Midsummer Nocturnes - Echoes of Nature
Cello: Joseph Spooner
Clarinet: Ian Scott
Poetry Readings: Rosie May Jones
Organ/Piano: Philip Scriven
JS Bach: Lobet den Herrn, Alle Heiden (BWV 230)
Rachmaninoff, arr Jonathan Wikely: Vocalise (Op 34, No 14)
Rosie May Jones: Poetry Reading
Sarah Quartel: Ripple Effect
Clarinet and Piano:
William Lloyd Webber: Frensham Pond
Benny Goodman: Soft Winds
Howard Skempton: After Rain
Kristina Arakelyan: To a Skylark
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Owain Park: Five Nocturnes (World première)
Organ:
JS Bach: Pastorale
MacDowell: Pastorale
Palestrina, arr Becky McGlade: Agnus Dei II from Missa Brevis
Bradley Ellingboe: Heart, we will forget him!
Rosie May Jones: Poetry Readings
John Rutter: Come Live With Me
The overarching theme of this concert, part of our Jubilee Year celebrations, is the relationship between music and the natural world, a subject that was dear to the heart of former choir member and Frensham parishioner Josephine Reader. Jo was both a farmer and a singer: for many years she was the Secretary of the Waverley Singers, and she gifted Pierrepont Farm to the Countryside Regeneration Trust.
It is thanks to a further generous bequest from Jo that we are able to offer our audience the world première of a new work, "Five Nocturnes", commissioned from Owain Park, one of the country's most inspirational young composers, who is also an accomplished performer in his own right. As Owain says below in our podcast conversation with him, the work sets five different poems to music, exploring the different shades of night-time, from the setting of the sun to its rising again the following morning:
We will also perform works especially selected for choir, cello, clarinet, and piano/organ, with our three instrumental soloists, taken from a collection entitled Music for Choir and Cello and published by Oxford University Press.
In addition we will hear poems written and read by Rosie May Jones. Rosie is widely recognised for her poems that aim to connect the listener to the natural world, including this one made with the Surrey Hills Natural Landscape, imagining how our efforts to protect the world around us will appear to an audience in 2100.
See here our podcast conversation with Rosie May, in which she talks about the essential connection between humanity and nature and, as she puts it, how "This land can soothe the human heart."
It's going to be a rather special concert!
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Reviews
Waverley Singers’ Showcase World Premiere!
A lightly edited version of the following review by Sarah Hard appeared in the Farnham Herald online edition on 25 June 2025.
Waverley Singers’ Jubilee celebrations continued with a sold-out concert, Midsummer Nocturnes, at St. Mary’s Frensham on 22nd June. The concert featured an ambitious programme of music for choir accompanied by different combinations of piano, cello and clarinet. Clear highlight of the evening was a world premiere of Owain Park’s Five Nocturnes, a special commission funded by a generous bequest from local resident Josephine Reader, who sang in the choir for many years before she died in 2018.
Five Nocturnes received a warm ovation from the capacity audience in the idyllic setting of St. Mary’s Church in the presence of the composer. The choir, superbly conducted by Richard Pearce and accompanied by Ian Scott on clarinet and Joseph Spooner on cello, gave a committed performance of the complex and stylistically challenging music, which sets five poets exploring different aspects of night-time including Rumi and Christina Rossetti. The five short pieces, or Nocturnes, reflected varying moods: by turns rhapsodic, contemplative, hypnotic and hymn-like, always sensitively setting the text, with the solo instruments weaving in and out of the texture alongside the piano.
The rest of the concert comprised arrangements of well-known vocal music arranged by Becky McGlade for cello and choir, including Bach, Rachmaninov and Palestrina, all relating to the theme of the natural world. Particularly notable was Ripple Effect by Sarah Quartel, with a beautifully sung semi-chorus, which underscored the part we all play in preserving the environment.
Interspersed among the musical offerings Rosie May Jones read several of her own poems which movingly described the significance and beauty of the natural world.
A couple of organ solos by Philip Scriven and two solo clarinet pieces completed a magical and varied programme of music reminding us of mankind’s fragile relationship with the rural landscape Josephine Reader knew and loved so well.
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