St Mary’s Bourne Street, Friday 19 April 2024
Vivamus presents a performance of Duruflé’s Requiem as well as works for choir, cello, organ or piano by Fauré, Villette and Widor from a new venue for Vivamus: the Anglican church of St Mary’s, Bourne Street. While all the pieces in tonight’s concert – to say nothing of the church itself – were constructed within the relatively modest interval of 1864–1995, the music draws on much older texts and musical traditions, including Gregorian chant, a notable feature of the worship at St Mary’s. Given Durufle’s musical conservativism, we very much hope that any rumbling from the District Line beneath will not unduly detract from your enjoyment of tonight’s programme of heartfelt French music.
Toccata (from Symphony for Organ No. 5 in F minor, Op. 42, No. 1) – Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937)
Toccata (from the Italian for the action of touching) refers here to a piece of music with virtuosic passages requiring dexterous fingers. Widor’s best-known piece is the toccata final movement of his Symphony for Organ No. 5, the first of the toccatas characteristic of French Romantic organ music; it served as a model for later works by composers, including Widor’s pupils Vierne and Dupré. Widor was pleased with the resultant fame but unhappy with how fast many other organists played the Toccata. He recorded it in 1932 at a relatively slow tempo in the Church of St. Sulpice, Paris, a year before the end of his 63-year tenure there. It is frequently played as recessional music at weddings and, dare we say it, has been known to be excerpted in other musical contexts.
Cantique de Jean Racine (Op. 11) – Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Cantique de Jean Racine (Chant by Jean Racine) is scored for SATB choir and piano or organ. The text is a French adaptation by the great dramatist Jean-Baptiste Racine of a Latin hymn – Consors paterni luminis (A companion of the father’s light) – from the liturgical book for matins. Fauré set the text in 1864–5 for a composition competition at the École Niedermeyer de Paris, and it won him First Prize. Fauré named his composition after the French playwright, not the Latin original, perhaps because he preferred the ornate and highly expressive French text. The music combines Romanticism, restraint and minute touches of dissonance.
Panis Angelicus (Op. 80) – Pierre Villette (1926-1998)
A pupil of Duruflé, his fellow native of Normandy, Pierre Villette wrote eighty-one pieces, arguably achieving more fame abroad than in France. When he retired from teaching in 1987, Villette spoke of how much he looked forward to having more time to write music ‘to the glory of God.’ Panis angelicus starts quietly and simply and builds in harmonic and contrapuntal complexity culminating in an anguished setting of the phrase, ‘Sic nos tu visita’. After returning to the simplicity of the opening, the piece ends on a decidedly more ambiguous hummed chord, perhaps a fitting expression of uncertainty in the composer’s final vocal work before his passing. The text is the penultimate stanza of a hymn written by Saint Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi.
Pavane in F-sharp minor (Op. 50) – Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
The Pavane in F-sharp minor was written in 1887 and first performed in Paris in 1888, becoming one of Fauré’s most popular works. It is named after a slow processional Spanish court dance. Fauré envisaged a purely orchestral composition to be played at a series of light summer concerts, but after dedicating it to his noble patron, he added a distant chorus. A ballet version was performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes from 1917 onwards, and Fauré’s mentees Debussy and Ravel went on to write pavanes in their own right. Tonight’s performance is by cello and piano.
Requiem (Op. 9) – Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986)
Despite winning a number of composition prizes, the organist, musicologist and teacher Maurice Duruflé was a reticent and self-critical composer. By some counts he wrote only four pieces for choir. His Requiem, Op. 9, is a 1947 (revised 1961) setting of the Latin Requiem, performed tonight by SATB choir, baritone solo, cello and organ.
Given his reticence, perhaps it is unsurprising that his Requiem was a commission. It was part of a programme of commissions in May 1941 by the Vichy regime to write extended works for a fee, ranging from 10,000 francs for a symphonic poem to 30,000 francs for an opera. Duruflé was committed to write a symphonic poem but decided to compose a Requiem and was still working on it in at the collaborationist regime’s collapse in 1944. Indeed, he completed it in September 1947.
