John Langridge conducting Battle Choral Society at Christ Church.

A cycle of Greats from Battle

Battle Choral Society’s spring concert on Saturday 16 May at Christ Church begins with two works by Wagner, the Siegfried Idyll and the Wesendonck Lieder song cycle, followed by the Mass in F minor by Bruckner, part of a cycle of the greatest choral works of all time, presented by the choir, writes HOT’s Chris Cormack.

Battle Choral Society has a fine tradition of performing the great choral masterpieces. In the last fourteen years these have included The Dream of Gerontius, The Creation, The Messiah, Elijah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and requiems by Verdi, Mozart, Faure and Brahms.

John Langridge, the musical director of Battle Choral Society, is also director of music at Battle Abbey School. His freelance work includes recording director, and musical producer and director for BBC Worldwide for an extensive range of repertoire including musicals, choral works, gala concerts, radio concerts and music shows. In February this year he was to be seen at the De La Warr Pavilion championing local composer and jazz musician, Trevor Watts, by conducting his recently commissioned choral work, the Light Vessel.

The organ which Bruckner loved to play in Saint Florian Priory

Bruckner’s Mass No 3 in F minor is considered to be among the three great concert masses, that is masses not written for liturgical use, the other two being by Bach and Beethoven. Bruckner’s mass is a great challenge even for an experienced choir – it is symphonic in its conception, as befits any work from the ‘Master of St Florian’ – Anton Bruckner (1824–96) was a choirboy and later organist at St Florian’s monastic church in Austria, and fittingly he is buried beneath the organ there.

The choir lies at the heart of this piece, the soloists having a less conspicuous role than usual. Battle Choral Society has proved itself in other great works, and John Langridge feels that they will relish scaling the heights of this peerless work. Written in 1868, Bruckner’s mass uses the musical language of the Romantic era and is almost operatic in its dramatic intensity. Due to the challenges it presents, it is not performed as regularly as other choral works; John sees this as a rare opportunity for local singers and classical music fans to experience a live performance of this magnificent work.

Wagner offers a pinch of snuff to Anton Bruckner (right), c. 1873. Silhouette by Otto Böhler (1847-1913).

Bruckner is a controversial figure; he was a distinctly odd and obsessive character, but he was also the composer of some of the  19th century’s greatest, grandest and most ambitious works. After the success of his Mass No 1 in D minor, Bruckner was commissioned to write a new mass for the Burgkapelle, or Royal Chapel,  and he began the Mass No. 3 in F minor in 1867. Influenced by his studies of Mozart’s Requiem, he continually revised the work into the 1890s. This performance includes soloists Jessica Leschnikoff, soprano, Emily Steventon, mezzo-soprano, Gary Marriott, tenor, and Michael White, baritone.

Wagner’s sublime Siegfried Idyll, which will be played by the orchestra, was composed in 1869 for his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried. It was first performed on the morning of her birthday on Christmas Day 1870, by a small ensemble on the stairs in their villa on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Could there ever have been a more beautiful Christmas present? Wagner originally intended the work to be a private piece but financial pressures caused him to sell it to the publisher B Schott in 1878. His opera Siegfried incorporates music from the Idyll.

Soprano Jessica Leschnikoff will perform Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, a song cycle composed while Wagner was working on Tristan and Isolde. The cycle is a setting of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of his patrons. It is sometimes claimed that Wagner and Mathilde had a love affair and that the mutual infatuation contributed both to the intensity of Mathilde’s  poems and to Wagner’s conception of Tristan and Isolde.  The highly praised Jessica Leschnikoff  has recorded several CDs, including the Wesendonck Leider, and is uniquely suited to sing this intensely moving work.

Battle Choral Society Spring Concert: Saturday 16 May, 7.30pm, at Christ Church, Silchester Road, St Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0JB. Tickets are £15 each. Book online. Also available from: Raggs Boutique, 20 High Street, Battle, and Little Larder, 39 Norman Road, St Leonards.

Acknowledgements to John Langridge and Battle Choral Society for help in the writing of this piece.

Also in: Music & Sound