Stanford Society Festival Weekend 2017
It’s not too late to get tickets for the events at this year’s Stanford Society Festival Weekend.
You can get tickets for all the much-anticipated events (except the Canterbury walk) at the Canterbury Festival website.
If you wish to come on the Canterbury walk, please contact our Honorary Secretary at wilkinsondb@hotmail.co.uk.
Here’s a reminder of what to expect at this year’s Stanford Society Festival Weekend.
Friday November 3rd 2017
8.00pm Choral Concert – Canterbury Cathedral
The Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, the Very Rev’d Robert Willis, will curate a concert of his favourite pieces of Stanford’s church music performed by the Cathedral Choir under its Director of Music and Organist, David Flood, and with Jubilate Brass. This will include the Te Deum in B flat, the Coronation Gloria in B flat, two of the Latin Motets, for Lo I Raise and O for a Closer Walk with God and the Bluebird with brass accompaniment.
Saturday November 4th 2017
1.30pm Recital of Music for Violin and Piano by Madeleine Mitchell and Rudi Eastwood.- St. Gregory’s Centre for Music.
Madeleine Mitchell is Professor of Music at the Royal College of Music and a frequent recitalist and recording artist. Rudi Eastwood is a well-known recitalist and accompanist. He previously appeared at the 2013 Stanford Festival Weekend in Winchester playing solo piano works by Stanford and John Ireland.
In this recital, Professor Mitchell will play the first three of Stanford’s Five Characteristic Pieces for Violin and from the Opus 93, Stanford’s own arrangement for Violin and Piano of the Irish Rhapsody No. 6, Opus 191, as well as works by Stanford students Eugene Goossens, Herbert Howells and Frank Bridge. She will also play “ Romanza” a work written for her by the composer David Matthews a former colleague of, and collaborator with, Benjamin Britten.
3.30pm Stanford on Dutch Shores- A choral concert by the Toonkunstkoor from Leiden in the Netherlands- St. Gregory’s Centre for Music.
This sixty strong choir is coming to Canterbury with their Conductor Hans van der Toorn to perform Stanford’s well-known Songs of the Fleet (Opus 117) and his lesser-known and rarely performed cantata for female voices, Fairy Day, (Opus 131). This work was written for the St. Cecelia Society of New York in 1912 but there is no record of the work having been performed by them. The Tookunstkoor will also perform two choral works by the contemporary Dutch composer Louis Andriessen.
7.30pm – We Looked for Peace – Gala Concert in Canterbury Cathedral
This Gala Concert features the Canterbury Choral Society and the English Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Richard Cooke. Tasmin Little will be the soloist in the world premiere of Stanford’s Variations for Violin and Orchestra (Opus 180) orchestrated by Jeremy Dibble, as well as in a performance of Vaughn Williams’ popular The Lark Arising. Katherine Crompton will be the soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. The concert will also include the Canterbury premiere of Stanford’s Song to the Soul (Opus 97b), a work written for a planned trip by Stanford and his wife to the USA in 1915. It sets the texts of two poems by Walt Whitman. The trip was cancelled because of the sinking of the Lusitania on which the Stanfords had booked passage. They decided not to risk the trip on another ship. The work was eventually premiered in Dublin in 2015 in an edition edited by Jeremy Dibble.
Professor Jeremy Dibble will give a pre-concert talk on the two Stanford works at 6.30pm in the Cathedral.
Sunday November 5th, 2017
2.00pm – The Dante Quartet – String Quartet Recital – Colyer-Fergusson Hall the University of Kent.
The Dante Quartet was formed in 1995 and has developed into one of the UK’s leading String Quartets. They have held a seven-year residency at King’s College Cambridge, run their own thriving summer festival in Devon and tour regularly including a recent visit to Japan. The Quartet is currently recording the complete cycle of Stanford’s Eight String Quartets and Two String Quintets for SOMM Records sponsored by the Stanford Society and the Durham University Music Department. Seven of these works will be receiving first recordings. The first CD in the series (of the Quartets Numbers 5 and 8) was released in September 2016 to warm reviews. They have recently recorded the Quartets Numbers 3 and 4.
Their programme for this recital includes the Vaughan Williams Quartet No. 2 in A minor, the Stanford Quartet No. 3 in D minor (Opus 64) and the Brahms Quartet No. 2.in A minor.
Cathedral Services – To include music by Stanford
Friday November 3rd – Evensong – 5.30pm – 6.15pm
Saturday November 4th – Evensong – 5.30pm – 6.15pm
Sunday November 5th – Mattins – 11.00am to 12.15pm
Talks – The Old Synagogue
Saturday November 4th–
10.00am – 11.00am – Stanford and Vaughan Williams – Professor J. Dibble
11.15am – 12.15pm – Stanford’s Response to the First World War – Dr. A. Commins
