Page 22 - Church Music Quarterly June 2019

BRINGING OUT THE COLOURS OF THE ORGAN IN NOTTINGHAM
It was good to welcome Adrian Lucas to St Peter, Nottingham on the evening of 8 March, where he worked with the choir of St Peter’s on a range of repertoire from Byrd to Stanford and Imogen Holst. Working with a conductor of such experience and accomplishment was a privilege and, of course, highly instructive. The following day, we welcomed to St Peter’s directors of music and organists from around the Southwell & Nottingham Area for masterclasses on conducting and organ accompaniment. The conducting masterclass was facilitated by the massed choral scholars
of St Peter, Nottingham and St Mary, Newark, who sang with great responsiveness for the five brave conductors to whom Adrian gave extremely useful advice. We were also introduced to the new Voice for Life Guide to Choir
Training – an excellent new resource published by the RSCM. The post-lunch session was devoted to organ
accompaniment, as Adrian worked with St Peter’s sub-organist Michael Leuty on the fearsome accompaniment to Stanford’s For lo, I raise up. It was fascinating to observe and we all came away with fresh ideas to try. As one delegate commented: ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the day and have much food for thought that I hope to put into practice in both my conducting and organ playing. It was particularly interesting to see Adrian working with Mike and it has encouraged me to think differently about how I register pieces, using my orchestral hat to bring out the colours of the organ.’
Dr P.A. Siepmann, organist & director of music, St Peter, Nottingham
MOTHERING SUNDAY AT ST SAVIOUR, OXTON
On Mothering Sunday, the choir of St Saviour, Oxton, in the Wirral, visited its ‘mother’ church – Holy Cross, Woodchurch. Visiting the mother church on Mothering Sunday – the
fourth Sunday of Lent – is a centuries-old tradition and it was good that choir members from Oxton could join their colleagues at Woodchurch to sing choral evensong. ‘We were delighted to welcome the choir and members of the congregation from our daughter parish,’ said the Revd Christine Broad, rector of Woodchurch. ‘In among all the commercial pressure to celebrate Mother’s Day, it was good to share some quiet time for reflection and to revive an ancient practice of visiting the mother church during Lent.’
The idea for the visit came during the Revd Christine’s recent induction as Rector of Woodchurch. ‘We came
to sing at that service, too,’ said Dr Glyn Mon Hughes, director of music at St Saviour’s, ‘so we thought it could
be appropriate to sing a celebratory choral evensong on Mothering Sunday. What was particularly striking was that we sang music by Henry Purcell, who died almost 325 years ago. Parts of Holy Cross were already at least 500 years old when he was writing the music we performed, and that is a sobering thought. We are also grateful to the conductor for the evening, Mark Cleave, and the organist Gill Locke.’ Glyn Mon Hughes