Five Choirs To Combine In Arts Festival Concert

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30555, 25 September 1964, Page 14

Five Choirs To Combine In Arts Festival Concert

Five Christchurch choirs will sing with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent when the Christchurch Pan-Pacific Arts Festival opens on February

22. More than 500 singers will take part. The choirs are the Royal Christchurch Musical Society (conductor, Mr E. R. FieldDodgson), the Christchurch Harmonic Society (Mr W. R. Hawkey), the Christchurch Liederkrantzchen (Mr Clifton Cook), the Christchurch Liedertafel (Mr K. R. New.son), and the University of Canterbury Madrigal Group (Mr Brian Barrett). The programme will Include Brahms’s “Academic Festival Overture” and the choral ending “Gaudeamus,” arranged by Sir Malcolm Sargent, the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s “Prince Igor” and the major choral presentation of the concert, “Blest Pair of Sirens,” by Sir Hubert Parry. This has been described by William Walton as the test piece of choral music written by an Englishman. The festival will also be notable for a massed choral performance on March 6, the final day, when the Royal Christchurch Musical Society and the Christchurch Harmonic Society, totalling more than 400 voices, will combine with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The conductor will be Mr Juan Matteucci. The first half of this programme will be orchestral music.