The Royal Choral Society (RCS) celebrates its 150th anniversary with a season of concerts which reflect its illustrious history and its connection with some of the most significant names in the musical world, including Charles Gounod, Giuseppe Verdi, Antonin Dvorák, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Edward Elgar, Ethel Smyth, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Malcolm Sargent, who had a 39-year association with the choir. The current music director, Richard Cooke, who joined in 1995, sang in King’s College Choir under David Willcocks and was chorus master under the batons of Bernstein, Abbado and Tennstedt among others.
A much-loved British institution, the Royal Choral Society has a long-standing association with the Royal Albert Hall where it gave its first performance on 8 May 1872 under the baton of its founder-conductor, Charles Gounod, at a time when live performance was the only means to hear music. Independent and self-funding, the Society has striven to keep the artform alive with performances of the great works of the choral repertoire, including during wartime with its morale-boosting concerts of Messiah, Elijah and The Dream of Gerontius.
Under the direction of Richard Cooke, the choir has sung rarely performed works by Berlioz – The Damnation of Faust & Grande Messe des Morts – while Mahler symphonies and Requiems by Verdi, Mozart and Britten have been performed to acclaim. The choir has also premiered many works in the UK, including Verdi’s Requiem, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater and Ramirez’s Misa Criolla. The choir’s Easter tradition of the Good Friday Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall has become something of a national event, with near sell-out annual performances, and the Society is now firmly established in the Royal Albert Hall’s Christmas programme, with 16 festive performances to look forward to this year.
In May 2021, the choir found itself in the national spotlight when, in something of the spirit of its wartime performances, it gave a socially-distanced performance of Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall at a time when it was forbidden for amateur choirs to rehearse or sing indoors in groups of more than six. The performance, deemed ‘professional’ by the DCMS, led the way for non-professional choirs to return to Covid-safe rehearsals and performance.
Find out more about the RCS’ illustrious history here: Royal Choral Society – History
Highlights of the Royal Choral Society 150th anniversary season:
THE WORLD OF SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR
Sunday 9 October, 7.30pm, Fairfield Halls, Croydon
London Mozart Players
Royal Choral Society
Croydon Philharmonic Choir
Richard Cooke: conductor
Ben Hulett: tenor
Fenella Humphreys: violin
A celebration of the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor including the epic Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.
Born in Holborn and raised in Croydon, Afro-British Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was regarded, by Elgar no less, as the most talented composer in Britain. He was a household name in the early twentieth century, thanks to the popularity of his biggest hit Hiawatha. Every summer for some 30 years, thousands of people descended on the Royal Albert Hall for ‘Hiawatha Season’ – a dedicated two-week stint of Coleridge-Taylor’s immense choral work, sung by the Royal Choral Society, with the Royal Albert Hall turned into a Native American ‘reservation’, a tradition only brought to a halt by the Second World War.
In this concert Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is reimagined for a modern audience, surrounding it in music from Coleridge-Taylor’s contemporaries – Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The programme also includes Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto, performed by Fenella Humphreys, the score of which was lost on RMS Titanic and had to be subsequently rewritten.
It is interesting to note that the Performing Rights Society was founded as a direct result of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor selling the publishing rights to Hiawatha to Novello. He never earned a penny more from his blockbuster hit and died in 1912 in relative poverty.
Today, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is being ‘rediscovered’, but the RCS has a long-standing association with him.
https://www.royalchoralsociety.co.uk/concertdetail.htm?event=624
CHRISTMAS WITH THE ROYAL CHORAL SOCIETY
Monday 12 December, 7.30pm, Royal Albert Hall
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Cooke conductor
Mary Bevan: soprano
The RCS has sung at the Royal Albert Hall every Christmas since 1872 and this year celebrates its 150th Christmas in its spiritual home. Its festive programme will be packed full of glorious carols old and new and includes best-loved carols for the audience to join in singing.
https://www.royalchoralsociety.co.uk/concertdetail.htm?event=625
CAROLS AT THE HALL ROYAL ALBERT HALL
17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24 December (various times)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Richard Cooke: conductor
Greg Beardsell: compere
Soloists tbc
Fifteen carol concerts in the lead up to Christmas at London’s favourite venue, these events are a firm favourite for families wanting a traditional, fun, singalong festive concert featuring Christmas classics and popular carols. The brilliant Greg Beardsell hosts all 15 concerts.
https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2022/carols-at-the-royal-albert-hall/
HANDEL’S MESSIAH ON GOOD FRIDAY
Royal Albert Hall, Good Friday 7 April 2023, 2.30pm
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Cooke: conductor
Keri Fuge: soprano
Marta Fontanals-Simmons: mezzo-soprano
Andrew Staples: tenor
James Clerverton: bass
The Royal Choral Society’s 147th year performing this beloved oratorio at the Royal Albert Hall on Good Friday. The choir performed Handel’s Messiah in its first season in 1872, but 1876 saw the first Good Friday performance at the Royal Albert Hall, and it quickly became an annual Easter tradition, only interrupted by the Blitz in 1940/1 and the 2020/1 Covid pandemic. The choir is thought to have performed this work more than any other choir with an estimated 280 performances.
In 2020, the RCS’ Messiah on Good Friday was an early lockdown casualty and the choir produced one of the first ‘multivideo’ performances – Hallelujah Chorus, broadcast on Good Friday to launch the Royal Albert Hall’s #RoyalAlbertHome initiative.
In 2021, due to Covid, the choir performed Messiah on Trinity Sunday instead of Good Friday, with 119 singers socially distanced on stage, only organ and trumpet accompaniment, and just 800 in the audience at the Royal Albert Hall.
The RCS’ video of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ has had 11.5 million hits on YouTube and is the ‘go to’ video for all manner of celebrations.
https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2023/messiah-on-good-friday/
A CHORAL CELEBRATION!
ROYAL CHORAL SOCIETY’S 150TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT
Royal Albert Hall, Sunday 7 May 2023, 2.30pm
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Cooke: conductor
The Royal Choral Society’s special 150th anniversary concert, featuring the best in choral music.
Join the Royal Choral Society in its spiritual home to enjoy the drama of the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem, the emotion of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and the ebullience of Parry’s Jerusalem – works inextricably linked to the choir’s illustrious history. Also on the programme is Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus both of which featured in the choir’s first concert in 1872, works specially commissioned for the choir by Malcolm Sargent and Roxanna Panufnik, plus a few other surprises along the way.
And for the singers in the audience, the opportunity to join in ‘beltissimo’ with favourite anthem, Parry’s I Was Glad.
The Royal Choral Society will be accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with Richard Pearce on the organ, all under the baton of the choir’s Music Director of 27 years, Richard Cooke. After the Covid woes, the choir intends to raise the roof of London’s favourite venue in celebration of the sheer joy of singing.
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