Burton bids farewell with a flourish

Aylesbury Choral Society

An outdoor concert is a risky business, but the weather could not have been better for Aylesbury Choral Society's Music for a Summer's Evening concert on Saturday June 12.

As conductor James Burton explained, the concert was intended to show two different sides of the same six composers.

The first half took place in St. Mary's Church and comprised short pieces of sacred music. The first two were contrasting works by Britten, followed by Elgar's simple Ave Verum Corpus and Stanford's Magnificat, featuring the outstanding voice of Catherine Pope.

Still a student, Catherine is a soprano in the Emma Kirkby mode, with a purity of tone eminently suited to works that were written with trebles in mind.

Quentin Thomas, a young composer, conductor and organist whose varied career includes two Oscar nominations, performed Vaughan Williams's Organ Prelude before the choir sang one of his compositions, My Beloved Spake. Finally the choir, and Catherine Pope, sang Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, which features O For the Wings of a Dove.

Then it was a quick walk around the corner to the lovely gardens of Prebendal House and the opportunity to hear secular pieces by the same composers ranging from two songs composed by Quentin Thomas to words by Spike Milligan to Stanford's gorgeous The Bluebird.

Back in the church, and after an intermission with strawberries and wine, James Burton gathered up the choir for one last time for not one but two performances of Britten's Green Broom.

This was a delightful evening with just a hint of sadness, for it was Burton's last performance with Aylesbury Choral Society. During his tenure the choir has excelled in large scale and demanding choral works, such as the recent Bach B Minor Mass and last year's The Dream of Gerontius, but here they showed that they were equally confident with the smaller jewels of English music.


Joss O'Kelly

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