Please join us and our new Musical Director, James Savage Hanford, for our autumn concert of Reflective Music for Remembrance. This concert includes music by English 20th century composers and features Herbert Howells’ Requiem, one of the most beautiful works in the English sacred musical canon together with his dramatic and moving anthem Take him Earth, for Cherishing. The Requiem is associated with Howells's grief for his young son Michael and his anthem was written in commemoration of JF Kennedy US President: both express not only deep grief but also eternal hope.   

The concert also includes the wonderful anthem for chorus and organ, Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice, composed in 1946 by Gerald Finzi, who lived in Harrogate as a boy and studied with Edward Farrar at Christ Church Harrogate and later with Edward Bairstow at York Minster. Therefore, it is fitting that Bairstow’s anthem Blessed City, Heavenly Salem is included, together with a much-loved 19th century part song by Robert Lucas Pearsall: the richly harmonic Lay a Garland.  We also welcome Alastair Stone, Assistant Organist at Ripon Cathedral, who will accompany the choir.

 Refreshments will be available.