Popular Mozart piece to feature as choir perform at church

ONE of Chester's top choirs is to stage a concert featuring a much loved classical piece of music and a recent composition by a rising young British composer.

- BY PAUL CROFTS

Chester Festival Chorus will stage a performance of the iconic Mozart Requiem and a contemporary piece, A Glimpse of the Light by British composer Rory Wainwright Johnston at St Thomas' Church in Chester on Saturday, June 21 at 7.30pm.

The evening will also feature a performance of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus.

The choir will be joined on stage by the British Sinfonia and soloists soprano Elspeth Piggott, mezzo soprano Lorna Day, tenor Timothy Peters and bass Henry Saywell. The concert will be conducted by Ellie Slorach in what will be her final concert as the choir's musical director.

Instantly recognisable from numerous films, TV programmes and adverts and regarded by many as his masterpiece, Mozart's Requiem in D minor (K626) was unfinished at the time of his death in December 1791. It was completed in 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr.

The inspiration for Rory Wainwright Johnson's A Glimpse of the Light came from the last line of the poem A passing glimpse by Robert Frost. First performed in Yorkshire in 2019, the work was written to be performed in concert as a partner to Mozart's Requiem.

Chester Festival Chorus was formed in 1981 by Martin Merry, a founder of the Chester Summer Music Festival and artistic director from its inception in 1978 until 1985.