Harmonic Plans Nine Concerts

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 10

Harmonic Plans Nine Concerts

The Christchurch Harmonic Society will start its year with a performance of Haydn’s oratorio, “The Creation,” in aid of C.0.R.5.0. next month.

The choir, soloists and Christchurch Civic Orchestra will give their services without charge. The concert will be given on March 5. Eight other concerts are planned. In the first subscription concert on April 21, the choir will sing Bach’s Mass fa B minor. This was last performed in 1961. In a non-subscription concert on July 14, the choir will sing Bruckner’s “Te Deum,” Hoist’s “Hymn of Jesus,” and Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces.” ENGLISH WORKS

In its second subscription concert on September 29 the choir will sing three recent English works, Rawsthorne’s “A Canticle of Man,” the Choral Dances from Britten’s “Gloriana,” and Tippett’s “A Child of Our Time.” If the choir is unable to obtain the music for these works, it will sing instead Brahms’s “A German Requiem” in German. The “Requiem” was sunff last year by the Royal Christchurch Musical Society in an English translation. The Harmonic Society also plans two carol concerts and three performances of Handel’s “Messiah” in December. “You hear people say there is a decline in choral music.

At the moment this is not bora out by fact,” said the conductor, Mr T 7. R. Hawkey. “Choirs are thriving everywhere and this one has just grown and grown.” Since the choir returned from its trip to Britain and the United States it has had many inquiries from singers interested in joining, but only a small proportion of these have met the choir’s requirement of a high standard of tone quality and reading.

The choir could do with some more tenors, second altos and second basses to improve the balance of the sections, Mr Hawkey said.

“We noticed on tour that other choirs had the same problems of balance—a topheaviness in the sopranos and mezzo-sopranos,” he said. “We need some true rich altos and deep second basses. I think it’s by having this true deep sound that the Huddersfield choir has made its name. When you get these singers going you get a full anti sonorous effect.”