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Clarke, Blow, Purcell & Handel - A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary II - Old Royal Naval College - London
%PM, %Europe/London %b %2024, %RI performed with the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists at the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich on Tuesday 30th April 2024. The performance featured two choirs, the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir (directed by Ralph Allwood) and the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea (directed by William Vann).
The concert was a choral celebration of Queen Mary II, and it featured music by Clarke, Handel, Purcell and Blow. I opened the concert with my own arrangement of Jeremiah Clarke's Prince of Denmark's March. (I've just bought a new printer and I managed to print some of the pages of the score upside down—whoops!) The programme continued with music from the 1689 Coronation of William III and Mary II, with John Blow's The Lord God is a sun and a shield, and Henry Purcell's alto solo, 'Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep this day without sin' from his Te Deum Laudamus in D. The first half finished with a rendition of Purcell's Birthday Ode for Queen Mary (1694), known as 'Come, ye sons of art'. After the interval we heard music from the funeral of Queen Mary II, before George Frideric Handel's Utrecht Te Deum (for the peace of Utrecht, 1713). The second half of the concert also featured a rousing rendition of happy birthday, for Ralph Allwood, who shares his birth date with that of Queen Mary II, (born 30 April [1662]).
It was a beautiful spring day by the river Thames in London, and it's always a pleasure to visit this very picturesque and historic part of Greenwich.