PAST PERFORMANCES
“Through their superb, committed and compelling performances on ‘Every Living Creature’, Andrew Griffiths and Londinium confirm Leighton as one of the finest British choral composers of the 20th century.”
In Harmony: choral music for a fragile world
Friday 11 October 2024, St John’s Waterloo
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A thought-provoking programme exploring our relationships with our planet and with each other. A sequence of glorious music, including works by Brahms, Joubert and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, celebrated the natural world as a constant in troubled times, even as Leighton's God's Grandeur warned of humanity's tendency to sully its purity. Meanwhile, Giles Swayne's remarkable Missa Tiburtina offered unflinching commentary on global inequality, and Bernard Hughes' wryly witty Precious Things highlighted our exploitation of resources.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
2023/24 SEASON
Tour to Slovenia: Fairest Isle
Saturday 6 July 2024, St Nicholas' Cathedral, Ljubljana
Sunday 7 July 2024, Festivalna Dvorana, Bled
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On its first visit to Slovenia, Londinium presented a feast of outstanding music by British composers. The programme celebrated the rich legacy of Charles Villiers Stanford and Gustav Holst in their anniversary years, alongside masterpieces by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century composers Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Robert Ramsey and Henry Purcell, and more recent works by Kenneth Leighton and Judith Bingham. The choir also performed music by the Slovenian composers Jakob Handl (Gallus) and Lojze Lebič.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Arise, my love
Friday 17 May 2024, St John’s Waterloo
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A thrillingly eclectic programme celebrated the power of love. Londinium sang fine settings of the biblical Song of Songs by Victoria, Palestrina, Guerrero, and John Sanders, told of divine love in Kerensa Briggs' Ubi caritas, and explored earthly delights and sorrows in music by Finzi, Lassus, Pearsall, Clara Schumann, and Skempton. Uniting these themes were large-scale works by Bernard Hughes, whose warm-hearted I Sing of Love brings together biblical texts with verses by Rumi, and Francis Pott, whose breathtaking Amore Langueo clothes a medieval text in heady layers of musical ecstasy.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Heart’s Music
Friday 22 March 2024, St John’s Waterloo
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Prompted by the centenaries of Charles Villiers Stanford his student Gustav Holst, Londinium performed spectacular double-choir works by Stanford - his Milton setting On Time, and his virtuosic Latin Magnificat - and Holst's visionary The Evening Watch, alongside a varied sequence of works by students of both composers, including Vaughan Williams, Howells, Bainton, Coleridge-Taylor, Gurney and Rubbra. We also presented music by earlier composers whom Stanford and Holst admired, and contemporary re-imaginings of some of Stanford's most beloved works by Judith Bingham and Janet Wheeler.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Abendlied
Friday 9 February 2024, St John’s Waterloo
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A gorgeous selection of German music exploring themes of twilight, sleep and peacefulness. Alongside wonderful works by Brahms, Schumann, Rheinberger, and the Mendelssohn siblings, we marked the anniversaries of Bruckner, Cornelius, Reger and Reinecke, and performed a series of fine motets by early Baroque masters. Our programme was completed by Clytus Gottwald's ingenious sixteen-voice arrangement of Berg's glorious Die Nachtigall, and Schoenberg's thrilling, visceral cry for peace, Friede auf Erden.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Brightest Star
Friday 15th December 2023, Holy Sepulchre London
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The sumptuous Missa Vox clamantis, by the Portuguese Renaissance composer Duarte Lobo, formed the spine of an irresistible festive programme. Fine recent compositions by Jonathan Dove, Kerensa Briggs, Francis Pott, Joanna Marsh, Bob Chilcott, Judith Weir, and Cecilia McDowall, whose powerful Brightest Star recounts Christmas hope in the bleak setting of the occupied Channel Islands were inter-woven, together with classic works by Gustav Holst, Elizabeth Poston and Andrew Carter, and by Jamie W. Hall's beautiful O Nata Lux, performed as part of #ChoirsAgainstCancer in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Endless Time
Friday 13th October 2023, St Gabriel’s Pimlico
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Gabriel Jackson's mesmerising, radiant Requiem formed the centrepiece, exploring timeless themes of loss and rebirth in a powerful sequence of overwhelmingly affirmative music. Jackson interweaves the traditional Latin texts with words by poets including Whitman and Tagore, whose verses also feature in Vytautas Mišknis' haunting Time is Endless. Classic motets by Robert Ramsey and Herbert Howells respond movingly to the untimely loss of national heroes, while the programme was completed by works by Lassus, Schütz and Cecilia McDowall speaking of hope and consolation.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
2022/23 SEASON
London to Edinburgh
Sunday 11th June 2023, Stockbridge Church, Edinburgh
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Londinium was thrilled to perform music by Kenneth Leighton in the city in which he lived and worked, alongside settings of Burns by James MacMillan and Ralph Vaughan Williams, motets by Byrd and Weelkes, and works by Judith Weir, Robert Pearsall, Charles Wood and William Harris. Reviews: "Clarity of diction was impressive, as was the rhythmic exactitude. Andrew Griffiths’ conducting style is clear, fluid and elegant… balance and blending… truly impressive throughout.” “A fine choir from London… [Byrd and Weelkes] demonstrating the full dynamic and expressive range… eloquently conducted by Andrew Griffiths.” (Donal Hurley, Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Edinburgh Music Review) Read reviews
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Voices in Harmony
Saturday 10th June 2023, St Bride's Episcopal Church, Glasgow
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Glasgow Chamber Choir and Londinium shared the stage for a unique and thrilling evening of choral music, in the first concert of Londinium's tour to Scotland. The two groups joined forces in a series of stunning works for multiple choir by Praetorius, Nystedt, MacMillan, Roderick Williams, and Kenneth Leighton, whose music was featured on Londinium’s recent release Every Living Creature. The programme also included beautiful music by Byrd, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Messiaen and Judith Weir.
Andrew Griffths, Nicholas Wilks conductors
Delicious Fire
Friday 26th May 2023, St John’s Waterloo
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Londinium celebrated the launch of Every Living Creature, the choir's latest release on the SOMM label. The new album includes a number of significant premiere recordings, most of which were in the programme - notably the magnificent, unpublished cantata Laudes Animantium, Our concert also included music by composers whom Leighton admired or who played a significant role in his career - amongst them Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Howells and Bernard Rose - and by his student James MacMillan.
Rebecca Lea soprano, Nick Pritchard tenor
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Crux Fidelis
Friday 31st March 2023, St John’s Waterloo
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In a stunning selection of music for Lent and Passiontide, Poulenc's arresting Quatre motets were heard alongside evocative works by Leighton, Bruckner and Sanders, and a sequence of fine motets and anthems by Tallis, Byrd, Purcell, Monteverdi and Morales. Music from our own time completed our programme: Matthew Martin's plangent setting of the Lamentations, Sarah MacDonald's intertwining of texts by Emily Dickinson and Emilia Lanier, and an unforgettable reinvention of Byrd by Roderick Williams.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Credo!
Friday 3rd February 2023, St John’s Waterloo
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Prompted by Frank Martin - who kept his searing Mass for Double Choir hidden for forty years, regarding it as a matter between himself and God - Londinium explored music springing from a bedrock of Christian faith. Superb works by Pärt, Bruckner, Hildegard of Bingen, Messiaen, Stravinsky, and Harvey were heard alongside James MacMillan's affirmative Who shall separate us?, commissioned for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Crowning our programme, marking the 400th anniversary, were magisterial motets by William Byrd, whose music defiantly proclaimed his Catholic faith in Elizabethan England.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Star of Wonder
Friday 16th December 2022, St John’s Waterloo
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Londinium's Christmas concert featured an irresistible selection of festive music spanning five centuries. Masterpieces from the Renaissance and early Baroque rubbed shoulders with superb contemporary settings by Jonathan Dove, Bernard Hughes, Joanna Marsh, Matthew Martin, Cecilia McDowall and Francis Pott, alongside classic works by Richard Rodney Bennett and Herbert Howells. The dark jewel at the centre of this sparkling sequence was Poulenc's haunting cantata Un soir de neige, composed in wartime Paris at Christmas 1944.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Shared Ground
Saturday 15th October 2022, St James’s Sussex Gardens
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A celebration of the remarkable poet George Herbert, having as its centrepiece Alec Roth's Shared Ground, a choral suite whose texts were written in response to Herbert by Vikram Seth, the current owner of Herbert's house at Bemerton. Roth's vibrant and inventive music alludes in turn to Bach's Komm, Jesu, komm, performed alongside it. In settings of Herbert's own poetry, superb recent works by Jonathan Dove, Judith Weir, Owain Park and James MacMillan rubbed shoulders with rare seventeenth-century examples by Gibbons and Playford, and classic works by Herbert Howells and Richard Lloyd.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
2021/22 SEASON
Tour to the Netherlands: Sing Joyfully
Saturday 13 August 2022, St Nicholas Basilica, Amsterdam
Sunday 14 August 2022, Lokhorstkerk, Leiden
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Masterpieces from the British tradition, including works by Ralph Vaughan Williams to mark the 150th anniversary, glorious Romantic music by Elgar and Stanford, gems by the early English composers Tallis, Byrd and Purcell - together with their renowned Dutch counterpart Sweelinck - and invigorating works by Kenneth Leighton and Bernard Hughes. We were grateful to Hebe de Champeaux for stepping in for Andrew Griffiths, who was indisposed with Covid. “Fire and vitality … It is wonderful how Londinium 'plays' the dynamics, dexterously following the textual content.” (Lidy van der Spek, Leidsch Dagblad)
Hebe de Champeaux guest conductor
Valiant-for-Truth: Vaughan Williams at 150
Friday 8th April 2022, St Gabriel’s Pimlico
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Londinium celebrated the wonderful a cappella music of Ralph Vaughan Williams to mark 150 years since his birth. Alongside a generous selection of Vaughan Williams' own works, including the classic Valiant-for-Truth and Three Shakespeare Songs, we performed music by his teachers Parry, Stanford and Ravel, and by his students Ina Boyle, Imogen Holst and Elizabeth Maconchy, as well as gems by his close friends Gustav Holst and Finzi.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Heartsong
Friday 11th February 2022, St Peter’s Eaton Square
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For its first concert of 2022, Londinium offered an atmospheric sequence of sacred music, charting a course from the desperation of Byrd's Miserere mei Deus to the catharsis of John Rutter's Hymn to the Creator of Light. Our programme included John Sheppard's twin settings of Libera nos, amongst the finest music of the English Renaissance, and superb works by Schütz and Tomkins in their anniversary years. Punctuating this emotional journey are the movements of Rheinberger's luscious Eb major Mass for Double Choir: music written - and performed - from the heart.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
A New Dawn
Saturday 11th December 2021, St James’s, Sussex Gardens
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Londinium's festive programme celebrated the new light and hope of Christmas in an invigorating mix of seasonal favourites and lesser-known gems. Alongside classic carols by Britten and Vaughan Williams, we performed highly contrasting recent works by James MacMillan, Giles Swayne, Bob Chilcott and Naji Hakim, and superb Renaissance motets by Byrd, Tallis and Lassus. Highlights included Philip Moore's radiant setting of the Angelus text Salutatio Angelica for double choir, Kenneth Leighton's inexplicably neglected Nativitie, and joyful music by Michael Praetorius in his anniversary year.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Silence & Music
Friday 15th October 2021, St Gabriel’s, Pimlico
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Inspired by the final words of Vaughan Williams' late masterpiece Silence and Music — "and music wakes from silence, where it slept" — Londinium returned to regular concert-giving by celebrating the power of music. Our programme looked to the future with hope, but allowed space to reflect on the past eighteen months. Highlights included the UK premiere of Kerensa Briggs' Hear my Prayer, recent works by Bernard Hughes and Richard Allain, and unfairly neglected music by Kodaly, Rebecca Clarke and Kenneth Leighton. These were heard alongside superb Renaissance madrigals and motets by Tomkins, Lobo, Byrd, Gibbons and Sweelinck, and the luscious Romantic sounds of Rheinberger and William Harris.
Andrew Griffiths conductor
Music Divine
Saturday 17th July 2021, St John the Divine, Kennington
Sunday 18th July, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich
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In its first public performances since lockdown last year, Londinium gave an informal recital of unaccompanied English choral music. Our programme took in some of the most beloved music in the repertoire, including Stanford's Beati quorum via, Pearsall's Lay a Garland and Gibbons' The Silver Swan, alongside works by Purcell, Tomkins, Moeran, Holst, Vaughan Williams and others.
Andrew Griffiths conductor