Portsmouth Baroque Choir - Music for Advent and Christmas

Every choir’s favourite, How lovely are the messengers by Mendelssohn combines messages about the Second Coming and universal celebration and it sits midpoint, chronologically, along the line of more than 400 festive seasons that separate the earliest from the most recently-written music in our festive programme.

The Second Coming message is also beautifully expressed in William Byrd’s Laetantur Coeli (1589), which begins the concert.

At the other end of the chronology, John Merrick’s setting of Carol Ann Duffy’s The Bee Carol (2017) makes a connection between the winter behaviour of bees as they cluster around the queen that will sustain their existence, and the “trembling” light from stars announcing the holy birth, while Mary is represented in the medieval text There is no rose in a setting by local composer and Portsmouth Baroque Choir President, Ian Schofield.

Originally written in 2021 for Sherborne Girls School, we will be giving the première of his 2024 SATB arrangement.

We celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Holst with Long ago, prophets knew and the carol Lullay my Liking.

From Central and Eastern Europe we have Kodály’s ‘O come, o come, Emmanuel’ (1943), Arvo Pärt’s rhythmic Bogoroditsye Dyevo (1990) and the traditional Appalachian carol I wonder as I wander by Swiss composer Carl Rütti.

The concert ends joyfully with Benedicamus Domino, a sequence of three carols written by Ian Schofield in 2000 for Portsmouth Choral Union.

The United Reformed Church in Havant has a warm and friendly interior with fine acoustics: with mulled wine and mince pies in the interval and some audience participation, this will be the perfect way to progress your festive season.

The concert starts at 7pm, tickets £14, £12 concessions, £2 U18/student on the door or from www.ticketsource.co.uk/baroquechoir.