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News Spring Concert 2022 17.03.2022

After a scramble for additional seating and spare programmes, Wednesday’s packed auditorium was treated to a remarkable variety of musical idioms at our Spring Concert in the Bishop Centre.

Our hugely energetic and enthusiastic Percussion Ensemble opened the show with Doğaçlama, an improvisation, and were followed by beautiful singing from our a capella group, The Octaves. The Senior Chamber Orchestra performed the second movement of Bruch’s Violin Concerto under the expert baton of Miss McAdam and with a dazzling virtuoso performance from soloist, Alison Roberts. There followed some wonderful choral singing from our Year 7 Choir and Year 8 and 9 Choir featuring works by Sondheim, Sells and Horner before a haunting rendition of Ashokan Farewell by our Junior Chamber Orchestra.

Our Chamber Choirs performed Howard Goodall’s The Lord is my Shepherd of Vicar of Dibley fame, and Say a Little Prayer by Bacharach before Mrs Garcia led our String Ensemble in a spell-binding performance of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto with tremendous technical skill from soloists Diane Comon and Isha Yerramilli-Rao. This was followed by a sublime rendition of Schwartz’ We Beseech Thee by our Senior Choir and a crowd-pleasing blast of Let it Go by the Concert Band – and they really did let it all go!

The concert hall then settled itself for the centrepiece of the evening: Faure’s Requiem. The masterpiece was completed in 1887 and our Senior Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Choirs and Senior Choir produced a well-polished and moving performance of the 1888 five movement setting for two soprano parts and an alto part. Fauré wrote of the work, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.” This sentiment resonated profoundly with our audience as the final bars of In Paradisum transported us to a more peaceful place.