Previous Seasons

Here are some highlights of LCC's work over the past few years.

Summer 2011

Thursday 9 June 2011, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

Book & Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner – Music by Frederick Loewe
Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play and Gabriel Pascal's motion picture "Pygmalion"

My Fair Lady is one of the greatest of all musicals. After opening on Broadway in 1956 it ran for more than six years, a record at the time. Almost everyone will recognise the succession of unforgettable songs in this marvellous show.

This semi-staged production features Arlene Rolph as Eliza, Toby Stafford-Allen as Professor Higgins and Martin Lamb as Alfred P. Doolittle. The choir provides the chorus of Cockneys, race-goers and servants.

Saturday 30 July 2011
Augsburg Peace Festival Concert – Basilika St Ulrich und Afra, Augsburg, Germany
with Basilikachor St Ulrich und Afra
and Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie

Haydn – Mass in Time of War (conductor Peter Bader)
Vaughan Williams – Dona Nobis Pacem

Spring 2011

Wednesday 9 March 2011, 7.30pm
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1

Verdi – Requiem

London Concert Choir
Basilikachor St Ulrich und Afra, Augsburg
Southbank Sinfonia
Claire Seaton soprano
Jennifer Johnston mezzo soprano
Peter Auty tenor
Alan Ewing bass
Mark Forkgen conductor

London Concert Choir welcomes the Basilica Choir of St Ulrich and Afra from Augsburg, Bavaria, for this joint performance of Verdi's Requiem. Composed in memory of the Italian writer Manzoni, the Requiem was first performed in 1874 on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. The sheer power of the music has ensured its lasting fame and popularity, with Verdi conveying the universal meaning and emotion of the traditional Latin words in a highly dramatic, even operatic style. From the terrifying Dies Irae to the sublime beauty of the Agnus Dei, the Verdi Requiem is a choral masterpiece of overwhelming impact.

Autumn 2010

Wednesday 20 October 2010, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

Gluck – Orfeo ed Euridice

Concert performance with
Michael Chance Orfeo
Erica Eloff Euridice
Mary Nelson Amore
and Counterpoint period instrument ensemble

Gluck's retelling of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice adds a happy ending to their story of love and loss. First performed in 1762, Orfeo ed Euridice was an operatic landmark, conveying extremes of human emotion in a simple classical style, most movingly in the famous aria Che farò senza Euridice? The chorus plays an integral part in the opera, as nymphs, shepherds, Furies and Blessed Spirits.

Summer 2010

Thursday 8 July 2010, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

• Beethoven: Mass in C
• Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
• Overture: Leonore No. 3
• Finale from Fidelio

Claire Seaton soprano
Arlene Rolph mezzo soprano
Adrian Thompson tenor
Giles Underwood baritone

with Counterpoint period instrumental ensemble

Beethoven’s Mass in C is a beautiful and moving masterpiece which reveals his intensely personal and dramatic response to the Latin text. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, an atmospheric setting for choir and orchestra of two Goethe poems, is followed by the Leonore overture – the greatest of the four versions Beethoven composed for the opera Fidelio, whose Finale is one of the most joyful and uplifting in all opera.

Spring 2010

Wednesday 31 March 2010, 8.00pm
Barbican Hall, Silk Street, EC2

Britten: War Requiem

Janice Watson soprano
Adrian Thompson tenor
Roderick Williams baritone
with Southbank Sinfonia

Tickets £26, £22, £18, £13, £7
Box Office: (020) 7638 8891 or http://www.barbican.org.uk

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was first performed in 1962 to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, built after the medieval cathedral had been destroyed in World War II. Britten's masterstroke was to interweave the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead with the uncompromisingly realistic poetry of Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action in November 1918. The Mass is sung by the soprano soloist and choir, while the words of Owen's soldiers are given to the tenor and baritone soloists. The result is a timeless and profoundly moving commentary on 'War and the pity of War'.

Autumn 2009

Wednesday 21 October 2009, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

London Concert Choir 50th Anniversary Concert

Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
with two pianos and percussion
Erica Eloff soprano
Andrew Radley counter-tenor
William Berger baritone

and English and American Music of the last 50 years

The choir launches its 50th Anniversary Season with Carmina Burana (songs of Beuern) in which Orff set the verses of a roving band of medieval clerics, celebrating the coming of spring, the pleasures of the tavern and the delights of love. Framed by the famous appeal to Destiny - 'O Fortuna', the work's exuberance and sensuality, simple melodies and driving rhythms have ensured its lasting popularity.

The concert begins with a sequence of unaccompanied choral music from the last 50 years by English and American composers, including William Walton, John Tavener and Morten Lauridsen.

