Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club 1899 - 1999

Centenary Concert Calendar

A number of special events were planned:

• in honour of former President Sir Lennox Berkeley, a concert of songs and chamber music by him and his friend Francis Poulenc, who was born in 1899;
• a master class by the present President, Sir Neville Marriner, on Mozart's Haffner Symphony No.35 In D, K385, held at University College School;
• a public concert performance of the rarely-heard comic opera The Poisoned Kiss by Vaughan Williams, one of the Club's most distinguished former members;
• a commemorative dinner in the historic Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn, by permission of the Benchers, followed by an illustrated talk about the Club's first President, Joseph Joachim, by his great-grandson Paul Joachim;
• a public performance of chamber, vocal and orchestral music in St John's Smith Square, of music particularly associated with the Club's history, partly conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, and including the prize-winner of a centenary chamber music competition.
• Five of the usual club chamber concerts will take the special form of revivals of the 1^st, 500^th, 1000^th and 1500^th concerts in the Club's history, concluding with a forward-looking concert devoted to works written since 1950.

The remaining six concerts will be in more traditional form, but the programmes will again emphasise works with particular Club, or 1899, associations:

• a joint 'gala' with the Oxford, Cambridge and University College Societies;
• a short choral and orchestral concert associated with the Club AGM ;
• a chamber concert;
• an orchestral concert;
• the club composers' concert, to include contributed short variations on the "Enigma" theme (as suggested by Sir Neville Marriner), which was first heard in 1899;
• the annual opera, to be Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, semi-staged, with a children's chorus to involve a new generation in the centenary celebrations.

 Thus the Calendar for 1999 takes the following form: