Programme for the 2022/2023 Season

 

 

Saturday 6th July 2024 - The Summer Concert

Missa in angustiis (Nelson Mass)

score edition: (New Novello)

(midi rehearsal file from CyberBass)

(rehearsal aid from chordperfect - human voice rehearsal aid)

Esther Bersweden: Time and Tides: An Exploration of Greenwich"

New work commissioned by ECS - score information to follow

Sibelius MP3 rehearsal tracks available from Esther. Click X to download as required.

	Full	Sop	Alto	tenor	bass
1 Time	X	X	X	X	X
2 The Lady Oriana	X	X	X	X	X
3 A Drop of Nelson_s Blood	X	X	X	X	X
4 One Tree Hill	X	X	X	X	X
5 When I Heard the Learn_d Astronomer	X	X	X	X	X
6 Even Such is Time	X	X	X	X	X

Check here for the Society's
code of conduct and protocol
for concert performances.

Eltham Choral Society Reviews

30TH JUNE 2012 THE SUMMER CONCERT - OLYMPIC YEAR COMPETITION FINALS

Review from the SEnine Click for Full Report

23RD JUNE 2001 CARMINA BURANA CONCERT REVIEW

Review from the The Kentish Times, July 6th 2001

Choral society works wonders.

Amateur and professional community-based choirs around the country add a great deal to our cultural and social heritage. But for many the problem of finding enough singers to maintain an acceptable balance between the male and female voices is a constant battle. I could only wonder how Eltham Choral Society still manages to perform demanding works with such professionalism and beautifully rich sounds and harmonies when I heard its recent concert at Holy Trinity Church.

For 25 years the choir was conducted by Miriam Coe and her influence was remarkable. Now a new conductor has been appointed: Nicholas Jenkins has an excellent musical pedigree and is a fluent, expressive conductor.

The main work of the evening was Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a theatrical, musically inventive, and a darkly passionate musical evocation of 13th Century secular poems. Untouched by religious overtones, they can be simply described as a celebration of ribald encounters with wine, women and song. Very difficult to conduct and sing, this was an outstanding performance. Disciplined throughout, the choir handled the work with passion and great drama. The conductor kept supreme control, the percussion excelled and the soloists, Rebecca Bottone (soprano), Mark Milhofer (tenor) and Mark Chaundy (baritone) sang with great professionalism. Mark Milhofer's handling of the strange mixture of tenor and alto pitches in his own very short solo section was a triumph of expressive creativity.The musical accompaniment was provided by pianists Tony Baldwin and David Battersby and a five-strong percussion section.

The concert opened with Bach's popular Brandenburg Concerto No.2. Without any real reflection on the pianists, the arrangement made a travesty of the work. However, the piano accompaniment for two of Verdi's choral works was excellent and the choir particularly excelled in the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco.

Roy Atterbury

28TH OCTOBER, 2000. TIPPETT, A CHILD OF OUR TIME REVIEW

Review from the Kentish Times, 9th November 2000

A concert in the Chapel of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich attracted a near capacity audience for what was very much a celebration of local culture.

The Eltham Choral Society was joined by the Ascension Choir from Blackheath, the children's choir from St Ursula's Convent School in Greenwich and the Kidbrooke School's Choirs in a performance of Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time. The orchestra was the Music Sinfonia of Trinity College, an institution shortly to take up residence at the Royal Naval College

While Tippett's work has sometimes been criticised for Socialist overtones, it remains a most powerful musical denouncement of racial intolerance. The negro spirituals used in the piece to underscore the torment of oppressed races are not only a highly moving element of the oratorio, they are an acknowledgement by the composer that nothing he could compose would match the simplicity and beauty of their melodies and words.

Under their conductor, Miriam Coe, (musical director of the Eltham Choral Society), the choir gave a performance that fully captured the complex mixture of hatred, passion and disquiet that is inherent in the oratorio.

The soloists, Mary Seers, Patricia Williams and John Bowley and the impressive narrator, Brindley Sherratt, added further quality to the memorable occasion.

