St Albans Chamber Choir at Fifty 1958 – 2008
In the mid-1950s there was in the Watford School of Music Chamber Choir a tenor named John Rose, who waylaid the choir’s accompanist June Clark on several occasions to bemoan the fact that there was no such chamber choir in St Albans. There were several large and thriving choral societies in the area, but he wanted to conduct a smaller choir where singers could actively seek to improve their vocal skills and explore together the riches of the less well-known parts of the choral repertoire. June, a great believer that the best way of getting something done is to do it yourself, suggested to John that they should start such a choir, and with the support of Lewis Budd, Head of Evening Studies at the St Albans College of Further Education, began the venture as an adult evening class in Advanced Choral Singing. Rehearsing first at a member’s house, and later in the chilly surroundings of the vestry of St Saviour’s Church, the small choir gave its first concert on December 11th 1958.
In the fifty years since its debut, St Albans Chamber Choir has established itself as a major contributor to the musical life of the St Albans area and further afield, delighting audiences with music from the last six centuries and winning awards for its innovative and wide-ranging programming. The link with the College of Further Education was a fruitful and supportive one for many years, with the Choir rehearsing in local schools and giving concerts promoted by the College; changes in College organisation in 1995 led to the Choir becoming independent at that time.
John Rose continued to direct and develop the Chamber Choir until he moved to Scotland in 1965. The Choir was very fortunate to appoint as his successor Richard Stangroom, a musician whose knowledge and ability were to inspire the Choir for thirty years, and whose sense of humour enlivened every rehearsal. Travelling up each week from Surrey, Richard’s enthusiasm never waned, and under his baton the Choir flourished. Concerts in venues large and small, with orchestra and unaccompanied, well-known works and first performances – the Choir tackled them all. It gave its first London concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1973, which elicited five curtain calls for the conductor (‘this is what it’s really all about’ – RS) and a rave review in the Daily Telegraph. Concerts at the Purcell Room, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St James’ Piccadilly, and St John’s Smith Square, followed over the years, as did regular appearances at St Albans Abbey.
Richard Stangroom retired in 1995 and, perhaps not surprisingly, it took a little while for the Choir to find the right replacement for such an outstanding musical director. However, in the end (and by returning to Surrey!) a worthy successor emerged in David Hansell, who battled weekly round the M25 for ten happy and productive years. A Baroque specialist, David did much to develop the earlier part of the repertoire with the Choir, in particular the works of Bach and Victoria, and was responsible for the planning and directing of the Choir’s two CDs. The first of these, Christmas across the Centuries (2001), is a sequence of music featuring medieval and modern settings of matching Christmas texts, while the second, Mixing their Music (2004), is an anthology of works by Victoria, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Howells, among others. Both these commercial recordings were released to much critical acclaim and are currently available. Preparing for David’s retirement in 2007, the Choir attracted a large field of applicants for musical director, and is delighted to have appointed John Gibbons, a hugely experienced musician whose particular skill in communicating with audiences has already won acclaim after his first season with the Choir last year.
The link with St Albans’ German twin-town of Worms that has been such a feature of the Chamber Choir’s life began in 1969 with a town-sponsored concert tour. This was followed by a visit to St Albans in 1971 by the choir now known as the Wormser Kantorei, and the first joint concert in what has become the longest-established link in the town-twinning programme. The link itself and the character it has developed are very much due to the warm personal friendship which grew between Tobias Ihle and Richard Stangroom, the conductors at the time of the first meetings and for thirty years thereafter. This year the two choirs celebrate forty years of meeting and making music together every other year, alternately here and in Germany, and there are many friendships between the choir members that have been running nearly as long. In 1985 a truly significant concert was given in Worms: Britten’s War Requiem, commissioned for the bombed and rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, performed in the bombed and restored Trinity Church by the joint choirs to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Richard Stangroom and the Kantorei’s director, Tobias Ihle, conducted the two orchestras, the church was packed and the atmosphere uniquely memorable. At the end of the performance there was no applause by request, only silence followed by the ringing of the church bells. The link continued to thrive under David Hansell and the Kantorei’s new conductor Stefan Merkelbach, and at Easter this year the Choir will once more be travelling to Germany, introducing John Gibbons to the joys of this long-running exchange.
A wide-ranging repertoire has always been a hallmark of the Chamber Choir, from pioneering modern performances of early works, including in 1978 Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, using original instruments and with outstanding soloists Nigel Rogers and Rogers Covey-Crump performing to a packed Abbey, to commissioning new pieces. Composers who have written for the Choir include Nicola LeFanu, John Joubert, John Tavener, and Malcolm Singer, whose Mask of Esther, a joint project with the Zemel Choir, was given its world première in St Albans Abbey in 2001 and its first London performance a few months later. The Choir’s most recent commission, Martyr by Tarik O’Regan, was written for tonight’s concert in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary. In 1994 the Choir won a coveted BT Innovations Award for its mixed media event Images, a concert of music inspired by the Russian Orthodox Church (Rachmaninov’s Vespers and a repeat performance of the work commissioned from John Tavener in 1991) presented with an exhibition of icons, and supported by a talk by Tavener and a lecture on the icons. Other composers whose works have been given second performances by the Choir include Giles Swayne and Stephen Oliver, whose Seven Last Words Richard Stangroom considered to be the most difficult work the Choir had undertaken, containing virtuoso glissandi and aleatory sections where everyone ‘did their own thing’. Under John Gibbons the Choir has continued to explore this new sound world, and two pieces are included in tonight’s programme.
Despite fifty years of exploring the choral repertoire, the Choir is still uncovering and presenting gems from all periods as well as revelling in the great masterpieces, and its members look forward to the future with confidence and joyful anticipation.