Cathedral Record

A concert to remember

by Dr Christopher McElroy Director of Music, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

On Saturday 12th November the Cathedral Choir will sing their first full concert since before Covid. We are very much looking forward to it and are very encouraged by ticket sales thus far.

As the concert takes place the evening before Remembrance Sunday, we will be singing the moving setting of the Requiem Mass text by Gabriel Fauré. Written in the late 19th Century, it is probably Fauré’s best known choral work.

During this year we are celebrating the 150th birthday of the British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and will present two of his works in this concert. Firstly, the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, an early work for double string orchestra written for the 1910 Three Choirs Festival. We will also perform the Five Mystical Songs, a musical setting by Vaughan Williams of words by the seventeenthcentury Welsh poet and Anglican priest George Herbert.

The soloist in the concert is Damian O’Keeffe, who himself is no stranger to the Cathedral having been Head Chorister of the Cathedral Choir from 1981-1982. A former choral scholar at St John’s College Cambridge, Damian has toured the world and performed with many leading choral groups. We very much look forward to welcoming him back to the Cathedral. The concert will involve the boy and girl choristers of the Cathedral Choir, alongside the Youth Choir and adult Lay Clerks. The singers will be accompanied by the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra. Founded in 1951 the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra is one of the UK’s leading amateur orchestras, whose members include experienced players from a wide range of occupational backgrounds, many of them professional music teachers and musicians.

Tickets for the concert are priced at £10 (£5 for under 18/NUS/over 65) and can be ordered from https://www. ticketsource.co.uk/metcathedral/ or by calling 0151 708 7283. Come and join us for an evening of beautiful music in the awe-inspiring setting of the Metropolitan Cathedral.

Cathedral Record

Canon Anthony O’Brien – Cathedral Dean

The beginning of November is marked always with the joyful celebration of All Saints, then the quiet prayerful day of All Souls followed by the memorial to St Martin de Porres, one of our much loved patrons here at the Cathedral. The month of November is always a busy and joyful time within the Cathedral calendar with seasonal changes and lots of events taking place. Upton Hall College on the Wirral fill the Cathedral to capacity for their Annual School Mass for students and parents here on Saturday 5 November at 11.00 am. Then on Tuesday 8 November Archbishop Malcolm will be installing four new Canons to the Diocesan Chapter. They are Fathers John Gorman, David Heywood, Kevin McLoughlin and Connor Stainton Polland. They will be installed at the public Mass at 12.15 pm that day which will be celebrated within the main Cathedral.

Remembrance Sunday falls on 13 November, the 33rd Sunday of the year. Our Cathedral Choirs along with the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra will be holding a special Remembrance Concert in the Cathedral on Saturday 12 November at 7.00 pm. We celebrate our Feast Day of Christ the King the following Sunday and mark the end of the Church’s liturgical year with thanksgiving, and hopefully by then joy that the organ refurbishment is finally complete and the instrument is back in action.

The Glyndebourne Opera Company will be rehearsing in the Crypt the following week preparing for performances of ‘La bohème’ at the Empire Theatre and they have even kindly invited me to one of the performances. We conclude the month with the start of the Season of Advent. As well as the Masses for the First Sunday of Advent we have an evening Service of seasonal music and readings at our Advent Sequence at 5.00 pm.