Duruflé incorporated his sketches for an organ suite into the Requiem, which uses numerous themes from the Gregorian ‘Mass for the Dead’. He dedicated the Requiem to the memory of his father and received 30,000 francs for the completed work thanks both to its complex nature and to contemporary inflation.
Duruflé’s Requiem omits certain parts in the tradition of Gabriel Fauré’s setting and is structured in nine movements. The composer’s exposure to the choral plainsong tradition at Rouen Cathedral is clear from the beginning of the piece. More fancifully, one may wonder about the debt owed to his birth in the town of Louviers on the River Eure in Normandy as one listens to the opening, restrained bars of the Sanctus with its organ part reminiscent of the wind ruffling water.
However, it is the final movement, In Paradisum, that often stirs the deepest feelings in the listener, carrying as it may suspense, relief, beauty, uncertainty and awe, all within the space of just thirty bars. And, however one views the end of earthly life, as a writer commenting on Mozart’s Requiem once put it: perhaps one starts to see death (or the eternal rest that comes with it) as a friend. Though of course we grieve our losses, perhaps through music we can learn to lessen our fears.
Performers
Vivamus
Vivamus is a small, London-based chamber choir who singing a diverse and challenging range of repertoire, from well-known classics to new works by living composers. We rehearse weekly at St Clement Danes RAF church and aim to perform at least four times a year at venues in and around central London, including St Martin-in-the-Fields and St James’, Piccadilly. We also organise away weekends to sing in UK cathedrals. We’ve visited Belfast, Lincoln and York in recent years, and we thoroughly enjoyed singing services at St Albans Cathedral over the Bank Holiday weekend in August 2023.
Rufus Frowde, Musical Director
Rufus read music at Oxford University (where he was Conductor of the Oxford University Philharmonia, Organ Scholar of Merton College and a tenor in Schola Cantorum. He performed his Finals Recital as a violinist). He subsequently became Organ Scholar of Worcester Cathedral. In 2003, Rufus took up his post as Organist and Assistant Director of Music at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. He combined this with prize-winning postgraduate study in Choral Direction and Church Music at the Royal Academy of Music before embarking on a freelance career as a conductor, organist, accompanist and composer. He joined Vivamus in 2008.
He is a passionate educator and is heavily involved in the work of Hertfordshire Music Service as an orchestral conductor and animateur (most notably as Artistic and Musical Director of the Hertfordshire Schools’ Galas at the Royal Albert Hall) and with the Chorister Outreach Programme at St Albans Cathedral. He also delivers the music curriculum at Samuel Lucas Primary School, Hitchin.
Rufus appears as a conductor and organist on the Divine Art, Diversions, Resonus Classics and Signum Classics labels and has broadcast on national television and radio. Contemporary music features highly in Rufus’s diary and he has conducted and played for numerous premieres including works by Judith Weir, Richard Allain, Ben Parry, Anne Dudley, Graham Ross, Sasha Johnson Manning, Richard Sisson and Will Todd. He has given organ recitals at numerous UK cathedrals and at Westminster Abbey. He is also active as a composer. His carol ‘Adam lay bounden’ was given its premiere at the Annual Carol Service for the Royal Academy of Arts.
Richard Hills, Organ and Piano
Richard Hills is widely acknowledged as one of the very few musicians to have bridged and mastered the divide between the classical and theatre organ worlds. Having studied with William Whitehead at Rochester Cathedral he went on in turn to the organ scholarships of Exeter College Oxford, Portsmouth Cathedral and Westminster Abbey where his teachers included Rosemary Field and David Sanger. He now combines a freelance solo career with continuo, choir-training and teaching work and is the Organist of St Mary’s, Bourne Street, a central-London church noted for its Anglo-Catholic Liturgy and fine musical tradition. In January 2022 he also took up the position of Director of Music and Organist of the West London Synagogue, and is only the fifth holder of that post since 1859.
