Tallis, Vaughan Williams and Bruckner – 21 March 2020 (cancelled)

Sadly this concert has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Thomas Tallis – Spem in Alium
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 7

We were planning to raise funds for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of our clarinettist Nigel Blake at this concert. Despite cancelling, we’ve raised £1478 for Pancreatic Cancer UK. We’d like to say huge thank-you to the ticketholders who donated their refunds, and to those who gave online.

With great sadness we have taken the decision not to perform this concert.

The rapidly worsening situation around the spread of Covid-19 has placed us in a terribly difficult situation, as we all very much wanted to perform this concert as a celebration of the life of our clarinettist Nigel Blake. However, it has become clear that this would be extremely difficult to achieve, and involve a level of risk that it would be irresponsible for us to ignore.

If you booked a ticket online we have sent you an email about how to claim a refund or donate the cost of your ticket to Pancreatic Cancer UK or FSO.

Conductor – Marc Dooley
Leader – Tom Evans
The Choir of King’s College London
The Choir of St Luke’s Church, Kew

21 March 2020, 7.30pm
St Paul’s Church, Hammersmith

Tickets: full price £12, under-18s £8. Friends of FSO get a free ticket.

Tallis’s “Spem in Alium”, for eight choirs of five singers, is considered the English composer’s greatest achievement and one of the finest pieces of choral music ever written.

Four centuries later, Vaughan Williams took another theme by Tallis and interwove it with folksong to create his much-loved Fantasia – a work for string orchestra that is by turns mysterious and passionate.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 was his first great popular success, met by a 15-minute standing ovation at its premiere. Wagner’s death prompted him to add an elegiac coda to the second movement, “In memory of the immortal and dearly beloved Master who has departed this life”.

This concert is dedicated to the memory of our long-serving clarinettist and former chairman, Nigel Blake, who died in 2019. Nigel sang regularly with the choir of St Luke’s Church, so we are delighted that they are joining us for this concert.

There will be a retiring collection for Pancreatic Cancer UK.