When the Stamp made its Mark - Wyre Forest Young Voices - March 18, 2011
This was indeed a very special concert, bringing together, as it did, atmospheric and moving writing, flawless performance, and a packed audience who hung upon every word.
Children from three of Kidderminster’s Primary Schools (Foley Park, Franche and Sutton Park) had studied the effects that Kidderminster-born Rowland Hill’s new postal system had had on letter-writing in the Victorian era, visiting the Post Office at Blists Hill Victorian Town and learning about the collection at the British Postal Museum. Writer and poet David Calcutt had worked with them to produce a narrative of parted lovers, putting their feelings of trust, loss and longing into letters which were read, most movingly by young actors Emily Chennery and Kieran Knowles. This story was interspersed and garnished with folk-songs that reflected the narrative – for example, the children sang “The Oak and the Ash” as the girl gazed into the ash tree and imagined her lover looking down on her.
Geoff Weaver had written, and Andrew Watts had orchestrated, incidental music, which was performed with their usual style and panache by the Carnival Band (Andrew Watts, Giles Lewin, Steno Vitale and Jub Davis and, in one piece, Wyre Forest Young Voices member Alexander Hill on the snare drum). Geoff had also arranged the folk-songs for performance by the large choir of children from the three schools, augmented by the Young Voices and Primary Chords (Kidderminster Choral Society’s two youth choirs), again accompanied by the Carnival Band.
The work, “The Penny Black Cantata: Letters to a Loved One”, was conducted by Geoff Weaver, and produced by the BBC’s Peter Wild, and proved to be a beautifully conceived drama, executed in fine fashion by all those who took part; a worthy successor to the “ChOral History” project which Geoff and David had produced three years previously.
The Cantata formed the second half of this concert, the first half having consisted of a number of performances by the Wyre Forest Young Voices, mostly of pieces from their existing repertoire. They began with Bob Chilcott’s Give me the Strength, followed by Lean on Me, by Bill Withers. Nicole Stone then sang So in love, from Cole Porter’s Kiss me Kate. The Young Voices Chorale performed Dos Baladas Amarillas, again by Bob Chilcott, and Prayer of the Children, by Kurt Bestor. Rachel Stone made her debut as a French Horn soloist with I Dreamed a Dream, from Les Misérables, and the short programme ended with Peter Hunt’s up-beat arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Soloists and choir alike were in fine form, and Mike Elden (accompanist) and Geoff Weaver (conductor) received rousing applause.
Our thanks and appreciation, once again, to Geoff and his “supporting cast”, for a wonderful evening of poetry and music - and to our long-time supporter Cathy Dew, who thought up the whole idea of using the postal system as the basis for a concert. Our thanks and appreciation also to the Heritage Lottery Fund, from which we were fortunate to obtain a very substantial grant for the project, and to the British Postal Museum and Archive for permitting us to use images of stamps and of letters from the collection.
Ray Harrowing
