Previous concerts
From ouchoir
Autumn 2011
Thursday 24 November 2011
WA Mozart: 'Coronation' Mass in C, K317. Soloists were Jamesena Tait, Rebecca Mitchell-Farmer, Ben Kerslake and David Kirby-Ashmore.
Motets by Anton Bruckner: Locus iste, Afferentur regi and Ecce sacerdos (the last with accompaniment arranged for additional wind and brass instruments by Bill Strang)
WA Mozart: Divertimento in D, K136
Summer 2011
Thursday 30 June 2011
Part songs by Parry and Stanford paved the way for Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, while folk-song arrangements for solo voice by Benjamin Britten led into a sequence of Percy Grainger's Folk-Music Settings for choir, which were interspersed with his piano music for 2, 4 then 6 hands.
Spring 2011
Thursday 7 April 2011
Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem with the composer's piano-duet accompaniment. Soloists Angela Caesar and David Kirby-Ashmore. Pianists John Byron and Anna Le Hair.
Autumn 2010
Thursday 25 November 2010
WA Mozart: Vesperae solennes de Dominica, K321, the less well-known of his two complete settings. Soloists were Jamesena Tait, Alison Young, Ben Kerslake and David Kirby-Ashmore.
Christmas motets by Jacob Handl and Morten Lauridsen
Antonio Vivaldi: Concert for 2 trumpets and string orchestra in C major. Soloists Terry Mayo and Martin Mills
Summer 2010
Thursday 24 & Friday 25 June 2010
The main work was a revival of Miriam's Song of Victory, a cantata by Franz Schubert for which three members of the choir, Ekkehard Thumm, Bill Strang and Eleanor Milburn, prepared a new singing translation in 1996. The wide-ranging solo part was taken this time by a soprano, Jamesena Tait.
The programme was filled out with pieces on related stories from the Old Testament, the 'Prayer' from Rossini's opera Moses and the 'Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves' from Verdi's Nabucco.
Spring 2010
Saturday 24 April 2010
The Choir decamped to the favourable acoustic of the Church of St Mary and St Giles in Stony Stratford for an evening concert in support of the church's organ fund. The programme included three anthems composed by William Bowie, former organist of the 3-manual Willis instrument when it was in St George's Church, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. Three Masts, Faith and Welcome, happy morning! were written for the choir of The Royal High School where Bowie also taught. The architecture of the church in Stony Stratford to which the organ was moved in 1967 lends itself to polychoral music which also featured in the programme.
Autumn 2009
Thursday 26 & Friday 27 November 2009
Heinrich Schütz: Jauchzet dem Herren alle Welt
Johann Kuhnau: Tristis est anima mea
Johann Sebastian Bach: Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227
Summer 2009
Sunday 28 June
The Choir joined with the Milton Keynes City Orchestra for a 40th Anniversary concert in Milton Keynes Theatre. This included the second performance of In the beginning by Jonathan Willcocks, which was commissioned for the OU Choir for the Millennium. This celebratory programme, and the Choir's season, culminated with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ('Choral'), in which the Choir was augmented by some 30 extra singers, mostly from other choirs in the locality, but also including former members of the OU Choir and current OU colleagues who don’t normally sing with the Choir.
Spring 2009
Thursday 2 & Friday 3 April
ffortissimo - a programme celebrating the University's 40th Anniversary by including some of the small-scale pieces written for the Choir over the years
Autumn 2008
Thursday 27 November 2008
Haydn’s ‘Creation’ Mass, thus completing the cycle of Haydn's six late masses. Soloists were Jamesena Tait, Rebecca Mitchell-Farmer, Ben Kerslake and David Kirby-Ashmore.
Summer 2008
Our summer concert for 2008 traced a theme of innocence and experience through the music of John Ireland (1879-1962), his teacher Charles Stanford, and some of his pupils. The concert included partsongs spanning Ireland's entire career, one of Stanford's most famous and best-loved songs, 'The blue bird', and music of Ireland's distinguished pupils E.J. Moeran, Benjamin Britten and Helen Perkin, whose vocal music has been revived by the OU Choir in recent years.
Spring 2008
Faure Requiem in the 1893 version with the composer's chamber orchestration, edited by John Rutter. John was a Lecturer in the Music Department at the OU when he did his work on this piece and he kindly facilitated what was the first public performance of it, by the OU Choir, in 1984. Our soloists in this year's performance were Jamesena Tait and Laurence Cole. The Requiem was preceded by motets by Durufle and Poulenc.
Autumn 2007
The main work in this programme was Haydn's Theresienmesse, the fourth of the six late masses Haydn wrote in the final phase of his creative career for his young new patron, Nikolaus II. Soloists were Nina Marcel, Rebecca Mitchell-Farmer, Ian Barratt and Nick Gee.
Summer 2007
The choir gave two performances of their summer concert, on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 June 2007,in St Michael’s Church, Walton Hall. The programme included Helen Perkin's 1957 settings of five poems by John Keats together with the Seven Poems of Robert Bridges by Gerald Finzi.
Find out more about Gerald Finzi at the Finzi Trust web site[1] and about Fiona Richards' research on Helen Perkin here at the OU [2]
Spring 2007
For its spring concert on Thursday 29 March The Open University Choir performed an exciting programme of double-choir music – Palestrina’s Stabat mater, JS Bach’s motet Fürchte dich nicht and the Three Festival Pieces Op.109 by Brahms. These were interspersed with a Vivaldi concerto for strings and a new arrangement for wind ensemble of one of Bach’s "Well-tempered Clavier" by the choir’s conductor Bill Strang.
OU Carol Concert 2006
The OU Choir joined with the OU Orchestra and Christian Forum on Tuesday 19 December 2006 for the University's annual carol concert, where the choir performed the Fantasia on Christmas Carols by Vaughan Williams, along with other seasonal music. A packed lecture theatre responded with some fine renditions of traditional carols.
We have some photos from the 2006 carol concert.
Autumn 2006
Haydn's 'Heiligmesse'. This was probably the first of the sequence of six masses Haydn wrote towards the end of his career for his new patron at Eisenstadt.
June 2006
Holst's Six Choral Folk Songs; Two settings by Helen Perkin, a pupil of John Ireland, of poems by John Keats; and the first performance of a new arrangement of Caller Herrin' by Bill Strang
March 2006
Motets for all seasons. A programme of motets from different historical periods and countries which included works by Peter Philips and Gregor Aichinger, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, Francis Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen, as well as a brief birthday tribute to WA Mozart, and culminated with Sechs Spruche for 8-part choir by Felix Mendelssohn
November 2005
Haydn: Missa in tempore belli and motet Insanae et vanae curae
June 2005
Songs of Love. First performance of a new arrangement of A red, red Rose by Bill Strang; second performance of And I will betroth you (2004) by Christopher Marr; Liebeslieder, Op.52 by Brahms
March 2005
Hummel's Mass in B flat, Op.77
December 2004
Requiem for double choir, strings and harp by David Kirby-Ashmore; motet Singet dem Herrn BWV 225 by JS Bach
