Hastings Philharmonic Choir set to share the joy of music

The concert starts at 7pm and tickets are on sale via the choir’s website (www.hastingsphilchoir.org.uk) and will also be available on the door.

Spokesman John Rycroft said: “Despite the choir's best endeavours, there are a number of members who have failed to return after the cessation of the lockdown, yet this has been tempered by the welcoming of new members which has given it the impetus it needed to move forward with confidence.

“So much of the last couple of years has been stop and start with concerts having to be cancelled or postponed, and the feeling is that we are now at a new beginning.

“Such is the exciting nature of Haydn's The Creation, the hushed phrases of the opening recitative and chorus, 'In the beginning God created the heaven, and the earth', taken from the first four verses of the book of Genesis; one can draw parallels with today's situation.

“Covid-19 brought us that 'darkness being upon the face of the deep', and now that darkness has disappeared almost and once more, as sung by the chorus, 'Let there be light: and there was light.' The future seems a little brighter.

“That excitement is in Haydn's composition, with drama in abundance. One cannot help but be moved and uplifted! The choir feels very much in the same vein and welcomes audiences to its performances to share with them the joys that music brings to all mankind.

“The concert will be conducted by the well-known and highly-respected HPC musical director Marcio da Silva. The soloists are all leading UK singers: Poppy Shotts (soprano), Kieran White (tenor) and John Holland-Avery (baritone). Both Kieran and John are making a welcome return visit to Hastings.

“The work will be performed with organ and piano accompaniment, played by local musicians Cornelis Taekema and Francis Rayner.

“Haydn was inspired to write a large oratorio during a visit to London in 1791 when at the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey he was overwhelmed by the monumental sublimity of the choruses in Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt, performed by a gargantuan array of over 1,000 players and singers.

“In the words of an early biographer, Giuseppe Carpani, Haydn 'confessed that ...he was struck as if he had been put back to the beginning of his studies and had known nothing up to that moment. He meditated on every note and drew from those most learned scores the essence of true musical grandeur.'

“While still in London Haydn expressed a desire to compose a work on a similarly exalted biblical theme that would appeal to a broad public.

“The result was The Creation, published in English and German, and performed for the first time in London in 1800.”

After the concert, the choir will take a short break and resume rehearsals at the beginning of September, with the first concert date being Saturday, November 5 in which the programme will include Bach's Magnificat, and Charpentier's Te Deum