Chelmsford Singers January 2024 Concert: Holocaust Memorial Day

Chelmsford Singers

Chelmsford Singers would like to announce a special concert for Saturday, January 27th 2024 at Christchurch URC Chelmsford, 164 New London Rd, Chelmsford CM2 0AW, starting at 7pm.

Doors open at 6.30pm. Tickets are available from chelmsfordsingers.co.uk.  

Ably conducted by James Davy, the Singers will be performing James Whitbourn’s Annelies, a choral work based on Anne Frank’s diary, on Holocaust Memorial Day, in this the 80th year since the D-Day landings. Samantha Crawford will be the soprano soloist. The singers will be accompanied by a chamber ensemble comprised of Elizabeth Drew on the clarinet, Marianne Olyver on the violin, David Burrowes on the cello and Tim Carey on the piano.

Including text in English, German and Dutch, Whitbourn’s music is at times hauntingly beautiful, while at others carries the force of a freight train, as it depicts the pain, fear and emotional turbulence of two families trapped in a small attic as they attempt to wait out the war, hidden from the world by only a cupboard. Sadly we know that they were betrayed at the very last moment - after D-Day - and, apart from Anne’s father Otto, died in the death camps along with 6 million others. But the work nonetheless ends on a note of hope, perhaps mirroring that felt by at the end of the war that this would not be allowed to happen again. 

The Singers will also be performing some works by Hugo Distler, a mid-20th century German composer who was forbidden from continuing to publish by the Nazi regime.

The instrumentalists will additionally perform four movements from Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time: 1: Liturgie de Cristal, 3: Âbime des Oiseaux, 4: Intermède, 8: Louange à L’Immortalité de Jésus.

James Davy has been director of The Chelmsford Singers since 2012 when he was appointed Director of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral.