The performance at Westminster Cathedral was the last in a run of eight concerts; I was deputising for this performance only, and the other members of the ensemble had performed in the cathedrals or minsters in Portsmouth, Canterbury, Peterborough, Ely, York, Hull and Coventry. The programme featured music by Michael Praetorius and Heinrich Schütz, among others. It included some of my favourite Christmas melodies, including Christum wir sollen loben schon and Vom Himmel hoch. We played Schütz’s Magnificat [SWV 468] and interspersed carols, including Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, and Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter. 

The concert involved hundreds of young singers, as part of the Gabrieli Roar education programme, who sang this complex music very well. Chapeau, as ever, to those who did such a good job in preparing them for the performance.

This was an uplifting programme of Christmas music, and it was great to play Praetorius’ In dulci jubilo from the organ loft (which is behind the altar) in Westminster Cathedral. Russell Gilmour & Adrian Woodward played the clarino parts; Malachy Frame (who joined us from the choral ranks of the Gabrieli Consort), Sue Addison, Tom Lees and Stephen Saunders played the lower trumpet parts; and Adrian Bending played timpani (and very kindly helped to relay the beat, over this great distance, from the conductor).