This evening in Glasgow City Hall, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra brings its season to a close with performances of The Creation by Haydn, conducted by expert in the composer's music and founder of multi-selling chamber choir The Sixteen, Harry Christophers.
On Thursday, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra closed its season at the City Hall with Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring what I think was the first orchestral concert hall appearance of the award-winning all-female ex-RSAMD/Royal Conservatoire of Scotland choir, Les Sirenes.
At the end of the month, music director Peter Oundjian brings down the curtain on the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's season with Elgar's choral favourite The Dream Of Gerontius at the Usher Hall and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The last of the Usher Hall's Symphonies On Sundays series teamed the Warsaw Philharmonic with Edinburgh Royal Choral Union for Beethoven 9. The pattern, could not be clearer: if you want a really special occasion, you had best include a choir in your concert.
Much has already been written and spoken about the rise in the popularity of singing in recent years. Both the RSNO and the SCO have their own choruses, of course, and the amateur members of those choirs regularly give up their time to rehearse the repertoire they perform with the orchestras throughout the season. The SSO has forged a relationship with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and with the National Youth Choir of Scotland, which conductor Donald Runnicles has taken to the BBC Proms and lavishly praised.
This year's Edinburgh International Festival will open with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Festival Chorus outside the Usher Hall, before they combine with Runnicles and the SSO again for the opening concert. That birthday comes at a time when the reputation of choral singing at the Festival has probably never been higher, with both the event's own chorus - the only performing artists on its year-round books - and the various choirs of young people that chorusmaster Christopher Bell has supplied from his talent-bank of youngsters at NYCoS winning rave notices for their performances. Beyond the "formal" classical scene, there has been a burgeoning of amateur talent. Off the top of my head, I can think of a full handful of newish choirs in Glasgow, including the Sirens Of Titan, the Parsonage, Merchant City Voices, and choruses based at the Arches and the Glad Cafe. Whether this is a trickle-down effect, on the George Osborne economic model, or a grass-roots movement, I shall leave to you.
The orchestras' adoption of choral masterpieces from the great composers as the milestones in their programmes continues apace. Having conducted Brahms's German Requiem, MacMillan's St John Passion and the Mozart Requiem in recent seasons, Runnicles brings the Festival Chorus to Glasgow next spring for Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. The SCO Chorus celebrates its 25th year next season, when Robin Ticciati's focus is on Brahms (their German Requiem arrives in March) while Richard Egarr conducts Handel's Theodora and Bach's Magnificat in a fine programme for their birthday. With SCO chorusmaster Gregory Batsleer assuming responsibility for drilling the RSNO Chorus as well, he will be busy, because Peter Oundjian opens his 2015/16 programme with Mahler's Resurrection Symphony and closing it with Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Never mind The Voice on the telly, get out and hear the real thing.
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