September 2011
The Journal, Hull
Chorus of approval
Family links to the celebrated musical arranger Arthur Fagge have helped to secure a first-time appearance in the region for the prestigious London Chorus. Arthur Fagge, contemporary and devotee of composer Sir Edward Elgar, was the founder, in 1903, of the London Choral Society (forerunner to the The London Chorus) with the intention of giving the first city concert performance of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. More than a century later, about 100 members of the chorus will be raising the rafters at Beverley Minster in a gala performance to raise funds for the Yorkshire Scan Appeal, as it reaches a landmark stage. The event takes place on Saturday 17th September, as the appeal committee excitedly counts down towards its £350,000 target after a staggering 18-month fundraising effort.

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Friday 2 September 2011
Beverley Guardian
Chorus to help boost scan appeal

A CAMPAIGN to provide non-surgical cancer treatment in the region is nearing its goal.
The Yorkshire Scan Appeal has spent the last 18 months working to raise the £350,000 needed to buy a Magnetic Resonance Guided-Focussed Ultra-Sonic System (MRgFUS). The system is for the Hull MRI centre to research its use into the non-evasive treatment of breast cancer. more >

September 2011
Gramophone Magazine
Editor’s Choice: The Queen of Cornwall

The London Chorus’s most recent recording project with the New London Orchestra was the world premiere recording of Rutland Boughton's opera, ‘The Queen of Cornwall’, a recording that was Editor’s Choice in the influential Gramophone magazine in September 2011.

March 2011
Opera Magazine
Disc of the Month: The Queen of Cornwall

It is probably no accident that the work The Queen of Cornwall most resembles is Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. This is not so much because of the part played by the choir, a sort of Greek chorus intermittently commenting on events, as the very specific tone of the music. Just as Elgar wrote Gerontius after absorbing Parsifal, so Boughton seems to have set to work on The Queen of Cornwall after coming hot-foot from a performance of Die Walküre. The result is a translation of Wagnerian music-drama to English soil, where minstrels strum their simple songs against a landscape of warmly romantic leitmotifs with a distinctly Teutonic hue. What is missing is Wagner's ability to build his basic motifs into sustained passages of inspiration: Boughton's passionate and brooding score offers ideas 19 to the dozen, but sometimes less might be more. More >