Spring 2025

This season’s show-piece spring concert on 5 April 2025 is called ‘Celebration’ and features two of John Rutter’s most effective and popular works.  Rutter is known first and foremost as a composer of choral music and, as The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states, “within this field he has become probably the most popular and widely performed composer of his generation, especially in the UK and the USA.”  In this concert we shall be joined by the wonderful soprano soloist Jennifer Walker and accompanied by a chamber orchestra.

Requiem

John Rutter’s Requiem was published in 1986, with its first performance conducted by the composer himself in Dallas, Texas in 1985.  Rutter’s intention was for the work to be intimate rather than grandiose, contemplative and lyrical rather than dramatic, and ultimately moving towards light rather than darkness.  He chose the texts for his Requiem with a personal motive, guided by a desire to use language that his father might have enjoyed.

The seven movements of the work form an arch-structure with themes of life and death: the first and last movements are prayers to God, movements two and six are psalms, movements three and five are personal prayers, and the central Sanctus is an affirmation of divine glory.

His Requiem has become a firm favourite with choirs and audiences all over the world. Although it necessarily has some dark moments, the Requiem is unmistakably optimistic in its message of hope and comfort, expressed through the beauty of the chosen texts and Rutter’s uplifting music.

Magnificat

John Rutter’s Magnificat was first performed at Carnegie Hall, New York in 1990 and conducted by the composer.  This work, also in seven movements, is a musical setting of the biblical Song of Mary, and is her outpouring of praise and joy on learning that she is about to give birth.  Although there are many musical settings of the Magnificat surprisingly few of them are extended works, with John Rutter and JS Bach being two notable examples.

Rutter wrote “I had long wished to write an extended Magnificat, but at first was not sure how to approach it. In Spain and other Latin countries feast days of the Virgin Mary are joyous opportunities for people to take to the streets and celebrate with singing, dancing and processions. These images of outdoor celebration were, I think, somewhere in my mind as I wrote the work”.

Rutter follows the tradition of setting the liturgical Latin text to music but also intersperses this with an anonymous 15th century English poem "Of a Rose, a lovely Rose", which compares Mary to a rose.