Join King’s Lynn Festival Chorus for a magical evening of festive joy as, under the baton of Ben Horden, they fill the air with the enchanting sounds of Christmas. Our family Christmas carol concert is a popular highlight of our season that promises to ignite your holiday spirit.

Our enchanting programme features a delightful selection of popular carols and secular music perfectly chosen to evoke the true essence of Christmas. To add a touch of literary magic to this festive evening, our concert will also feature heart-warming readings, transporting you to the heart of the holiday season as we relish in the spirit of Christmas through both word and song.

Written in 1734 when Bach was at the height of his considerable powers, the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) is rarely heard in its complete form. We perform all six cantatas written for the feast days of Christmas and New Year, presenting Bach at his most joyous. Bach’s festive choruses are contrasted with exquisitely beautiful solo instrumental and vocal music. Its music calls for the largest and most spectacular orchestral forces Bach ever required.  Bound together, Bach’s musical compendium powerfully encapsulates rituals of belief, the diversity of the human spirit and an ecstatic joy in the Christmas message.

Join us as we tour those hallowed halls of Paris’s cathedrals, churches, and organ lofts that sit at the heart of nineteenth century French religious choral music. Presenting some of the most celebrated works from history’s finest organist composers, the captivating programme features choral masterpieces of Franck, Fauré, Dupré, and including Vierne’s majestic Messe Solennelle. The programme also includes organ improvisations from the incomparable Martin Baker on the mighty organ of King’s Lynn Minster. Immerse yourself in the divine melodies and heavenly harmonies that have captivated congregations, audiences, and musicians for generations. Join us for an evening of spiritual enlightenment and musical splendour that will leave you uplifted and inspired.

Join King’s Lynn Festival Chorus and conductor Ben Horden as they present an entertaining programme of Gilbert and Sullivan favourites, including the one-act comic opera Trial by Jury, dubbed ‘the most successful British one-act operetta of all time’, by theatre scholar Kurt Gänzl. The work is a delicious spoof of a breach of promise trial, a now-forgotten procedure where a man could be sued by a woman for withdrawing a proposal of marriage. The programme also showcases popular favourites, including the overture to The Gondoliers, 'Is Life a Boon’ from Yeomen of the Guard, 'Minerva and O Goddess Wise' from Princess Ida, the overture to Iolanthe, 'As Someday it May Happen' from Mikado, 'When I was a Lad' from H.M.S. Pinafore, and a complete performance of Trial by Jury.

The Chorus is once again joined by a stellar array of soloists and musicians, including star of the Gilbert and Sullivan stage, Simon Butteriss, and internationally renowned operatic soprano, Sarah Fox. Also appearing are Richard Pinkstone and Felix Kemp, both already forging glittering careers as operatic artists. The British Sinfonietta make a very welcome return to King’s Lynn after appearing with the Chorus for Duruflé’s Requiem in 2022.

The Bach dynasty brought great innovation and expression to the motet genre. In this concert, we explore music composed by Johann Sebastian and members of his considerable musical family, including uncles, cousins and sons. Motets by these ‘other Bachs’ contain treasures in a surprising range of musical styles. Alongside the joyous Jauchzet dem Herrn by J S Bach, we present examples from J C Bach, J M Bach and C P E Bach.

During the seventeenth century, dance secured its position as a serious art discipline. As a result, dance music became prevalent across Europe, and composers of the period and indeed many since have turned to dance forms and structures as a rhythmic framework and inspiration for their composition. Characteristics of early dance forms were incorporated into the works of many European composers. This programme focuses on its use by two leading forces in organ music of the German Baroque and indeed its development and evolution within Western music: Johann Sebastian Bach and Dieterich Buxtehude.

After returning from studies with Monteverdi in Venice, Heinrich Schütz, the greatest German composer of the seventeenth century, established his career in Dresden. As Kapellmeister at the Elector’s court, he created a musical style which is as innovative as it is traditional, as beautiful as it is austere. We showcase the range of his musical style from the expressive Musicalische Exequien to the sonorous textures of his colourful psalms.

