Article published in Manchester Evening News 12 June 2015

GORTON Monastery will see one of its biggest choral concerts ever on June 21, when St George’s Singers of Poynton, 80-strong, are joined by the Sheffield Chorale, 50-strong, for a performance of Elgar’s The Dream Of Gerontius, with Stockport Symphony Orchestra. 

Neil Taylor is conductor of both choirs and thrilled to be bringing them together for the first time.  

“I’ve been able to rehearse each choir separately,” he says, “but we all come together on the Thursday before for a rehearsal with orchestra, and then on the day itself with orchestra and soloists.” 

Those soloists themselves are a starry team: Marcus Farnsworth, who studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Academy of Music, won the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition in 2009 and is now in demand everywhere, is the bass baritone; and Mancunian tenor Joshua Ellicott, who has garnered golden opinions in Vienna and New York and sung here with Opera North, the Hallé and The English Concert, Gerontius.  

Anna Harvey, a young Sheffield singer who was at Cambridge and the RAM and has appeared with top UK orchestras and opera companies, takes the mezzo-soprano role.  

Neil Taylor – organist of Sheffield Cathedral and a choral director for The Daily Service and Manchester University Chorus – has trained his Poynton choir over the past nine years for many prestige concerts, including Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and Bach’s St John Passion.  

But this is the first time he’s asked them to tackle Gerontius. “My hesitation in the past was because of the size of chorus the work needs. It needs to be big to balance the orchestral writing … but I always thought I’d like to do the work. It has everything: drama, delicacy and an amazing moment where the soul of Gerontius finally meets his Maker. Elgar wrote: ‘For one moment, must every instrument exert its full force’. 

“The chorus needs to be able to make a good, strong sound, but also, at times, something quite ethereal.” 

He’s just brought the Singers back from Germany, with four concerts and three standing ovations, and has planned an exciting season for 2015-16, with Mozart’s C minor Mass at the Royal Northern College of Music in November, an open ‘singing day’ in January, a St George’s Day special for April 23, and a return to Gorton in a year’s time for Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and music by Gustav Holst.