Magical folk music from around the world lifted all our spirits

South Chiltern Choral Society with Highdown School Senior Choir
Highdown School, Emmer Green
Saturday, June 28

SOUTH Chiltern Choral Society’s music director, Helen Bilkey, introduced the evening’s concert as bringing folk music from across the world, promising the audience a “magical evening in June”, featuring combinations of the main South Chiltern choir and Highdown’s Senior Choir.

The opening song La Cucaracha was a lively Spanish folk song that helped set the tone for the evening, followed by The Little Birch Tree, a Russian folk song that invoked the spirits to protect those who planted the trees. Ian Westley provided the accompaniment for the evening, showing his customary versatility and great skill.

Highdown School’s Barbershop then sang the Beach Boys’ well-known God Only Knows, which was very entertaining and received great applause. The audience were then treated with the spectacle of 12-year-old Alfie Hatton expertly playing a bassoon that was almost as big as himself, for a song based on Romeo and Juliet.

Alfie has been playing bassoon since the age of seven! Another school contribution came from Ellie Chan, aged 15, who played Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor with great sensitivity and confidence.

The first half ended with Helen asking the audience to contemplate the words from composer John Rutter’s A Distant Land. This prayer for freedom was composed in 1990, in response to the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Helen said that, sadly, the world today still needs freedom. The South Chiltern Choral Society choir delivered the moving song with dramatic use of key changes and dynamics.

After the interval, both choirs combined for the jolly Mexican folk song Cielito Lindo (“pretty little sweetheart”), followed by the senior school’s Maya Mieckzkowska Ma playing Lady Gaga’s Hold My Hand. Helen then confessed that she had selected The Newquay Fisherman’s Song as a family favourite from her childhood.

The return of the school’s barbershop saw Lollipop performed with amusing movements. The stirring traditional Russian folk song Kalinka kept up the lively pace, with all choirs combining for the final song Down by the Riverside. The audience were encouraged to join in with this rousing African-American spiritual to end what had been a magical evening.

Terry Grourk