Widely regarded as one of the finest choral works in history, Bach’s towering masterpiece combines technical skill and virtuosity with an inherent spirituality, leading the listener in a remarkable narrative of faith and commitment. Completed in his final year, the Mass in B minor is the culmination of an extraordinary life in music and a perfect realisation of Bach’s endlessly flexible and inventive musical style.

King’s Lynn Festival Chorus is once again joined by period instrument ensemble Noxwode Baroque and an outstanding line-up of soloists.

Brahms himself wrote that his Requiem served to comfort the living, not the souls of the dead. Consequently Brahms’ most substantial choral work focuses on faith in the Resurrection rather than fear of the Day of Judgement. The Brent Singers are joined in this cornerstone of the choral repertory by Ben Horden and David Davies in Brahms’ own version of the work for chorus and piano duet.

The late seventeenth century Italian choral tradition, with its exuberant string writing, had a great influence on Vivaldi and Handel. The latter went to Italy specifically to study with Alessandro Scarlatti and Corelli. Vivaldi’s concise setting of the Magnificat for chorus and soloists contains all the colour and imagination you would expect. The Italian and French styles were brought together on English soil by Purcell in his anthems for choir and strings, many of which were written for the Chapel Royal. Handel’s vivid setting of Dixit Dominus, a direct outcome of his Italian studies, is one of his most impressive choral compositions.

The sonorities and vivid colour of the Spanish Renaissance form one of the great glories of the choral repertoire. This concert features Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum of 1603, filled with harmonic inventiveness and subtle expressiveness. What is possibly the most accomplished Requiem setting of its epoch is complemented with a sequence of Antiphons and Psalms published around the same time.

King’s Lynn Festival Chorus teams up with period performance ensemble Noxwode Baroque for Handel’s most celebrated oratorio in the awe-inspiring setting of St Nicholas’ Chapel. The Chorus is also joined by a wonderful line-up of soloists: Bethany Seymour, Luthien Brackett, Jonathan Hanley, and Geoff Clapham. The dramatic oratorio portrays Jesus Christ as 'Messiah', from the prophecies of Isaiah through Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and to His ultimate glory-seat in Heaven. A fond favourite of audiences and musicians alike, no Christmas season is complete without it!

After languishing in the margins of musical history, Handel’s only Passion setting (first performed in Hamburg in 1719) is characterised by an extraordinary combination of humanity and beauty. Handel plunges into the narrative of the Passion with consummate dramatic skill using a vivid mixture of chorales, choruses and emotive recitatives in some of his finest music. Yorkshire Bach Choir is joined by the period colour of Yorkshire Baroque Soloists and an outstanding line-up of vocal soloists in the first performance of this major work in the North of England – an opportunity for performers and audience alike to experience this highly dramatic setting of the Passion story.

Noxwode are taking their programme ‘Lies and Morals’ to three remote locations across the UK this Summer, culminating in a video recording. The focus of this theme delves into the wild composition style of the stylus fantasticus. A lie cannot exist without good morals, and Noxwode have included works that represent naivety and a care-free nature, only to be faced with dark gravitas, complex resolutions, and open-ended questions through the weapon of rhetoric, and virtuosic compositional harmony. Inspired by Strozzi’s Mentita, this programme also includes a work commissioned for Noxwode on the theme of false love.

As part of this year’s King’s Lynn Festival, the Chorus teams up with the European Union Chamber Orchestra to showcase a cornerstone work of the high baroque; Handel’s Dixit Dominus. The virtuosic work, sets the Latin text of Psalm 110, “The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot-stool.” Handel, although German-born, demonstrates his ability to write in the Italian style in his Dixit Dominus. It was written in April 1707, while the composer was in residence in Italy, and premiered three months later on the 16 July in the Church of Santa Maria in Montesanto, under the patronage of the Colonna family, members of the Carmelite Order, from whom several of Handel’s works were commissioned. It is scored for soloists, five-part chorus, strings and continuo.