Richard’s career in the theatre organ world has been equally prestigious. He has numerous prizes and awards to his credit, both in this country and in the USA, where he was named ‘Organist of the Year’ in 2010 by the American Theatre Organ Society. He has appeared many times as a soloist on national and international TV and Radio in programmes as diverse as BBC Radio 3’s ‘Choral Evensong’ and BBC Radio 2’s ‘Friday Night is Music Night’, and he made his solo debut at the BBC Proms in 2013. He returned again to the Proms as a soloist in 2015, and appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony and John Wilson Orchestras during the 2019 Proms season. 2019 also saw a solo recital at London’s Royal Festival Hall, alongside concerts in the USA, Europe and Sweden. His many recording credits include, most recently, a disc of British music made on the magnificent dual-purpose Compton organ of Southampton’s Guildhall, which earned a five-star review in Choir and Organ magazine.
Richard is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and a strong supporter of the work of the UK’s Cinema Organ Society, to whom he serves as Musical Adviser.
Yuki Ito, Cello
Yuki Ito (cellist, conductor and author) won First Prize at both the International Brahms Competition in 2010 and the UK’s highly prestigious Windsor Festival International String Competition in 2011, which led him to commence an international career.
He has since appeared internationally with major orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Kärntner Sinfonieorchester, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras. He has also has regularly given recitals around the globe at venues including London’s Wigmore Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre.
Yuki made his conducting debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 2013. In 2016 he led a tour by Camerata Luanda from the Republic of Angola to success, a historic event that marked the first tour in Japan by an African orchestra. In recent years he has been invited to give masterclasses at conservatoires and has served as adjudicator for international competitions.
In 2019, Yuki Ito was awarded the Hideo Saito Memorial Award – one of the most honourable music awards in Japan – for his services to music.
You can view Yuki’s full bio on his website.
John Holland-Avery, Baritone
John Holland-Avery from Staines, Middlesex is a BA (Hons) in Music from York University and is a former Bass Lay Clerk of St John’s College, Cambridge, with which he toured much of Europe. In 2016 he completed an MMus in Vocal Performance at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, during which time he won the 2015 Frederic Cox Song Prize (RNCM) and sang live on BBC Radio 3. His studies were generously supported by the Mercers’ Company and an Independent Opera Voice Scholarship.
John has a number of professional operatic credits to his name, with highlights including Governor in Bart’s Oliver! (Grange Park Opera), Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte (Woodhouse Opera), Don Alfonso from the same opera (Devon Opera), Periarco in Cavalli’s Xerse (UK premiere), Giove in Cavalli’s La Calisto, Melisso in Handel’s Alcina, Ali in Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes (Ensemble OrQuesta), Step-Out Baritone (cover) in Noah Mosley’s Aurora (Bury Court Opera), Alidoro (cover) in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (British Youth Opera), Dr Falke in J. Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus (Windsor & Eton Opera), Harasta in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen (Riverside Opera, London), and Hipparco in Cavalli’s L’Egisto (Hampstead Garden Opera). John is on a break from the opera stage in order to focus on online lessons from internationally acclaimed Welsh baritone, David Kempster.Work with other musical societies has included Copland’s American Folk Songs at the Apex, Bury St Edmunds, Haydn’s Creation and Brahms’ A German Requiem for Hastings Philharmonic, and Vaughan William’s Dona nobis pacem for the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, Münster, Germany. Future work includes Handel’s Messiah with Eboracum Baroque, of whom he is a founding member and regular, featuring on its 2021 Messiah CD release and in its ongoing ‘Purcell and a Pint’ nationwide recital series. John is also a passionate singing teacher, with private singing lessons, for Enhui Music School (Richmond), the American Community School (Egham), and Windsor Piano School (Windsor). In 2020 he started his YouTube for Kids channel, Mr Holland-Avery’s Singing Lessons.
You can follow John Holland-Avery on Facebook.
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