Amici Chamber Choir

The 27-strong Amici Chamber Choir, with its guest conductor Jeremy Haneman, gave a highly successful concert of works by Bach and Haydn in St James’s Church, Piccadilly on 29 November 2009. This wonderful Wren church, with its Grinling Gibbons carvings, provided the perfect venue.

The programme opened with the well-known chorale Jesu, joy of man’s desiring from JS Bach’s Cantata 147, played on the organ by Anthony McCarthy and accompanied by the choir. Anthony then gave a spirited rendition of Bach’s Concerto in G major (after Vivaldi). This was followed by the Bach motet Jesu, meine Freude. Jeremy took the choir and the audience on a spiritual journey, starting with the love of Jesus, passing through the fear of earthly terrors and temptation and on to the renunciation of earthly pleasures and resignation to the love of God. The choir sang the chorales unaccompanied, while Anthony provided a light accompaniment to the complex contrapuntal settings of the words of St Paul in his Letter to the Romans. The trio of soloists – Susan Devlin (contralto), Adam Tunnicliffe (tenor) and Ørjan Hartveit (bass) – took the fugato portraying the Spirit at a truly spirited pace. As the journey drew to a close, the choir sang ever more piano, creating, at the close, an almost tangible sense of calm stillness.

In complete contrast, the choir, solo quartet (now including soprano Sonya Prentice) and organ performed Haydn’s ‘Maria Theresa’ Mass. This glorious setting of the Latin Mass allowed organ, choir and soloists to display a range of styles, reflecting the moods of prayer, thanksgiving and belief implied by the various parts of the Mass.

The Amici Chamber Choir has benefited enormously from Jeremy’s training during the autumn of 2008 and members all wish to thank him for his painstaking work, which culminated in a lovely event that was warmly received by the 145 people in the audience.