Programme to be confirmed

We invite allcomers to come and sing a selection of choruses from Handel’s Messiah. We will have a short rehearsal, then a performance – join us, just for the joy of singing this glorious music. If you have a score of the Messiah published by either OUP or Novello (ed. Watkins Shaw) please bring it with you on the day. If you need to borrow a score, please advise when booking.

For its Pride Concert this year, The Fourth Choir is celebrating that endlessly fascinating subject, LOVE!

What is love? Well, come and hear what Kate Rusby and Michel LeGrand have to say on the subject. Shakespeare and Shelley also have some thoughts they want to share with you, as well as Leonard Bernstein and Robbie Burns, Cecilia McDowall and Judith Weir. The concert will also feature a performance of The Hymn to St Cecilia, an astonishing twelve-minute masterpiece by those queer geniuses, Benjamin Britten and WH Auden, which asks whether love should be chaste or sexual - St Cecilia or Aphrodite.

The Fourth Choir is thrilled to be performing at ​Stone Nest, scene of the Limelight, London’s most hedonistic nightclub in the 1980s. We can just feel the aura of Boy George, Bob Geldof, George Michael and the international glitterati who used to hang out there. And because we’re performing in the heart of the West End, we’ll be celebrating music theatre with wonderful choral arrangements of pieces from Rent and West Side Story.

Programme to be confirmed

During the seventeenth century, dance secured its position as a serious art discipline. As a result, dance music became prevalent across Europe, and composers of the period and indeed many since have turned to dance forms and structures as a rhythmic framework and inspiration for their composition. Characteristics of early dance forms were incorporated into the works of many European composers. This programme focuses on its use by two leading forces in organ music of the German Baroque and indeed its development and evolution within Western music: Johann Sebastian Bach and Dieterich Buxtehude. Nestled amongst these giants of the North German Baroque is University of York native and rising star, Frederick Viner. Viner’s work draws on a similar inspiration and his three-movement suite ends with the virtuosity and rhythmic energy of the ‘Dance’.

This evening, we are transported to the ‘Belle Époque’ (Beautiful Era) of twentieth century Paris; encouraged by the success of the World’s Fair and the expansion of France’s colonial empire, the City inspired optimism and frivolity and ignited the creative genius of its artists in theatre, cinema, art and music. Although immersed in this chaotic and creative melting pot, Duruflé showed little interest in rubbing shoulders with the literary and musical elite in Paris’s exclusive salons. Despite this, he was recognised as one of the finest organists of his day, and an outstanding teacher and composer. Duruflé’s unparalleled grasp of harmony and Gregorian chant form the basis of his small, but meticulously refined opus, and not least his Requiem, performed this evening in its reduced orchestral version by the composer, preserving as it does the intimacy of the organ-only score and the expressive and dramatic possibilities of the full orchestral score.

By the mid-twentieth century, the rosy landscape had darkened as a result of the political situation in Europe and with World War II on the horizon. By 1938, Francis Poulenc’s personal outlook reflected more acutely that of the changing world around him and he had lost the impish joie de vivre of his youth. The year ended with his concerto for organ, strings and timpani. The work combines Poulenc’s former carefree sense of musical and harmonic abandon with an altogether more Gothic musical architecture, in places seemingly drawing its inspiration from the likes of J S Bach and his fellow North German masters. The work was premiered by Duruflé in early 1939.

Brent Singers re-enact the music from the great ceremony of a nineteenth-century Parisian High Mass, including Louis Vierne Messe Solennelle, César Franck Panis Angelicus and a singalong version of Charles-Marie Widor’s famous Toccata!

This programme will explore distinctive twentieth-century composers who composed uniquely expressive music for choir and organ. Finzi’s vibrant Lo the full final sacrifice will contrast with Leigton’s dark, magisterial setting of the Crucifixus. Also included in this programme will be Howells’ deeply personal and poignant unaccompanied setting of the Requiem text. The programme will also include a performance of Richard Shephard’s Never weather beaten sail in tribute to a much missed composer from York who died in February 2021. We finish with music from another son of York with Bairstow’s rousing Blessed City. 

