Tony Woodhead

A REMARKABLE FIND

Before outlining Hoylake Choral Society's 60 year story I must tell you about an amazing discovery which happened literally as we were preparing these pages.
One of our members came across a 100-year old programme for a performance of Elijah which took place on March 15th 1907. It was headed "WEST KIRBY CHORAL SOCIETY". Until this find I was totally unaware of any of the musical activity in our district earlier than 1946 let alone a choral society which performed with an orchestra and listed over 110 members a century ago. It had a direct link to us because the conductor was Dr W B Brierley FRCO who conducted the  Hoylake Musical Society's performance of  The Creation in 1952. He was for some years music master at Calday Grammar School.
If anyone can shed light on this hitherto unknown organisation I would be delighted to hear from them.

But I digress!

THE JUBILEE BOOK

At the time of our Golden Jubilee I wrote a short book of reminiscences called "A View from the Back Row". Much of what follows is taken from that, apart from the last ten years, which for present purposes I have named "Recent Developments.If you would like to read more about our first 50 years please let me know. There are still copies of that book available. A donation of £5.00 to our funds will secure you a copy. Cheques should be made payable to Hoylake Choral Society.Please see Contact Us for my phone number.

On 26 November 1947 a group of local music lovers formed “ a society for the encouragement of choral and orchestral music to be known as the Hoylake Musical Society.” The work performed at its concert on 2 May 1948 under Charles Sutcliffe was Handel’s Messiah.

For the first ten years its choir and orchestra presented three or four concerts a year. However not all were performed by its own members, with visiting choirs, soloists and a series of lectures making up its output.  During this time concerts were under the baton of various conductors, most of whom were music teachers in local schools. These included John Senior,at one time a pupil of Vaughan Williams, who took charge in 1952/3.

From 1957 to 1960 concerts were reduced to two a year and usually only one of these included any choral content. In 1961 the only concert of the year was Handel’s Messiah. It almost looked as if the wheel had come full circle as the orchestra was disbanded. The whole society appeared to be on the verge of extinction because the choir‘s numbers had dwindled as well.

Rescue was at hand in the persons of a West Kirby couple, Amy and Ernest Pratt. A member of the society, Amy had for many years been a music teacher and a member of the Liverpool Philharmonic Choir. Her husband was its accompanist and an organist of some distinction, who later became an assistant at Liverpool Cathedral.
For some nineteen years she conducted and he accompanied the Society’s concerts, during which time the choir’s numbers grew from eighteen at Amy’s first rehearsal to over one hundred when she finally bowed out with a magnificent performance of the Verdi Requiem in May 1979.
She returned a year later as guest conductor at a performance of the St Matthew Passion, a memorable concert in which the Pratt family featured strongly including husband (organ), wife (conductor), son (harpsichord) and grandson (violin). Ernest was President of the Society from 1957 to 1991.

In 1968 it was recognised that the Musical Society operated solely as a choir and to reflect this more accurately, its name was changed to the Hoylake Choral Society.  An extract from the meeting making this change is shown below.

After Amy two younger men took the helm for shorter periods. Paul Ferguson had been an organ scholar at New College Oxford and when appointed, was doing further musical research. After only three years he responded to a call to the Church of England ministry and was soon to become Precentor at Wesminster Abbey. He later held a similar post in York Minster and is currently Archdeacon of Middlesbrough.

He was followed by Gordon Pullin, a nationally recognised tenor soloist, who had performed with us on a number of occasions (and still does). Sadly for us another career move, in the teaching profession, took him south and we sought another leader. Gordon has made recordings of the English Tenor repertoire which now runs to 8 volumes and will join us at the performance of Messiah on 21 June 2008.

Another distinguished organist was Simon Russell who, having been the Society’s  rehearsal accompanist, became Musical Director in 1981, a post which he filled for some 16 years. During his “reign” the society continued to present performances of the standard choral repertoire but also took steps into the “unknown” (the twentieth century no less!) including works by Duruflé, Vaughan Williams and John Rutter.

When Simon’s full time job caused him to leave the district in 2000, the Society was fortunate enough to obtain the services of yet another organist, Jim Wrightson (who had accompanied one of the Society’s concerts when Simon was in charge). During the six years he has been with us the Society has grown considerably – from some 65 when he arrived to over 100 today. A regular feature now is that one concert a year is accompanied by an orchestra of professional players. You can read more about Jim on the About us Biographies page.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

In recent years one of our concerns has been for the involvement of children and young people in our music making. We enjoy their participation in our Carol  Concerts. We have been happy to welcome the Rock Ferry Salvation Army Junior Singing Company and latterly the choir of St Bridget's  Junior School from West Kirby.

In 1997 we set up our own Junior Choir, known as The Red Rocks Singers. This was a group of local children between the ages of 8 and 14 trained by a talented music teacher who was a member of the Society, Linda Fox. Unfortunately, when she left the district we were unable to find anyone else prepared to take them on and so the project was abandoned after some three years.

In 2004 when we were unable to obtain the services of the Salvation Army Band we were joined by a group of young mid-teens string players from the district, known as The Awry String Quartet. They played their own arrangements of Christmas music but of course were not powerful enough to accompany the audience carols.

At our most recent Annual General Meeting, the Society demonstrated its views on this subject by fixing the annual subscription for children and students at NIL.

COLLECTIONS

Almost all our concerts run at a loss and so our own resources are not sufficient to contribute to other charitable organisations. So an innovation in the last few years has been the introduction of a collection at the end of each of our concerts. For several years our audiences have assisted The Hoylake Cottage Hospital Trust. Last season our collections went to help the work of Wirral Heartbeat, a registered charity dedicated to the support of those recovering from heart operations. Our generous audiences regularly contribute two or three hundred pounds per concert for which we and the charities are extremely grateful.

ACCOMPANIMENT

Since 2004 we have performed one concert a year at which we have been accompanied by a group of professional players, the Sefton Chamber Orchestra. Careful selection of the works to be performed has kept the players to a number that we could afford (and who would fit in the space available!). This has added an extra dimension to our music.  For several years at our Christmas concerts we were joined by the Rock Ferry Salvation Army Band who added a real splash of colour with their high quality playing.

Last year we hired a Phoenix Organ to accompany one of our concerts. This is an electronic organ which produces sound of a very high quality and is almost indistinguishable from the sounds made by a traditional organ. So happy were we that we have booked it for two of this season's concerts including The Verdi Requiem!

An era for the society came to an end in June 2010 when our chairman of 38 years, against much pleading from the membership, retired. Tony Woodhead had cajoled, bullied (very gently) and guided the society through many changes, ups and downs, good times and some not so good. He leaves it in robust good health and although no longer Chairman as our only Honorary Life Member we expect to have the assistance of his solid bass voice for many years to come.