Amici Chamber Choir

The Amici Chamber Choir, with guest conductor Duncan Aspden and organist Christian Wilson, performed a beautiful programme of European music for Passiontide at St John the Baptist Church, Pinner on Saturday 21 March 2009.

In the first half, the choir sang Renaissance motets by composers from Italy, Spain and the UK. Some of these pieces are well-known – for example, Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ – while others are less frequently performed, including ‘Trahe me post te’, an early motet by Francisco Guerrero, conjoining a prayer to the Virgin Mary with the eroticism of the Old Testament Song of Songs. Purcell’s ‘Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei’, taken from Psalm 3, featured solos by Giles Clayton and Jeremy Bryans.

Christian performed two organ solos: Variations on a well-known chorale by Sweelinck and, in the second half, Max Reger’s ‘Benedictus’.

The music moved forward three hundred years in the second half, starting with the well-known ‘Os justi’ by Bruckner and two motets by Rheinberger, with a solo from Giles Clayton. The choir then moved into the distance to perform R Vaughan Williams’ ‘O vos omnes’, featuring the undulating melodic style and ‘medieval’ harmonies well-known from the later ‘Mass in G Minor’. The choir then processed forward from the darkness to the quasi-chant of Salieri’s ‘De profundis’ to achieve a fortissimo blaze of light, finishing the concert with the pianissimo of Bruckner’s ‘Christus factus est’.

Lamentoso – Music for Passiontide

Guest Conductor: Duncan Aspden
Organist: Christian Wilson

Guest Conductor: Tansy Castledine

plus works by Dvorák and Pärt.

A programme of Christmas music, including:

As well as works by John Rutter, Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Praetorius, John Ireland, Pierre Villette, Heinrich Schütz, Willian Mathias and Francis Grier.

Also works by: Copeland, Elgar, Gershwin, Howells, Purcell, Vaughan Williams and two American Folk Songs arranged by Daryl Runswick.

This concert was in aid of St. Luke’s Hospice, Kenton.