrieli and Schutz. He has been thoroughly involved in the work with schools and has plans for recordings, tours and new works, including commissions. There is no sense, as Leicestershire Chorale reaches its 30th year, that there is any slowing down in its development, far from it, the years ahead will be full of exciting challenges. Those who would like to be part of it would do well to contact us.