Eric’s milestone concert season to end in style
Newcastle Bach Choir returns to “fabulous” abbey
Newcastle Bach Choir’s forthcoming concert in Hexham Abbey will set the seal on Eric Cross’s 40th anniversary season as conductor and music director.
“It’s been really good,” he says, although he points out that he has no plans to relinquish what has clearly been a four-decade labour of love.
“There’s no farewell tour,” he says.
Congratulatory words were spoken at the season’s opening concert in November, which featured a “fantastic” new commission from composer Cecilia McDowall, and there was “a nice party” in February.
And in that November programme he wrote of what a “huge privilege” it had been to be music director for 40 years of the choir formed in 1915 by Newcastle-born musicologist WG (William Gillies) Whittaker.
Taking over the baton from friend and mentor Percy Lovell, who had also been a music lecturer at Newcastle University and music director of the Bach Choir for 12 years, Eric’s first concert – on December 1, 1984 - was a performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.
“Little did I realise at the time quite what was to follow,” he noted.
What followed was a succession of memorable concerts by a choir which is still rooted at Newcastle University.
It had no dedicated music department when the choir was established but all Eric’s predecessors taught music there. He joined the staff as a music lecturer and is now emeritus professor of music and culture.
The season’s concluding concert takes place not in the ‘home’ venue of the King’s Hall, on the university campus, but in the abbey.
“We’ve performed there a few times but it has been a while so it’s really nice to be going back again,” says Eric.
“It’s a fabulous venue, obviously, and very atmospheric.”
So what lies in store for those who buy tickets?
It’s a programme built around Handel’s Coronation Anthems – the four of them, including Zadok the Priest, were composed for the coronation of George II in 1727 – and compositions by Vivaldi.
“Although it’s a Bach choir I’m a great Handelian and always have been,” says Eric, explaining why Bach’s having a night off for once.
“I’ve worked my way through Handel’s oratorios over the years but it’s quite a long time since we last did the Coronation Anthems and it seemed a suitably celebratory group of pieces to do.
“Zadok the Priest is the best known of them but the others are also marvellous pieces.”
Composed to punctuate the ritual of the coronation, they will be interspersed in Hexham Abbey by the music of Vivaldi, whose operas were the subject of Eric’s doctoral thesis.
Soprano Mhairi Lawson is to sing three Vivaldi arias but the choir will also perform two other pieces by the composer, his Credo in E minor and Domine ad adiuvandum me.
“They’re very fine pieces but rarely performed live,” says Eric, adding that one of his priorities as music director has been introducing audiences to music and composers they might not know.
Jan Dismas Zelenka, born in 1679 in what we now know as the Czech Republic, might fall into that category and it’s his Miserere in C minor that completes the programme Eric has put together for the abbey.
“We did it in 2013 and it’s nice to return to it.
“We’ve done several Zelenka pieces over the last decade or so and some of them are really very good.”
Eric believes WG Whittaker, the man who started it all 110 years ago, would approve of this educational approach.
“He formed the choir primarily to perform Bach cantatas which, with one or two exceptions, weren’t performed in the early part of the last century,” he says.
The 90-strong choir – big for a Bach choir, I’m told – will be lining up in Hexham with familiar accompanists, the musicians of Newcastle Baroque who will be giving a period flavour to the occasion.
It should be quite a night – and afterwards Eric can step out of the spotlight, metaphorically speaking, and look ahead to his 41st season as the man with the baton.
The concert in Hexham Abbey takes place on Saturday, June 7 at 7.30pm. Tickets can be bought from the Newcastle Bach Choir website.
And you can also catch the choir at Holy Trinity Church, Churchill Gardens, Jesmond, on Saturday, May 31 at 5pm when it will be performing with accompanist Alison Shiel as part of the Jesmond Community Festival.