Choir marks Remembrance with beautiful songs by a composer killed on the Somme

Huntingdonshire Philharmonic, universally known as Hunts Phil, performs at St Mary’s Church, Godmanchester, on Saturday November 7 at 7.30pm, four days before Armistice Day.

The first half features with six songs from George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, sung by baritone Caleb Richards.

Butterworth was killed by a sniper at Pozières on the Somme in August 1916, aged 31. Before leaving for France he destroyed the manuscripts he was dissatisfied with, fearing he would not come back to revise them, and left the rest to his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. His body was never recovered.

The programme also includes Vaughan Williams’s Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge, John Ireland’s Greater Love Hath No Man and Herbert Sumsion’s They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships.

The second half is Matthew Coleridge’s Requiem. Classic FM has described it as a modern choral classic. It entered the station’s Hall of Fame top 100 in 2023 and has been a regular presence since.

The concert falls in the middle of Hunts Phil’s 50th anniversary season, which opened on October 17 to a capacity audience.

The society traces its roots to a wartime music club founded in 1939 to lift local spirits, and was formally established in 1977 when the local choral and orchestral societies joined forces. In 1986 it gave the first British performance of Shostakovich’s suite Five Days and Five Nights, and Sir John Major was its President during the 1990s while he was Prime Minister.

The choir is conducted by Nicholas Morris.

Hunts Phil rehearses on Tuesday evenings (choir) and Thursday evenings (orchestra) in Godmanchester and welcomes new members. There is no audition.

Tickets are £15, or £5 for under-18s and those in full-time education, and are available at huntsphil.org.uk.