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Leicestershire Chorale...
While many say that the strength of the choir lies in music of the Baroque period, the Chorale has always been willing to accept the challenge of modern and contemporary composers. Several pieces have been written for first performance by the Chorale. By May of 1978 pieces by Messiaen, Poulenc and Bruckner had been added to a repertoire, already wide enough to support a tour to Normandy, with concerts in Dieppe and Etretat. Such tours have helped to cement the twinning arrangements which Leicestershire has with Normandy. Foreign tours do much to promote bonding in a choir. In May 1979 further advantage was taken of twinning, this time for a tour of Saarland, including concerts in Dittingen Town Hall and Hochwoldchallen.
The Chorale has never been shy of hard work and within the first two seasons they had performed 15 concerts. Among the concert venues were the Cathedrals of Westminster (singing with the Cathedral Choristers), Lincoln and Leicester, and the choir visited several other cathedrals in the years that followed including Southwell, Norwich, Peterborough, and even Rouen. Tewkesbury Abbey, Beverley Minster, Great St. Mary’s Cambridge and St. John’s Smith Square were other venues. However, in the main, the Chorale serves the county from which it takes its name and there is no town, nor many large villages, where the choir has not sung, even if most concerts have been performed in Leicester and Loughborough. Of all the churches St. James the Greater has been most used because of its magnificent acoustic and its convenient location for many supporters.
Peter Fletcher continued to conduct the Chorale until 1984. By then good links had been established with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra and they had accompanied several Chorale performances and made two joint recordings. This was the beginning of the tradition, unique among chamber choirs in the region, of having at least one major work accompanied by orchestra in each season. The performance of the Verdi Requiem in the De Montfort Hall in March 1984 also involved other adult and school choirs and was the precursor of work which the Chorale has continued to do with young people. Apart from the LSSO, the Chorale has worked with the Gabrieli Consort, Musica Donum Dei, Saraband, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and has its own invited orchestra the Leicestershire Camerata, made up of players who work both in this region and in London.
“Motets, madrigals, masses, canticles, cantatas, chorals, anthems, oratorios and passions all form part of the repertoires of one of the most interesting and versatile choirs in the county” wrote Neil Crutchley of Leicestershire Chorale in the Leicester Mercury in 1990. Well before that the choir had taken on some major challenges. They had recorded music by Tippett, mastered the complexities of a Stravinsky Mass and Copland’s Motet “In the Beginning”, and taken Britten Cantatas and Missa Brevis on tour in Europe. The first performance of a Bach Passion did not occur until 1981 when the St. John was performed in All Saints, Loughborough. Thereafter Passions and major oratorios came in close succession. The St. Matthew was performed, again in All Saints, in 1982; Messiah, for the first time, at Christmas time in 1981; Tippett’s ”A Child of our Time” in 1982 and, of all works for a chamber choir, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in 1983. Before he retired as Music Director, Peter Fletcher, had steered the choir through Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the two major Requiems of Verdi and Brahms, all in 1984. His final work with the Chorale was the one he returned to conduct in the final year of his life, Bach’s wonderful B Minor Mass.
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The National Federation of Music Societies
