WATCH: Brighton Festival Chorus offer a special concert at the Brighton Festival

Music director James Morgan, who studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and then joined the staff of English National Opera before conducting operas for Glyndebourne, ENO, ETO and Raymond Gubbay at the Royal Albert Hall, is delighted to maintain the chorus’ festival tradition.

The concert will feature Ella Taylor soprano and Felix Kemp baritone for a programme comprising: Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending; Frank Bridge – There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook; Joseph Phibbs – Flame and Shadow (world premiere) and Vaughan Williams – Dona Nobis Pacem. Vaughan Williams said that folk song ‘opened the door’ to discovering his own compositional style. Its spirit certainly hovers over The Lark Ascending, part apotheosis of the English pastoral tradition, part elegy for the folksong-singing culture that the Great War destroyed. A decade later, Brighton-born Frank Bridge wrote a folk-inflected lament for Shakespeare’s Ophelia, still singing ‘snatches of old tunes’ even as she drowns. By 1936, the idyll was over and Vaughan Williams’ cantata Dona Nobis Pacem offers a desperate plea for peace in a world hurtling towards war.

James said: “It is great to be working with the Britten Sinfonia. We have worked with them before but now they have recently had their Arts Council funding cut. They have been removed from the national portfolio and it's hard to know what they're going to do. They are fundraising. They are the only orchestra in the region in which they are operating so it does seem a bit odd, but they have lost all their funding as the only orchestra operating in Suffolk and Norfolk. But down the years we have worked with them quite a bit and they have been great to work with. They are basically chamber musicians that come together to form an orchestra.”

The concert finds Brighton Festival Chorus in a good position post pandemic: “We have got really good numbers. We've got 170 of us now and I would say that we are 90 per cent back to normal. The other ten per cent is getting back to the standards of excellence that we had before the pandemic.” Numbers are considerably different though with the Brighton Festival Youth Choir who perform for the Brighton Festival two days before under Juliet Pochin. “Numbers are still very down,” Juliet said. “The youth choir was around 50 pre-pandemic when there was so much singing and music going on schools. Now we're down to 25 and I think you see the impact on young people and music from the pandemic and I think you also see the impact on young people's mental health as well. There's a lot less singing going on, and in the schools I think you can see that it is absolutely bottom of the pile now. Singing and music are well down underneath all sorts of other priorities. They are not teaching singing and music in the way they used to and they are certainly not encouraging it outside of school in the way they used to so it's very difficult to get young people coming to choirs because they're simply not exposed to it. I think maybe it's starting to turn around but only very, very slowly. There is a long way to go and as I say we have really, really seen the impact.” Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra, May 15, 7.30pm with Maciej Kułakowski (cello) & Peter Davison (conductor) and Brighton Festival Youth Choir, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, with works to include Doreen Carwithen – Suffolk Suite; Edward Elgar – Cello Concerto in E min.