A Love for All seasons at Congleton Town on October 10^th

This was Congleton Choral Society’s first concert with its new Musical Director Nick Concannon Hodges and it was planned as ‘something completely different’.

After the performance members of the audience were asked to give their views on the concert and contributed the following:

I liked the variety - choral, instrumental, solo vocal, poetry - as an introduction to the new director.   I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.   Some of the arrangements were not entirely successful - I think particularly of 'Summertime' which was overly fussy and detracted from the original - but others, Linden Lea, 'The Blue Bird' , 'All in the April Evening' , were just lovely.   I loved the Balkan folksongs - a  real innovation - from soloist Lis Murphy, with 'Zajdi, Zajdi' my favourite.

Re the instrumental soloists, I found The Albinoni trio sonata was the most successful, the Joplin and the other modern arrangements less so for this combination of piano, flute and oboe.   

Poet W.Terry Fox was a delight.  He put over Keat’s Ode to Autumn and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, in a way that was almost conversational and which really brought out the meaning. His own poems were both pithy and wise and I shall be looking out for some to buy. 

It was clear from the expressions on the choir’s faces that they like Nick and were all responding well to him. 

David Johnson, previous MD, said that being at the concert and seeing the choir under another Director was much like seeing your daughter who you had nurtured for 34 years getting married. You feel very proud, but a bit sad as well. He added that the choir sounded well-balanced and confident in some tricky unaccompanied pieces, and they had obviously put in a lot of hard work for the concert.