Summer 2009

Thursday 9 July 2009, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

Handel: Coronation Anthems
Handel: Foundling Hospital Anthem
Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks

Handel, who died 250 years ago, wrote four splendid anthems for King George II's coronation, the best-known being 'Zadok the Priest'. As a generous benefactor of Coram's Foundling Hospital, he contributed a new anthem for a fundraising concert. The Foundling Hospital Anthem incorporates music from several previous works and ends with the 'Hallelujah Chorus' from Messiah. That same concert also included his exultant Royal Fireworks Music.

Spring 2009

Saturday 28 March 2009, 7.30pm
Barbican Hall, Silk Street, EC2

Mozart: Coronation Mass in C
Mendelssohn: Symphony no. 2 'Lobgesang' (Hymn of Praise)

with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Mozart's 'Coronation' Mass is one of his best loved and most popular sacred works. Composed in 1779 for the Easter Day service in Salzburg Cathedral, it later gained its name from being performed at the coronations of both the Emperor Leopold II and his son Francis II. The Mass setting is extremely varied – ceremonial and celebratory in style, but concise in form.

The bicentenary of Mendelssohn's birth is marked by a performance of his magnificent choral symphony. This was written in 1840 for a grand festival in Leipzig, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's printing press and its contribution to human enlightenment.

A three-movement orchestral sinfonia leads to an extended finale for soloists and chorus – a cantata on biblical texts, praising God and rejoicing in the triumph of light over darkness. While the structure of the symphony is reminiscent of Beethoven's Ninth, the choral movements are strongly influenced by Bach.

Autumn 2008

Thursday 6 November 2008, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

The Duke Ellington Sacred Concert
with Nina Bennet (soprano) and Big Band

Duke Ellington, bandleader, pianist and composer of big-band jazz, had a deep religious faith. In his last decade he composed the music for a series of remarkable Sacred Concerts that he and his orchestra gave from 1965 onwards. London Concert Choir presents a suite of this music, which combines jazz, classical, spirituals and gospel, blues and dance. As Ellington himself said, "Every man prays in his own language, and there is no language that God does not understand".

Summer 2008

Thursday 10 July
Guildhall, Gresham Street, EC2

Haydn: The Creation (sung in English)
with Counterpoint period instrumental ensemble

During his visits to London in the 1790s Haydn was greatly impressed by the oratorios of Handel and resolved to emulate his example. The words of The Creation, derived from the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost, describe the successive creation of the universe, the Earth and its inhabitants and finally, Adam and Eve. There are fine solo arias and joyful Handelian choruses of praise and thanksgiving, while Haydn’s orchestration vividly depicts the wonders of the natural world. The Creation represents Haydn at his finest and its continuing popularity is well deserved.

Spring 2008

Thursday 20 March 2008
Barbican Hall, Silk Street, EC2

Beethoven: Mass in D (Missa Solemnis)

with Canticum
and the English Chamber Orchestra

Beethoven himself regarded his monumental setting of the Latin Mass as his greatest work. Completed in 1823, it is one of the supreme choral masterpieces, combining awe-inspiring grandeur with a fervent spiritual intensity. Beethoven's musical interpretation of the text stretches its performers to the limit as he seeks to give the deepest expression to every word, within the architectural structure of the whole. The score bears the heading "From the heart – may it go to the heart".

Autumn 2007

Wednesday 31 October
St Columba's Church, Pont Street, SW1

• Britten: St Nicolas
• Elgar: Serenade for Strings
• Elgar: Give unto the Lord

with Andrew O'Brien (tenor)
and Orchestra

St Nicolas, the patron saint of children, was the fourth-century Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor. Britten's engaging cantata, composed in 1948, celebrates the saint's 'piety and marvellous works'. In recounting the story of his life from birth to death, it includes such legendary episodes as his calming of a storm at sea and restoring three young boys to life.

2007 is The Year of Elgar, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. Elgar's Serenade was one of his earliest works to become well known, but is typical of the composer in its Englishness. The grand ceremonial anthem Give Unto the Lord was commissioned for a festival at St Paul's Cathedral in 1914; appropriately, it concludes with a prayer for the blessing of peace.

Summer 2007

Thursday 12 July 2007
Cadogan Hall, Sloane Terrace, SW1

Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Great Musicals

A celebration of five of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's best-loved musicals. Written in the 1940s and 50s, all are full of life-enhancing songs and choruses in which the wit of the lyrics is matched by the inspiration of the music. The mood ranges from the exuberant – 'Oklahoma', 'June is Bustin' Out All Over', to the uplifting – 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'', 'You'll Never Walk Alone'; and from the positive – 'I Whistle a Happy Tune', 'The Lonely Goatherd', to the defiant – 'Many a New Day', 'I'm Gonna Wash that Man right outa my Hair', and the romantic – 'If I Loved You', 'I Have Dreamed' and 'Some Enchanted Evening'.

Spring 2007

Tuesday 20 March 2007
Barbican Hall, Silk Street, EC2

Brahms: Symphony No. 3 and German Requiem

with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra