What better way of spending a murky November evening than with the soloists and choir of

PETER SYMONDS COLLEGE at the final concert in the ‘HYDE900 Michaelmas Music’ season?

Come along this evening and enjoy the stars of the future perform

• music for Brass ensemble by Jean Berger, Maurer, Riccio and Josquin.
• music for upper voices by Kodaly, Alexander Campkin and Bob Chilcott.
• two madrigals by Weelkes and Morley sung by Kelso Choir.
• Cantata by Purcell: How pleasant is this flowery Plain and Grove, for soprano, bass, two flutes and continuo.
• Two anthems for vocal ensemble by Tallis.
• Verse Anthem by Gibbons for mixed voices and brass with continuo.

Tickets £6 at the door (students free) which opens at 7.00.

Performance begins at 7.30

Hyde900 is delighted to announce its Michaelmas Music programme for 2011 in St Bartholomew’s Church, Hyde, sponsored by Taylor Fordyce Solicitors.

The series of six concerts builds on the success of last year’s Hyde900 concert series which demonstrated St Bartholomew’s excellent acoustics, and its scope as a charming niche venue within the wider Winchester Music scene.

The series will feature three characteristic strands – choral music, English music and ‘youth opportunity’. What makes it outstanding, however, is that it features a series of premieres including works written by the performers themselves.

Students from both Peter Symonds College and the University of Winchester will be taking part along with Vox Angelica (an early music choir). The distinguished international clarinettist Emma Alexandra [pictured], and the Spooner Mosley Duo will both be performing works specially written for the series as will Mark Gillman, the St Bartholomew’s resident organist, who premiers his newly written work ‘St. Bartholomew’s, Hyde’. Read the rest of this entry »

A packed audience in St Bartholomew’s Church, including the Mayor, Cllr Richard Izard, enjoyed a sizzling performance on Sunday evening from two University of Winchester Choirs – the King Alfred Singers and the Cantatus Chamber Choir – in the final concert of this year’s Hyde900 Music series. Under the title ‘Singing the Mystery – Exploring church music across the centuries’ the choirs ranged across a thousand years of religious music from Gregorian chant and the earliest written English music to relatively recent work by Balfour Gardiner and Sydney Carter. Read the rest of this entry »

To open our short series of concerts we will be featuring two young performers, both of whom live in Hyde, to set the standard for what is to come.  YOUNG SOUNDS CLASSICAL (Saturday 4 September), a musical soiree, will feature violinist Avril Freemantle a former pupil of  King Edward VI School, Southampton and now a student at the Royal Northern College of Music. Avril’s programme will consist of the Violin Concerto No.4 (movements 1 and 2) by Mozart; Scherzo in C minor by Brahms; Cavatina by Raff and Tambourin Chinois by Kreisler. Avril will be joined by pianist Marcus Martin, formerly of Peter Symonds, who is currently studying music at King’s College London, London. Marcus’s programme will consist of Debussy’s First Arabesque, Mendelssohn’s  Rondo Capricioso, Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu and, to change the mood,  Somewhere over the Rainbow by Keith Jarrett.

The following week, Saturday September 11^th, in a Hyde900 ‘Associate event’  we are delighted that the CAMBRIDGE TAVERNER CHOIR will be performing at St Cross ‘Reformation and Renaissance: Choral Masterpieces of the 16th Century’. Included in the programme will be motets by the two greatest composers of the English Renaissance,  Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Tallis’s career spanned the destruction of the monasteries, which he experienced at first hand, so is particularly apposite to feature as part of the Hyde900 programme. Tickets for this concert (and only this one) are available from the Winchester Cathedral box office.

We are also pleased to welcome back to Hyde THE MADDING CROWD, the well-established and highly popular exponents of ‘West Choir’ music who model themselves on the popular church choirs of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels. Their concert on Saturday 25 September is titled ‘Sound up the tune Neighbours’ and will feature music sung or composed in Hampshire during the period 1750 -1850 approx. “We will aim to include as many references as we can to events in Hyde at that time,” says the choir’s co-ordinator Brenda Bennett.

For our next performance on Saturday 9 October we are particularly indebted to Hyde resident James McConnachie who has persuaded a number of his fellow choir members from Southern Voices to create – for one night only ! – HYDE VOICES which will perform works by Tallis ( Te lucis ante terminum), Byrd (4 part Mass – omitting the Credo), English Madrigals and Campion’s’ Never weather-beaten sail’. This will be followed by Stanford Latin motets (Justorum animae, Beati quorum via, Coelos scendit), Parry’s  Songs of Farewell and English Romantic Part-songs. It sounds like a terrific evening.

Finally to conclude the sequence of performances on Sunday 24^th October we welcome a strong contribution from the UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER which is kindly providing two of its choirs – the King Alfred Singers and the Cantatus Chamber Choir – conducted by the Rev Professor June Boyce-Tillman MBE and Dr Vicky Feldwick.

As befits the final event of our season ‘Singing the mystery – exploring church music across the centuries’ will reflect a wide diversity of church music styles. This will range from the plainchant hymns of the Middle Ages through Baroque and Classical composers into the English choral tradition with composers such as Stanford and Balfour Gardiner. We are particularly excited that the concert will include one specially written piece using prayers from King Alfred as well as part of the music drama from the Winchester Troper – one of the oldest collections of two-part music in Europe dating from about 1000 – and other contemporary compositions written by staff at the university.

By bringing a series of concerts to St Bartholomew’s this autumn we hope to show off the church’s marvellous acoustics to a wider audience and put down a marker for other events in the future.

We look forward to seeing you there.