Festival: Brandenburg Choral Festival

The Brandenburg Choral Festival is an enormous endeavour, with hundreds of concerts all over London, featuring all kinds of choral music and a diverse range of performers. Tonight we were in the beautiful church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the heart of the festival, for a late-night concert of stunning Tallis, Byrd and Allegri by candlelight.

Even at 9.20 on a cold Thursday evening in January, there were queues out the door to hear the Pegasus Choir’s debut at the Brandenburg Choral Festival. As the sixteenth concert of 66, the performance certainly needed something special to attract the crowds. This was achieved by programming Rachmaninov’s magnificent All-Night Vigil – perhaps one of the most famous settings of the Vespers.

This was my second visit to the Brandenburg Choral Festival, and I was looking forward to seeing younger performers tackle some challenging music. The experience outlined in the programme that Oakham School Chamber Choir have had is impressive, with the school giving over 80 concerts a year and touring recently to Dublin and Paris.