They were here in December 2023, and were so successful that the Philharmonie invited them back in 2025: the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge and the renowned organist Thomas Trotter.
This Choir with its young girl and boy treble choristers and student mezzos/altos, tenors and basses is one of the very best, renowned not just in Cambridge but in the UK, Europe, indeed the world. Together with the organist Thomas Trotter they once again performed a delightful range of seasonal music ranging from the traditional Sussex Carol, pieces by Bach, Sally Beamish, Benjamin Britten, William Walton, and the lovely “O Holy Night” by Adolphe Adam.
Thomas Trotter showed his virtuostic skills on the organ at the end of the first half of the concert and the beginning of the second half, delighting the audience with his arrangement of Leroy Anderson’s medley of carols “A Christmas Festival ” which he informed me after the concert was only the third time he has performed it. He was particularly appreciative of the audience’s enthusiastic reception of the piece.
At the end of the concert the a cappella ensemble of the Choir, “The Gents of St John’s”, sang a lighter piece in the swinging close-harmony style of the King’s Singers, a tremendous way to send the very happy audience off into the night.
But it was not the end for the alumni members of the Cambridge Society and their families and friends from the Oxford Society and the British Luxembourg Society who joined the adult members of the Choir (it was bedtime for the choristers) and Thomas Trotter for a splendid reception organised by the Society and supplied by Julian Cliquet, traiteur, in the Grand Foyer. Some 90 participants celebrated a successful concert with plenty of Christmas cheer.
To cap the evening the Gents regaled us with no less than 3 more of their Christmas songs (“Jingle Bells Rock”, Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer”, and “Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas”), showing what a talented group of singers they are.
We have to thank the management of the Philharmonie for their kind permission for us to organise the reception.
This was a marvellous occasion for the Society to close its events for 2025, and for putting us all in a Christmas mood.
