Chandos Choir

The Purcell pieces with their unusual chromatics and varying textures were new to many of the audience but very well received, and we enjoyed hearing Robert Randall playing the keyboard in harpsichord-mode, which gave, as he said, a slight flavour of what Purcell would have heard when he composed the pieces. Purcell was a master of the baroque era and his death was mourned as widely as Mozart was; sadly his pieces are not performed very much nowadays. Soloists Jan 'Ziggy' Sanfranski and Emma Penn enjoyed their parts. After the interval the mood and style changed, and the choir sang selections from the beautiful music of Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, assisted by the superb vocals of Ziggy with the excellent Harriett Jackson.