King’s Lynn Festival Chorus heralds the season and is joined by brass ensemble, percussion and organ for a Christmas spectacular! Join the festive cheer with traditional carols, including some in which we hope you’ll join us, readings, and other festive lollipops. This ever-popular event often draws quite a crowd so book early and don’t miss out!

Completed in the final year of his life, the monumental Mass in B minor is arguably Bach’s greatest achievement. Forming a compilation of earlier music, mainly cantata settings, it forms an extraordinary narrative of faith. All in all, it is the perfect realisation of his endlessly flexible and inventive musical style. An outstanding line-up of vocal soloists complements the period-style agility of Yorkshire Baroque Soloists.

Tonight we hear Beethoven’s third piano concerto, a dark and exciting piece first performed in April 1800 with the composer himself as soloist. Beethoven's friend, Ignaz von Seyfried reported that, as was often the case, Beethoven hadn’t actually finished writing the score before its first performance and played it from memory! Stephen Hough follows in his footsteps this evening – with a completed score!

Next, the ballet music from Idomeneo, a 1780 commission for Mozart which premiered in Munich in 1781. Composed in the baroque tradition of the opera seria, it is a lyrical tragedy and tells the story of the king of Crete. It is said Mozart referred in letters to “These accursed dances!” - but the soaring music belies any struggle he may have encountered in his art.

Finally we hear from ‘The father of symphony.’ Haydn’s balanced and elegant Symphony No. 101 or Clock Symphony as it is affectionately known, gets its nickname from the pacey, rhythmic second movement, and the almost hypnotic tick-tock idea it introduces. Once you pick up on it, try tuning out!

Pythagoras said “There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres”. This concert explores the connections between music, geometry and space —puzzled over by philosophers, scientists and composers alike — with a programme of pieces spanning over three centuries.

The programme starts and ends with music by William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus and became the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society. Not content with just one field, Herschel was a prolific composer and his Eighth Symphony is packed with cosmic beauty and telescopic depth. After its lively first movement, the orchestra rotates into something quite different – the music of American composer Missy Mazzoli which she describes as “music in the shape of a solar system”. Mazolli’s ‘Sinfonia (for orbiting spheres)’ makes inspired use of unusual instruments, such as the harmonica, and begins the concert’s spherical triptych. Later this will be completed with “Spheres” by Robert Laidlow, music that grapples with Pythagoras’ notion of a firmament moving according to celestial harmony, and “Sphere” by Emily Howard – an exploration of geometric space for orchestra.

In the middle of the concert there is a world premiere of music for piano and orchestra. Laidlow’s “Warp”, written for soloist Joseph Havlat, catapults the music far beyond the solar system into the very depths of space. Translating into music a theoretical warp-speed drive based on Einstein’s General Relativity, the music crushes and stretches its way into another galaxy. Upon arrival, we find something familiar: Benjamin Britten’s “Now The Great Bear and Pleiades” and music from the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, for which the orchestra is joined by tenor Alessandro Fisher.

As the concert completes its orbit, the music of Herschel returns; we finish with the remaining two movements of his Eighth Symphony.

During the twentieth- and twenty-first-centuries the size and scale of religious choral music expanded beyond that which was appropriate to include in the liturgy. As a result, large-scale, religious choral music began to make more regular appearances outside of the church and found its place on the concert platform. Entitled 'Icon', the programme includes religious choral devotions from composers Karl Jenkins, Gustav Holst, John Tavener and Anton Bruckner. Many of the works have won the affections of both choirs and audiences the world over. As the Chorus returns to live music making the programme promises to be one that won’t disappoint.

During the seventeenth century, dance secured its position as a serious art discipline. As a result, dance music became prevalent across Europe, and composers of the period and indeed many since have turned to dance forms and structures as a rhythmic framework and inspiration for their composition. Characteristics of early dance forms were incorporated into the works of many European composers. This particular collection focuses on its use by two leading forces in organ music of the German Baroque and indeed its development and evolution within Western music: Johann Sebastian Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude.

Postgraduate violinist Dimitra Ananiadou, accompanied by accomplished conductor and keyboardist Ben Horden, performs stunning works by Handel, Corelli, Mozart and Kreisler.