Summer Newsletter 2026
Many thanks to those of you who attended our Festino concert in March. We all really enjoyed the evening and hope that you did too! It was a lovely start to our 60th birthday celebrations.
Following on from this successful event, our next concert will be on Saturday June 27th, 7.30pm, at St John’s Church, Beeston. There’s no tasty meal planned for this evening but there will be plenty of Handel and C.P.E. Bach on the menu!
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar on the 8th March, 1714 and died in December 1788. He was the fifth child of Johann Sebastian Bach and the singer Maria Barbara Bach. Trained in music by his father, he became a very influential composer, working during the Baroque period and into the Classical era. He, in turn, drew inspiration from his own father, his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann and also contemporaries such as George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).
From 1740 to 1768, he served at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin and following this he succeeded Telemann as music director of five principal churches in Hamburg. He was a prolific composer and extremely accomplished at playing different keyboard instruments, his favourite being the clavichord. He wrote a treatise An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments which was recognised as a definitive work on keyboard technique.
Whilst in Berlin (in 1749) he also composed his Magnificat, Wq215, H.772, which we will be performing on June 27th. The work utilises vocal soloists, a SATB four-part choir and a Baroque orchestra. and it is the composer’s first extant major choral composition. There are nine movements and parts of the Magnificat show similarities to J.S. Bach’s Magnificat and also his Mass in B minor. Luckily, he was able to hear his son’s work in 1749.
We are very excited to be performing with a wonderful period instrument ensemble, under the enthusiastic leadership of Kelly McCusker, an extremely talented musician who encourages everyone to fully engage with, and enjoy, the music. Naturally, we are also delighted that our consummate accompanist, Michael Overbury, will be playing and our conductor, Richard Roddis, will be leading us all, skilfully bringing out the nuance, passion and beauty of the pieces.
The second work we will be performing is Handel’s Dixit Dominus, completed in 1707, while Handel was living in Italy. He used the Latin text of Psalm 110 and scored it for five vocal soloists (SSATB), five-part chorus, strings and continuo. This piece can be fast, furious and exciting, as well as heartfelt, reflective and beautiful – challenging and rewarding for performers and listeners!
Handel was born in Halle, Germany, but settled in London in 1712 and actually became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He enjoyed the support of the British royal family and about three thousand people attended his funeral at Westminster Abbey. Handel was internationally popular during his lifetime and is the first composer whose music has regularly been performed ever since.
Tickets are £15 (£5 for students) and are available from Sandra Wakefield on 0115 9606236, from Turner Violins 1-5 Lily Grove in Beeston, or from the Sinfonia Chorale website.
Best wishes to you all and it would be great if you could come and join us on Saturday June 27th, to share in the appreciation of these magnificent works!
*As an extra treat, if anyone is planning a visit to Haddon Hall in Derbyshire on Sunday May 31st, you might hear us singing some of the movements from Festino (as well as madrigals and other items) in the Long Gallery! It would be lovely to see you there!
Sinfonia Chorale
Sinfonia Chorale - 60th Birthday Newsletter
Sinfonia Chorale is 60 years old! No, we can’t believe it either but, dear friends, 2026 is our special birthday year and we have some exciting events planned, which we would love to share with you!
Save the date – Saturday March 21st, 2026, 6pm doors open, 6.30pm concert. This will take place at St Jude’s Church Hall, Mapperley, Nottingham, NG3 5HE.
We are going to have an evening of feasting and entertainment! Following the performance at 6.30pm, we will all enjoy a delicious, hot banquet, professionally catered by Sadlergates Catering, where we can all sit together, eat, chat and relax, enjoying a party ambience and celebrating our years as a choir.
Advance booking (before noon on Friday March 6th) is essential for this event, so please visit our website to secure your place and order your choice of food. There will be chicken, pork and vegetarian options. It is also possible to contact Sandra Wakefield on 0115 9606236, if you have any special dietary requirements. We will welcome everyone with a Prosecco/Nosecco celebratory drink and there will be free tea and coffee. You are invited to ‘bring your own bottle’ to enjoy with your meal! Tickets are only £25.00 per person.
The entertainment for the evening will be Adriano Banchieri’s Festino nella sera del giovedi grasso avanti cena (1608), which translates as ‘Small party before dinner on the evening of Fat Thursday’. This was the last Thursday before Lent. Banchieri (1568-1634), who actually became a Benedictine monk in 1589, was an Italian composer, organist and poet, as well as a founder of the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. He was also a music theorist and a master at composing madrigal comedies, which were in fashion just before the rise of opera.
Festino is one such example of a series of madrigals (sung in Italian but full translations will be provided!) which paint colourful pictures of larger than life characters (such as the little old men of Chioggia), ordinary village folk (spindle-sellers, maidens and Aunt Bernadina) and animals (dogs, cats, owls and even a magpie). Banchieri wanted to be more modern, creating more dramatic pieces which told a story when sung in succession.
This will be a fun evening of celebration, so please book your tickets and join us! As Banchieri declares in the opening lines of Festino: ‘Chi brama avere spasso e piacere, per un tantino entri al festino’, which, for those of us not fluent in Italian, means ‘Whoever longs for fun and pleasure, come into the party for a little while’. How could you resist?!
We look forward to seeing you, and we thank you so much for your continued support.
Best wishes,
Sinfonia Chorale
