Four members of the Bach Choir from Bonn in Germany will be in the audience next Saturday evening (10 December) at Leeds Town Hall for a performance of Handel’s Messiah by Leeds Festival Chorus.
They will be arriving in the city along with Sue Bailey, who once sang with Leeds Festival Chorus but who is now living – and singing – in Germany. She has had a key role in drawing the two choirs closer together.
Both choirs are already planning future collaborations and exchanges in the next few years, which include a proposed joint performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem for 2014 to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War.
Unlike some other choirs, Leeds Festival Chorus does not perform Handel’s Messiah every year. When it does, it is treated as a very special event. Conductor and Artistic Adviser Simon Wright wrote an article for the programme for the previous Messiah concert in Leeds Town Hall, in December 2007, in which he stated “...we will be performing this masterpiece of the Baroque age at modern pitch and with modern instruments but, I hope, in a style based on the performance practice of the mid-18th century”. This will be true for the current Messiah as well. The full article is at
http://www.leedsfestivalchorus.co.uk/news/2/121/What-Mr-Handel-expected.html
