Category: Review

Mendelssohn’s oratorio ‘St. Paul’ has not become a familiar part of the main oratorio repertoire in this country: and yet it was a very welcome surprise to hear the Bollington Festival Choir and Chamber Orchestra perform this work at the Arts Centre on Palm Sunday. It has not the spiritual power and magnificence of ‘The […]

After the days of splendour and celebration for the Diamond Jubilee of H. M. The Queen in London and all over the country, it was fitting to find a conclusion to the excitements with the Festival Choir giving their Bollington audience an evening with Gilbert and Sullivan. It was a happy choice, very English, as […]

What a fine performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus was given by the Bollington Festival Choir and Orchestra, with soloists from the R.N.C.M., on Palm Sunday. It raised not only sustained applause at the end, but cheers as well. This oratorio begins with an atmosphere of solemnity and desolation but it gradually leads the listener through […]

Each year the Festival Choir and members of the Chamber Orchestra offer their reflections on this lovely season – “so hallow’d and so gracious is the time”. These words of Shakespeare from Hamlet’s castle of Elsinore are a fitting introduction to Christmastide. The choir sings works that are old and works that are new, things […]

What a delightful concert this was. Its title ‘A Night at the Opera’, as Donald Judge pointed out, makes many people think of the Marx Brothers in that unforgettable film: but what the Bollington Festival Choir and soloists presented was a programme of arias, choruses and piano pieces, ranging from the Baroque, starting with Purcell, […]

The Bollington Festival Choir and Orchestra are in excellent form, achieved by a sustained renewal during these last few years. They gave a stimulating performance of works by Mozart and Haydn, and included an organ prelude by Buxtehude. There has been a marked change in the choir from concert to concert over the recent period […]