2019 Concerts

Bach St Matthew Passion

Saturday 6 April 2019

6.30pm

(please note the earlier than usual start time; ends 9.30pm approximately)

St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds

Bach    St Matthew Passion

Robert Murray Evangelist / tenor

Graeme Danby Jesus

Fae Evelyn soprano

Valerie Reid mezzo-soprano

Tom Asher baritone

Suffolk Baroque Players

Boy Choristers of St Edmundsbury Cathedral

Bury Bach Choir

Philip Reed conductor

For this performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the choir will be joined by five soloists of international standing, by Boy Choristers of St Edmundsbury Cathedral (Director of Music: James Thomas) and by the Suffolk Baroque Players. 

The St Matthew Passion is, by common consent, one of the greatest sacred choral works ever composed.  Bach himself seems to have cared for it as he did for no other work.  Even by the standard of the Baroque passions, the St Matthew Passion is exceptional for its musical richness and its grand scope. 

Relating the story of Jesus’s suffering and death, the variety and majesty of the music grabs the listener firmly by the shoulder and never lets go. Bach’s phenomenal imagination and skill are apparent throughout.  The score, one of the most ambitious compositions of all time, calls for double orchestra and double choir – three choirs at one point. The musical textures range widely from complex counterpoint to simple hymns. 

Bring or hire a cushion, and sit back for a memorable evening that will touch you on many levels, eventually culminating with one of the most beautiful laments ever written. For reserved seats you are advised to book early.

Booking opens 3 September 2018

Tickets £26 (reserved), £21 and £16 (unreserved)

Early booking discount £1 off all tickets booked by 28 February 2019

Purcell Dido and Aeneas

Saturday 15 June 2019

7.30pm

(ends 9.30pm approximately)

The Apex, Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds

Purcell        Three Anthems

Purcell        Dido and Aeneas

Clare Presland     Dido

  mezzo-soprano

Tom Asher        Aeneas

  baritone       

Tali Ketzef         Belinda 

  soprano       

Valerie Reid       Sorceress 

  mezzo-soprano 

Bronwen Stephens Second Witch / Second Woman

  mezzo-soprano

Austin Gunn       Sailor

  tenor         

Charlotte Leeder   Spirit

  soprano

Suffolk Baroque Players

Bury Bach Choir

Philip Reed conductor

Bury Bach Choir are delighted to bring a concert performance of Purcell’s only opera, Dido and Aeneas, to Bury St Edmunds. This enchanting work, which has touched the hearts of generations of listeners, recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. 

Probably inspired by an earlier opera by his contemporary John Blow, Purcell set his opera in three acts, for full chorus accompanied by four part strings and continuo. First performed between 1683 and 1689, the opera includes the famous “Dido’s Lament”, an aria of melancholic beauty, perhaps unsurpassed in all opera, which will be performed this evening by the award winning, Suffolk-born opera star Clare Presland. The opera embodies love, romance, betrayal and tragedy in equal measure.

To set the scene for this evening of seventeenth century English music and to reflect the other side of Purcell’s working life, his major contribution to English sacred music, the concert opens with three anthems by Purcell, including "I was glad when they said unto me". The Suffolk Baroque Players follow this with an orchestral suite from Handel's Water Music. 

Booking opens 10 November 2018

Tickets £25, £20 and £15 (all seats reserved)

Apex booking fee £1 per ticket

Early booking discount £1 off all tickets booked by 30 April 2019

Brahms Requiem and The Armed Man

Saturday 16 November 2019

7.30pm

(ends 9.30pm approximately)

The Apex, Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds

Brahms            Ein deutsches Requiem

Karl Jenkins     Suite from The Armed Man

Helen Bailey soprano                 

Tom Asher baritone             

James Recknell piano                 

Christopher Moore piano

Bury Bach Choir

Philip Reed conductor

This evening we perform two contrasting choral works, one an acknowledged masterpiece, the other a contemporary classic.

Brahms began work on his sublime German Requiem following the death in 1856 of his close friend and fellow composer, Schumann. A notoriously slow and self-critical worker, Brahms only completed it a decade later, after the death of his mother, when he added in tribute to her a movement featuring a soprano soloist. Following the example of the seventeenth-century composer Heinrich Schütz, Brahms chose as the texts for his German Requiem traditional words of comfort for the bereaved from the Lutheran Bible rather than using the Catholic Latin mass. The result is a work that acknowledges personal suffering and grief and attempts to offer consolation. Originally conceived for two soloists, choir and large orchestra, Brahms himself made a transcription of the orchestra’s role for piano, four hands. It is this intimate, chamber music-like account of Brahms’s great score that we perform this evening.

Commissioned for the millennium and dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man is a powerful and compelling account of the descent into the horrors of war before offering hope for a peaceful future. The work has captured the popular imagination to become one of the most performed and poignant choral works of the moment. We perform the composer’s five-movement choral suite, which distils many of the piece’s most striking elements.

Booking opens 2 September 2019

Tickets £25, £20 and £15 (all seats reserved)

Apex booking fee £1 per ticket

Early booking discout £1 off all tickets booked by 30 September 2019

A Christmas Celebration

Saturday 14 December 2019

7.30pm

(ends 9.15pm approximately)

The Church of St Peter and St Paul, Lavenham

Valerie Reid mezzo-soprano           

Graeme Danby bass                   

James Recknell organ / piano

Jill Burrows reader

Bury Bach Choir

Philip Reed conductor

Get Christmas off to a joyful start by joining us for a feast of Christmas music in the beautiful parish church at Lavenham. This concert is always a highlight of the Christmas season! 

We will be singing a variety of seasonal music, mixing the familiar with some less-known pieces, and including a series of Christmas readings. 

We are delighted that this year our co-Presidents Graeme Danby and Valerie Reid – both distinguished opera singers with international careers – will again be performing with us. It’ll be a great evening!

Bring the family and join in with your favourite carols before enjoying mince pies and mulled wine.

Ticket price includes refreshments.

Booking opens 2 September 2019

Tickets £15 (all unreserved), under 21's half price

Early booking discount £1 off all adult tickets booked by 31 October 2019

Tickets also available from 1 November 2019 (for cash only) from

Lavenham Blue Vintage Tea Rooms, Market Place, Lavenham

(open 10.00 - 4.30 daily except Thursdays: tel. 01787 248295)