Christ Church, St Leonards on Sea in 19th century courtesy Redfearn Archive

St John Passion in St Leonards

We had another musical evening last night, courtesy of the Hastings Philharmonic Choir, in the magnificent Oxford Movement building of Christ Church, Saint Leonards.  If there’s classical music going, I believe in seizing the opportunity, and although choral music isn’t my favourite, you can’t go far wrong with Bach, writes Antony Mair.

Lancelot Nomura courtesy Wokingham Choral Society

In the end it was a bit of a triumph.  The choir seemed a tad shaky to begin with, as did one of the oboes in the orchestra, but everything settled down rapidly and the two final chorales were terrific.  The conductor, Marcio da Silva currently a postgraduate conducting student at the Royal College of Music, extracted the best from orchestra and choir. Soloists were drafted in from the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music:, Daniel Joy bore the lion’s share of the vocals as the Evangelist, bringing considerable expressive power to what can be a mechanical part.  It was a pleasure to hear Saint Leonards’ own Alice Privett again.  A new joy was the bass Lancelot Nomura.

There was something slightly surreal about the contrast between Bach’s eighteenth century music, full of the spirit of German Protestantism, and the High Anglican setting of Christ Church, completed in 1875.  My initial instinct was that its interior begs for Berlioz’ Requiem, composed in 1840.  However, when speaking to the composer Polo Piatti in the interval he was enthusing about Saint-Saens’ Requiem, and I see that this dates back to 1878, so it would be even better.  Let’s hope that this enterprising group of musicians take up the challenge in the near future.

Reproduced from‘Postcards from Hastings’ with the kind permission of Antony Mair

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