HAMILTON In Flanders Fields | FRANCK Panis Angelicus Pièce Héroïque, for organ | FOUHY New work | GRANT New work | YSAŸE Violin Sonata in E minor, op 27 | DURUFLÉ Requiem Op 9 for choir, soprano, baritone, cello and organ
With this wide-ranging concert featuring music of peace and remembrance, Auckland Choral honours those 18,000 New Zealand casualties — including 5000 who died — a hundred years ago in the horror of the Ypres front line around Passchendaele.
Music by Belgian, French and New Zealand composers will be performed, including the calm Requiem by French composer Maurice Duruflé, works by the Belgian-born César Franck, and a moving solo sonata by Belgian violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe.
Musical tributes from New Zealanders will feature a work by David Hamilton and new music on the theme of peace by young composers Sarah Fouhy and Lachlan Grant, first and second prizewinners respectively in the 2016 APO Student Composers competition.
Morag Atchison Soprano
Christopher Tonkin Baritone
Andrew Beer Violin
James Bush Cello
John Wells Organ
Paul Chan Piano
Morag Atchison Soprano
Christopher Tonkin Baritone
Auckland Choral
Elizabeth Lau Conductor
Uwe Grodd Conductor
Sunday 28 May 5.00pm
St Matthew-in-the-City
Like so many contraltos, I first got put in the alto section as a school girl because I could read music and manage to sing a line of harmony. I joined Auckland Choral when I was in high school and now I’ve been a member for 40 years! I started singing with my mum as a toddler, sitting on her knee while she played the piano and sang soprano and tenor Messiah arias. I used to come to Auckland Choral’s Saturday dress rehearsals in the Town Hall and follow the score in my early teenage years, and it was a natural step to join Mum in the choir when I was 15. I remember Choral Hall in Airedale Street where we used to meet (before Mayoral Drive was built). It was a dusty old building and freezing in winter, but the ladies in the alto section were very kind to me and welcomed me into the back row. Nothing really changes in that respect; the Auckland Choral altos today are a great bunch of people as well!
I learnt to sing on my mother's knee and have been singing ever since! In school in Wales I sang in small and large choirs in the eisteddfod. As soon as I left school I joined a choral society and have always been a member of one choir or another. I joined Auckland Choral in 2006 and have been on the management committee for the last 2 years. Choral singing has given me opportunities to make and keep wonderful friends, to travel, to see magnificent buildings, to hear all the major works and many new compositions, and to be part of a fabulous music making machine, always striving to improve. I have sung Handel's Messiah in 4 continents, in 2016 clocked up my 70th Messiah, and I still love it. I am also a semi retired speech language therapist and enjoy spending time with my 5 grandchildren.
Garnet has a long involvement with Auckland Choral after his first introduction to singing in Lead Roles in Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas at Kings High School in Dunedin,followed by being a member of Capping Sextet at Otago University with Sir William Southgate in the 1960s.