From the second side of an LP recorded at the opening of the Farnham Festival on May 13th, 1963, in which the choirs of Farnham Girls' grammar school (in Surrey) sing some charming songs guilelessly for you.Rather a good way to discover these songs if you don't know them already!
A Spring Carol Sequence (Edmund Rubbra)
Ching-a-ring-chaw (Arr. Copland)
Dirge for Fidelis (Vaughan Williams)
The Pearly Adriatic (Yugoslav Folk Song)
1 comment:
I found your site on a search for Farnham Girls' Grammar School, my old school which I joined fifty years ago this month at age 11.
I am singing on this record, aged 13, and actually hunted it out last night, prior to an Old Girls' Reunion.
The Rubbra was specially commissioned for the Festival, which was held every two years in the Parish Church, was none competitive and seemed to be pretty high profile in the composers it invited to write new works. In 1965 we performed a new work by Christopher Hurd, "The Canticles of the VIrgin Mary', and in 1967 we sang a work by Christopher Steele which was based on one of the poems of MAry Magdalene, written by Zhivago in Pasternak's novel. That same year there were works composed for other groups by John Dankworth and Thea Musgrave, among others.
I have the recording of the 1967 work, but not 1965. I think there was a problem with the recording that year. The church was not the ideal sound venue!
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