A WONDERFULLY successful joint concert saw singers from the Daventry area perform alongside musicians from Oxfordshire.
St Helen’s Church in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, hosted a joint concert by Daventry Choral Society and the Abingdon and District Musical Society last Saturday.
Alexander Walker, who conducts major orchestras and choirs around the world, is musical dire
ctor for both societies and it is from that link the idea for a joint performance came.
The concert started with musicians from the Abingdon society playing Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), a dramatic piece depicting the life of an artist passing before his eyes as he dies. The second part saw Daventry Choral Society join with the musicians and singers of the Abingdon society to perform Berlioz’s climactic Te Deum. The scale of the piece, which includes a church organ alongside an orchestra, large choir and a tenor soloist, filled the church with an impressive and powerful sound.
A militaristic feel comes from the sheer power of the piece, backed up by the use of a church organ throughout.
Unfortunately Daventry district has no venues suitable to perform Te Deum so it was a rare opportunity to hear it performed live.
Daventry Choral Society’s next performance is A Box Of Delights featuring Duruflé’s Requiem, in Daventry’s Holy Cross Church on November 29.
James Bryce
The full article contains 229 words and appears in Daventry Express newspaper.
