Talk on the conservation of Ralph Vaughan Williams' original working copy of Bach's St Matthew Passion score

Conservator Victoria Stevens will give a presentation on the recent restoration of the score, which was used by Vaughan Williams at the Festival. The score will be on view in a specially commissioned display case.

Tuesday 19^th September 2017at Dorking Halls, Surrey

10.30 a.m to 12.30 p.m

The talk is free to Friends and Patrons of the Festival, £7.50 to others (including tea/coffee). To reserve a place:

Please email: secretary@lhmf.org.uk or phone: Mandy Begg 07775 745689

The St Matthew Passion was first performed at the Festival in 1931 with a special massed choir of around 700 singers conducted by Vaughan Williams. The performance marked the opening of the Dorking Halls which were built to house the growing Festival and was in memory of the conductor’s sister and co-founder of the Festival, Margaret Vaughan Williams who had died earlier that year. The St Matthew continued to be conducted by Vaughan Williams at the Festival until 1958.

The Festival was approached in 2016 by Conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who performed all the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Leningrad in the late 1980s, as he wanted to perform Bach’s St Matthew Passion with The State Academic Symphony Capella of Russia at the Moscow Conservatoire using a copy of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ full score.

The score is owned by the Festival and kept by the Surrey Performing Arts Library in their Vaughan Williams Collection and was in need of restoration. The Festival arranged for the score to be restored by conservator Victoria Stevens and a specially commissioned display case made to house it safely.

Following the talk, the score will be available to view by appointment at the Surrey Performing Arts Library as part of the Vaughan Williams Collection.