Mozart's Coronation Mass and Handel's Coronation Anthems
We are delighted that for our Spring 2021 programme we are rehearsing Mozart's Coronation Mass in C Major and Handel's Four Coronation Anthems, a stirring blend of regal choral music to help get us through the cold weather.
Our Music Director Will Vann has once again very kindly offered to produce a series of video podcasts, each about 15 minutes long, similar to the videos he made for the Faure Requiem, Brahms Schicksalslied and Rachmaninov Vespers, being made available weekly to the choir during January and February.
As before, the weekly rehearsals will take place by Zoom, for an hour each Monday evening starting at 7:30 p.m., with links circulated on email and also available in the Members section of the website. The link is live from 7:15 p.m. for those wishing to join early for a social chat. The sheet music can be accessed online or can be purchased through South London Music or Amazon, and details on that have been circulated by email and can be found in the members' section of this website.
While we are not currently planning physical rehearsals due to the Covid-19 situation, we are keeping possibilities under active review and hope to resume them sometime in 2021, depending on demand from the choir and the status of government guidelines at the time.
Dulwich Choral Society is a thriving friendly local choir with over 100 members which normally rehearses on Monday evenings during term time from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the Holst Hall at James Allen's Girls' School, East Dulwich Grove. During this period of national lockdown because of the Coronavirus, we like other choirs have had to suspend our rehearsals and concerts, but as outlined above, we are very much continuing our musical activities online.
Our members are drawn from across the entire local area including Dulwich, Herne Hill, West Norwood, Crystal Palace and Brixton, as well as further afield. While we are an auditioned choir with high standards, the ability to read music and sing in tune are the two main requirements and everything else can be picked up in rehearsal. We welcome new members, and our membership secretaries Jane and Michael Palmer can be contacted at any time on membershipdcs@gmail.com.
The choir, which was founded in 1944, performs at least three concerts a year. These include two with professional orchestras and top-class soloists, typically in late autumn and early spring, and a third with a lighter programme in the summer. We also hold an Xmas music and carol concert, typically with a local primary or junior school, and also at least one Come & Sing event a year on a weekend when non-members are invited to rehearse and perform music with the choir in an informal and sociable setting. We welcome the opportunity to sing additionally at local festivals and similar events. For any enquiries, please contact DCS Chair Guy Collins on choir@dulwichchoral.com.
Our most recent concert was a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Benjamin Britten's Canticle II `Abraham and Isaac' and Jubilate in C, Janacek's Otcenas (Our Father) and Vaugh Williams's Let All the World. It took place at All Saints, West Dulwich on March 14, 2020 and was the final concert under the baton of our former Music Director Aidan Oliver, who has left us after 14 highly successful years to pursue his responsibilities at Glyndebourne and the Edinburgh International Festival. He has been replaced by our new Music Director William Vann, who is the founder and Artistic Director of the London English Song Festival and Director of Music at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. We hope to be able to stage a summer concert locally in June or July 2021, conditions and Covid restrictions permitting, and are also planning to perform Handel's Messiah here in Dulwich in November 2021.
Prior to our Bernstein concert, our previous event was `An Evening With Bach,' featuring his Magnificat in D and Ascension Oratorio, at All Saints in November 2019. In the 2018-19 season we performed an ambitious programme encompassing Haydn's Mass in Time of War and Vaughan Williams's Toward the Unknown Region at JAGS's Vaughan Williams Auditorium in November 2018, followed by Mendelssohn's Elijah at Cadogan Hall in April 2019, as well as Christmas and summer concerts. In addition to performing in the Dulwich area, the choir regularly appears more widely in central London and abroad, and a choir tour to Italy's Amalfi coast took place in October 2018.
Since 1998 the choir has undertaken tours to Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Germany and Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina; in 2014 the choir continued this tradition with a four day visit to Portugal, performing in Sintra and Lisbon, while in 2016 our singers visited Spain, focusing on the area around Madrid. The 2018 tour took us to Sorrento, Salerno and Ravello. Closer to home the choir performs in several of the beautiful churches in and around Dulwich, and enjoys a strong local following. If you would like to support the choir, you can find details of our Friends and Patrons scheme here.
Other major recent concerts have included Handel's Samson at All Saints West Dulwich in Spring 2018, Beethoven’s Mass in C at All Saints, Dulwich in December 2017, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at Cadogan Hall in March 2017, Haydn’s Creation in Dulwich in October 2016 and the world premier of Jonathan Dove’s Arion and the Dolphin in the presence of the composer in March 2016. The choir has also recently performed both Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in the beautiful surroundings of the Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich.
