MUSIC MATTERS

Come and listen to Mendelsohnn’s vivid and compelling musical re-telling of the story of Elijah on Saturday 29thOctober at the Victoria Theatre. First performed by HCS in 1846 this drama has been stirring the hearts of concert-goers ever since.

Carols & Brass this year features the broadcaster Ian MacMillan on Thursday 1stDecember. Let’s hope his jokes are better than JPJ’s! Friday night is family night with a visit from Santa and songs from local school children.

Christmas wouldn’t be the same for me without a performance of “Messiah”. This year will be the 196thperformance of Handel’s oratorio by HCS. So you see we’re nearly 200 years old. Most of us don’t look it! “Messiah” is on Sunday 4thDecember.

Carole  

Saturday 22ndOctober 2011 at 7.00

A Night with Rossini

in Halifax Minster

by kind permission of the Vicar of Halifax, Canon Hilary Barber

 An enjoyably memorable programme of music by the inimitable Rossini culminates in a performance of the great man’s Petite Messe Solennelle of 1863.

 The piece is well-known to music-lovers as a mass that is neither “little” nor one jot “solemn” – a declaration alleged to have been made by Napoleon III – no less!

 After his Stabat Mater written between 1832 and 1841, the Petite Messe Solennelle is Rossini’s last major work and was composed almost thirty years after the great opera William Tell, the creation of which seems to have preceded its composer’s “retirement” at the very early age of just 39.

 In his intensely personal preface to the Mass, the composer wrote these lines, encapsulating a truly humorous play on words addressed to the Deity:

Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass—is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]?

 You know well, I was born for comic opera.

 Little science, a little heart, that is all.

 So may you be blessed, and grant me Paradise!"

 Dr Simon Lindley conducts, David Houlder is at the piano and Alan Horsey at the harmonium. The work was orchestrated by the Rossini between 1866 and 1867, apparently because the composer felt that performances with the original scoring (for piano and harmonium only) would lead to the piece never achieving widespread performance or popularity – how very wrong he was to prove to be!

A fine team of soloists for our main Autumn event is headed up by Halifax’s own Rachel Harrison, soprano and Rachel will be joined by Overgate “regulars”, Lucy Appleyard, Paul Dutton and Philip Wilcox.

 The performance is dedicated to the memory of Mr Philip Taylor, who founded Overgate Hospice Choir in 1991 and who died late last year at 86 years of age. The Concert has already received generous sponsorship from a number of donors including Mrs Sylvia Graucob, MBE, President of both Overgate Hospice and of Elland Silver Band, whose Junior Band we will welcome in December at the Carol Concert. Mrs Graucob and Mr Taylor worked together on behalf of Overgate for many years.