Autumn – How can I keep from singing?
Saturday, 23 October 2021, 7:30 pm, St Barnabas Church, Jericho, Oxford
The City of Oxford Choir celebrate the return of live music with a riot of songs about music and singing itself. Music has the ability to amplify powerful emotional responses; our programme abounds with the joy of singing, from Finzi's My spirit sang all day to the effusive cacophany of Bob Chilcott's Songs and Cries. A meditative Vaughan Williams contemplates the meaning of art in Silence and Music, while George Jeffrey's rare and delicious verse anthem A music strange, full of delight echoes with evocative harmonies. The programme will also include 'music on music' by Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Kenneth Leighton and Sarah Quartel.
Christmas – O magnum mysterium
Saturday, 11 December 2021, 7:30 pm, The University Church of St Mary the Virgin, High Street, Oxford
"What a great mystery, and what a wondrous moment, that the animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger!”
City of Oxford Choir's festive concert delights in four settings of this most luminous text, from Gabrieli's sonorous double choir splendour to a distinctively dreamy setting by Kjell Mørk Karlsen. The concert will also ring in the season with Bach's glorious Sanctus in D, and a sleighful of carols new and old, familiar and rare. Come celebrate the miracle of a Christmas together with the City of Oxford Choir!
Spring – Americana
Saturday, 2 April 2022, 7:30 pm, Exeter College Chapel, Oxford
An exploration of the great American choral tradition, including 20th-century greats such as Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland alongside contemporary masters including Philip Glass. The magical textures of superstar composer Eric Whitacre (and his younger disciples) are an important part of the contemporary choral landscape, while no concert featuring American choral music would be complete without a range of vivid spiritual treatments, including classics from Moses Hogan and Jack Halloran, alongside contemporary takes on the style by Steven Paulus and others.
Summer – Rejoice in the Lamb
Saturday, 16 July 2022, 7:30 pm, Keble College Chapel, Oxford
Britten: Rejoice in the Lamb
Kodaly: Matra Pictures
Bach: Lobet den Herrn
Our summer concert in the beautiful chapel of Keble College collates a sequence of choral masterworks from different eras and traditions.
Rejoice in the Lamb by Benjamin Britten sets excerpts from the extraordinary poem written by Christopher Smart during his confinement at St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in the mid-eighteenth century. By turns exuberant and harrowing, Britten's cantata perfectly captures the expression of faith from a troubled mind. The Britten will also resonate in the context of that other towering setter of English prose, Henry Purcell, whose collection of movements prepared for the funeral of Queen Mary contains music of similar heartfelt pain and noble spirit.
Emerging from the shadows, rejoicing surrounds us in the Bach motet Lobet den Herrn - ‘Praise the Lord, all ye nations’ - and in the vivacious Matra Pictures, scenes of a Hungarian homeland preserved and arranged with flair by Zoltán Kodály. Cecilia McDowall’s beautiful motet I know that my Redeemer Liveth is imbued with a serene faith.
Finally, combining both aesthetics, is Walton’s seminal dramatic anthem The Twelve. Commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral in 1965, this is a startlingly vivid setting of a powerful text by W. H. Auden depicting the trials of the apostles’ attempts to found the early church.
Join us, and the organist Greg Morris, for this choral tour de force!