November concert

With the Brecknock Sinfonia

Saturday 22nd November 2025, 7.30pm

Brecon Cathedral

Schubert: Mass No 5 in A flat

Mendelssohn: Singet dem Herrn (Sing unto the Lord)

Haydn: Insanae et vanae curae

After this year’s summer, it’s hard to believe that our November 2024 concert had to be cancelled because of flooding! 

But the upside is that, weather permitting, Brecon Cathedral will soon be filled with a glorious feast of great choral classics, courtesy of the Choral Society and the Brecknock Sinfonia.

This sumptuous programme of works by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Haydn is something special, encompassing the realms of transcendent beauty and high drama.

Although it appears that Schubert never heard it performed, he believed his setting of the Mass in A flat to be his finest. The result apparently of his “extended labours”, the work was composed and revised over a period of some seven years (1818-1826) and was no doubt intended as proof of his mastery of sacred musical idioms; although ignored in the composer’s own lifetime, it has come to be regarded as a truly remarkable work, full of radiant tunefulness and deep emotion at every turn.

The programme also features a rousing and rarely heard Psalm setting for double choir and soloists by Mendelssohn, Singet dem Herrn, an iridescent piece composed to inaugurate the composer’s appointment as musical director at Berlin Cathedral in 1844. This is a real choral tour de force, the psalm’s ecstatic words cast in the great Handelian oratorio tradition.

By contrast, Haydn’s short motet Insanae et vanae curae is a highly-charged stand-alone piece derived from the composer’s first oratorio “The Return of Tobias”; it has long been a firm favourite with choirs.We are delighted to be collaborating again with the Brecknock Sinfonia for this project and are very much looking forward to hearing these great pieces reverberate around the Cathedral’s sacred space. 

Tickets cost £15 (£15.50 online) and are now on sale. Click here.

Or email: tickets@crickhowellchoralsociety.org

Also available at Webbs of Crickhowell, or call 07816 991501.

Free for children and students.

Community Carols with local schools

Tuesday 16th December, 6pm at St Edmund’s Church, Crickhowell

In support of the North Gwent Cardiac Rehabilitation and Aftercare Charity 

The spirit of Christmas is wonderfully captured in this celebration of local singing talent. The joint choirs of schools, the Choral Society and our choral scholars will provide a fabulous variety of carols old and new with much audience participation encouraged throughout!

This year, the Community Carols concert will be in support of the North Gwent Cardiac Rehabilitation and Aftercare Charity with members of the Charity providing drinks and Christmas treats during the interval.

Entry is free to all. Donations to the charity will be welcomed and all money raised  during the interval will go to the charity.