The Southern Cathdrals' Festival marks its 50th anniversary in 2010 and we look forward to welcoming you to Chichester in this celebration year. The services, which lie at the heart of the Festival, will include a recreation of the 1960 Combined Evensong, which will be recorded for broadcast on Radio 3.
The music of S.S. Wesley and Robert Schumann, in their bicentenary years, is woven through the programme and offers an insight into their distinct yet parallel lives. S.S. Wesley, the renowned English church musician, provides a feast of choral favourites, as well as some excellent hymns for the congregation to sing. Robert Schumann's impact in the realm of sacred music was limited, but like Wesley, he was a prolific and skilful composed for voices. The performance of Dichterliebe in a newly-commissioned translation by Amanda Holden, brings the best of Schumann to the Festival, and the Friday night choral concert captures his musical heritage. We are delighted that internationally renowned pianist David Owen Norris will be perfomring with the Choirs and presenting Dichterliebe at Pallant House Gallery; tickets will include admission to the Gallery, one of Chichester's treasures.
All of the Choir concerts this year will be performed from the Arundel Screen, with the magnificent Cathedral organ. Thomas Trotter is our celebrity organ recitalist, and other guests include Jonathan Willcocks, Richard Baker and Katie Flanaghan.
To round off the 50th anniversary Festival, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms form the centrepiece of the Saturday night concert, returning to their spiritual home, and sung by the Cathedral Choirs for which they were written.