After enjoying a busy and exciting 2018, FCMG celebrated turning 60 with an Anniversary Concert at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday 13th January, singing popular British choral music including a work by FCMG’s original President Benjamin Britten, and two exciting new commissions. Singers from every period of the choirs’ history took part, making the 60th Anniversary Concert a jubilant festival of FCMG and its journey since 1958.
The Intermediate and Senior Choirs both gave world premieres: Joanna Forbes L’Estrange and Alexander L’Estrange’s Winter Songs, sung by the Intermediate Choir, conducted by Rebecca Lodge Birkebæk and accompanied by Jenny Gould; and Alastair Putt’s Under the Giant Fern of Night, sung by the Senior Choir with harpist Catherine Derrick, under the baton of FCMG Music Director Grace Rossiter. The Chamber Choir performed short pieces by Quilter, Grainger and Shearing, and were then joined by a choir of over 70 FCMG alumni for the second half to sing Britten’s A Hymn to St Cecilia and Tippett’s Five Spirituals from A Child of Our Time, among other FCMG favourites.
