Centenary Classics

12 February 2021

Following our Musical Director’s 2020 Summer Choral Alphabet and Christmas Choral Alphabet, and his Concerto for Ten in the Autumn half-term of 2020, he has prepared a daily dose of listening for us during the Spring half-term break of 2021. Inspired by the centenary of the birth of Northampton’s-own Sir Malcolm Arnold, he has put together ten daily social media posts celebrating classical musicians who were born one hundred years ago, with the hashtag #centenaryclassics

There are six men and four women, and a selection of performers, composers, and even one great patron of the arts. Like the Concerto for Ten series, there is no choral music in the selections, as we take a brief pause from our online choral immersion! Armenia, Czechia, France, Great Britain, Turkey, and the United States are represented, and there is music for brass band, chamber ensemble, full orchestra, organ, and string orchestra in the mix. The series ends with Alec Wyton, who was our third Musical Director, serving from 1946 to 1949, before emigrating to North America, where he served for twenty years as Organist and Master of the Choristers at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York City.