Sunday, November 8

The Shopwyke Singers' first concert under new director Richard Allum takes place on Remembrance Sunday, November 8 at 7pm in Boxgrove Priory.

The choir, founded in 1994 and currently numbering around thirty-five singers, will perform works suitable for the solemnity of the day, but also offering hope and peace, Richard said.

Joining them will be soloists Lucy Cronin (The Sixteen) and Andrew Davies (Glyndebourne), alongside instrumentalists Julie Twite (flute) and Sophie Hurr (cello).

Richard said: “Whilst my first programme was always going to include one of my favourite pieces of choral music, the Fauré Requiem, it is a particular honour to be performing the work, alongside John Rutter’s setting, on Remembrance Sunday. The music of both settings differs somewhat from many others, such as those by Verdi or Mozart, in that it does not include, for example, the rather more dramatic Dies Irae. Instead, both works paint a more consoling, gentler vision of the afterlife.

“Fauré, who composed the work after his father’s death, described his work as having ‘a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest’ whilst American composer Aaron Copland summed the work up perfectly as a ‘lullaby of death’. Rutter is himself a great admirer of the work. His own setting, published in 1986 and so celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, was heavily influenced by the gentleness and optimistic tone of the earlier work.

“Coupled with Mendelssohn’s Hear my Prayer and Stanford’s short, beautiful setting of the Nunc Dimittis, I hope that the evening's music will provide a suitable backdrop to the memories of those we may know of, be they family or otherwise, who have given their lives in the pursuit of peace.”

Tickets £15; under 14s free; available in advance on 07747 600651 or on the door.