Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club

2005 New Year Letter from the Chairman

To all club members

Another excellent year for Club concerts; I think I used up all my superlatives last year, let them stand for this year too. A great success for organisers and performers alike, and much pleasure for the audiences. I’ll mention just one, the Memorial concert for Percy Timberlake. A few days afterwards I had a message from a Club member to say that he thought the occasion was ‘the Club at its best – somewhat unusual music played with love and care’. I think this sums up what is so special about OCMC and the reason why so many of us enjoy being involved in it. (I would of course have added the word ‘sung’!) Percy used to organise the annual Gala Concert – Hugh Rosenbaum & Mike Crowe have taken this over, the date this year is March 5^th. Please try to attend this one particularly as we have contributions from visiting performers from Oxford & Cambridge Universities & UCL as well as our own, the standard will be high, and we try to make an occasion of it with refreshments afterwards.

On the subject of singing, we are experimenting this year with an Oratorio instead of the usual Opera; this is not intended to be a permanent change. It will give opportunities for more people to sing solos, large and small. I would like to remind aspiring soloists that we don’t have formal auditions: if you would like to be considered please ask me or Jo Parton and aim to be heard at a concert or two. There will be a Chamber Opera on 16^th July which has been planned for a long time, Britten’s ‘The Rape of Lucretia’.
Instrumentalists who are not playing in any event with a choir, please offer to sing, we need you!

Open Concerts: We are always short of items for these events, frequently having to fill spaces at short notice with items by people who get heard quite a lot anyway. This is the ideal opportunity for those who say they are ‘never asked’ – yes you are, at least twice a year! Please don’t be shy, volunteer when you see one in the diary, it makes it much easier for the Committee to organise if there are plenty of items.

String Chamber-Music: The Committee would like to have a Co-ordinator for this as we’d like more items in this category to appear regularly and it’s too much for the String Co-ordinator to do this as well as fixing orchestras. If you think you could do this or can suggest somebody else, please come forward soon. We are also hoping to start a liaison this year with Pro Corda, an organisation for young string players.

Baroque Concert on 14^th May: We’d like to do this with authentic (or modern equivalent) instruments. Players and singers, please let me know if you are interested so that we can plan something really amazing!

Rehearsal Venues: Please contact Adrian Rushton with news of central, inexpensive places.

I hope to see you all at the AGM on 23^rd April. Meanwhile, here are a few Anniversaries which might inspire your choice of music for 2005. I’m sure there are more: Thomas Tallis, b.1505. Giacomo Carissimi b.1605, Orazzio Vecchi d.1605 Maurice Greene d.1755, Ernest Chausson b.1855 Michael Tippett, Constant Lambert, Elizabeth Poston, Matyas Seiber, Alan Rawsthorne, all b. 1905 Arthur Honegger d.1955

I wish you all a happy, healthy and peaceful 2005

Lyn Parkyns, January 2005