The concert opened with Andrew Morely conducting the two popular works by Aaron Copland. The Fanfare for the Common Man provided an ideal opportunity for the brass section of the Sinfonia to show off its skills to great effect while the orchestral ballet suite Appalachian Spring was played with warmth, colour and vitality.

The concert was supported by Greenwich Council and the New Millennium Experience Company as part of the Time to Celebrate events

Roy Atterbury

FELPHAM CONCERT TOUR - SATURDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER 1998

An Autumn concert visit to Felpham near Bognor was enjoyed by all who went. The following review appeared in the parish magazine:

Saturday 26th September was a damp, miserable day, but for those of us who attended the Eltham Choral Society concert in St. Mary's, the event was enough to wipe away the memories of those leaden skies.

The church provided a warm and inviting backdrop as the choir started their programme with the first half, a well balanced mixture of music and readings, old and modern, on an autumn theme. The music ranged from Handel, Mozart, Purcell and Vaughan-Williams to modern composers Maxwell-Davies, Jenkins and Taverner. The readings from Keats and Betjeman were well chosen and complemented the music perfectly.

The second half consisted of a hastily rehearsed recital of Faure's Requiem as the original programme included Vivaldi's Gloria which is due to be performed next month by our own choirs. Unphased by this, the Society showed their professionalism and talent by delivering a stunning performance of the piece that on its first hearing had been thought to be "too lively" for a requiem.

Shelagh Eastwood whose clarity and range filled the vaulted ceilings and lifted the spirits, performed the soprano solo, Pie Jesu. The organist, Tony Baldwin, showed us new heights with his accomplished playing, never masking the singing, only complementing it.

Miriam Coe, the musical director, joined the Society 23 years ago to escape the tribulations of 2-year-old toddlers. As she led us through the programme, her enthusiasm and vitality focused the eyes and ears of both choir and audience,

Comments following the performance were full of praise. Hopefully we will be able to arrange a return visit so those who missed this stunning evening can have a second chance to enjoy the Eltham Choral Society.

Robert Baker

4TH APRIL 1998 HAYDN CONCERT REVIEW

Review from the The Kentish Times, April 9th 1998

Society May Have Hit the Ton

Last Saturday the Eltham Choral society's 90th Anniversary Concert at Holy Trinity Church was not quite the occasion I expected.

It was certainly the 90th anniversary of the Society's first performance of Haydn's the Creation which took place at the same church in Southend Crescent, on April 27, 1908. However, a subsequent review of the concert in the Times of the day made it clear the choir was already well established in the community. Indeed, an earlier report refers to the ECS performing at Eynsford in 1907. In the absence of any other historical records, therefore, this latest event could well have been a celebration of the choir's 100th anniversary which would have given the event greater importance. There is obviously no way of comparing the quality of the 1908 and 1998 ensembles but there is no doubt that the present choir is of an exceptional standard and, with almost 70 singers, it brought great passion and a supremely delicate lyricism to Haydn's work.

Delicate

The musical director of the ECS is Miriam Coe who conducts without a baton but uses restrained yet commandingly delicate hand movements to coax some inspired reactions from both the choir and the orchestra. The rising phrase in the last section of the second part was an object lesson in choral discipline as well as purity of sound. The 35-strong orchestra was bolstered by a fine organist in Tony Baldwin who is also assistant musical director of the choir. He not only provided a further depth to the orchestral playing but never once allowed his potentially powerful instrument to conflict with the perfect balance that was maintained overall.

In Susan Hendrie (soprano), Alan Jolly (tenor) and Paul Keohane (bass baritone), the society had brought together singers with great expressive skills who blended perfectly in the duets and trios. I was fascinated by Alan Jolly's tenor voice that had a gentleness and expression which had an odd affinity to the pure alto - but clearly in effect rather than pitch.

Haydn's work is not only great choral music, it is also fascinating in the way it heralds a new area of music. Written when the composer was at his zenith at 61, there are times when the brilliance of Mozart and the romanticism of Brahms, Beethoven and others are reflected in an orchestral approach which then slips almost into a near chamber mode. Seventeenth and 18th century music all seem to come together and the interpretative skills brought to this fascinating range of contrasts by all concerned made the concert an event to remember.

Roy Atterbury