Please note the new concert time of 6pm on the Come and Sing Brahms Requiem day.

The Rodolfus Choir American Tour 14th-23rd April 2012

The details of the choir's tour to the East Coast of America are nearly finalised. So far the Rodolfus Choir will be visiting St Thomas New York, All Saints Cathedral in Albany, Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Wilmington and St Paul's Church Alexandria. The repertoire will included works by Tallis, Byrd, Mealor and Whitacre. More details will follow shortly.

The tour has been generously supported by a former member of Rodolfus, now resident in the USA. The tour has been supported generously by a former member the the choir but there is a shortfall and we need to raise money to fund the tour. If you would like to donate please go to www.virginmoneygiving.com or click on the button below.

Many efforts are being made by the choir – collectively and individually – to bridge the gap. The Come and Sing Brahms Requiem is just one event, and the American Tour Preview Concert at Holy Trinity Guildford will we trust swell the coffers a bit more. 

The latest broadcast by the Rodulfus Choir was featured in today's Daily Telegraph as one of Sunday's radio highlights. Gillian Reynolds recommends listening to the repeat of the Epiphany Sequence on Radio 3 on Sunday 8th January at 3pm (originally broadcast on Wednesday). If you miss it, you'll be able to listen to it on the iplayer until Wednesday the 11th. 

It is with enormous pride and pleasure that Trustees of the Rodolfus Choir and Friends of Ralph Allwood announce the news that Ralph has been awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List of 2012.

Ralph Allwood has been a champion of young singers for the last forty years and he continues to be a magnificent enabler, providing positive opportunities for youngsters to learn excellent music in the best, most inspiring conditions.  An indefatigable encourager, he has spent the last four decades conducting and teaching music, inspiring a huge range of young people to find joy and fulfilment in the greatest music available and he has been responsible for starting the careers of many singers now prominent in the UK’s music industry.

From being a school Director of Music (at Pangbourne, Uppingham and Eton College) he has spent his ‘spare’ time running holiday courses in choral music for young people, providing extraordinary opportunities for children to share facilities and music teaching which are normally reserved for a privileged few during term time.  These courses have blossomed for the last thirty or so years from an initial single week’s course to the seven one-week courses which now take place under the Eton Choral Course banner.  The strength and continued success of the Eton Choral Courses is entirely due to the creative energy of Ralph Allwood, and these courses are now attended each year by over four hundred singers aged between 16 and 20, open to youngsters from all backgrounds and schools, and over 110 of these courses have now been held.

Not content with devoting his summers to these courses, Ralph has created further chances for some of their participants to meet up again, give concerts and make recordings of outstanding quality in his Rodolfus Choir. This group meets during the remaining few weeks left to him in the year.  And when the odd few spare days pop up through his schedule he usually spends them travelling through the country and abroad (from the US to China) coaching other choirs – he was twice invited to be conductor for the National Youth Choir of Wales – and being consultant and judge at festivals such as the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.  He has also begun a choral course for younger children in the spring holidays. 

Ralph’s Rodolfus Choir goes from strength to strength, with recent recordings of the Bach B Minor Mass, Monteverdi’s Vespers, choral works by Howells and the soon to be released choral music of Elgar.  The Rodolfus Choir’s CDs have drawn four-star reviews from BBC Music Magazine, The Times and other national daily newspapers.

Recently retired from Eton College, Ralph is taking his choral work to new communities.  One of these projects sees a major new venture, co-founding Inner Voices, a choir for young people from ten different inner London state schools, the group will be launched later this month (18th January 2012).

For more information on the work of Ralph Allwood, please see his website.   

We will be singing a programme of the English Romantics in Cheltenham College Chapel on January 2nd at 7pm. 

Programme to include:

• Parry, Songs of Farewell
• Elgar, Part Songs
• Strauss, Der Abend
• other music for Epiphany

Tickets £15 (£12 concessions, £10 Students)

To buy tickets, please contact the box office (details below) or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Box Office: 0208 878 5095 or 01242 265600

Independent review site MusicWeb International have published a glowing review of our Herbert Howells CD:

From the very opening of this disc - a mixture of sacred and secular choral works - the Rodolfus Choir, under the astute directorship of Ralph Allwood, capture Howells’s idiom perfectly, and their understanding of this music is reflected in the high quality of their performances.

...Other works presented include the Collegium Regale Te Deum and Jubilate, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the Dallas Service (commissioned by the director of music at St Luke’s Episcopal Church in Dallas – American Anglicans were great followers of Howells’s music at that time), and God be in my head. The latter was a composition demonstration that Howells gave to a pupil, written within the student’s hour-long lesson. The Rodolfus Choir here give a glowing account of this simple but incredibly effective piece.

The disc concludes with A Hymn for St Cecilia, commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Musicians to celebrate Howells’s time as Master of the Company. It is a splendid conclusion to an excellent disc of exquisite and radiant singing.

Read the full review.

This CD is available to purchase on our website.

We will be singing a programme of choral music from the Renaissance to the 21st century celebrating the beauty of creation and light, the historical figures of the Virgin Mary and St. Cecilia and the mysteries of life and death.

Programme to include:

• Ecce Beatam Lucem Alessandro Striggio (c. 1540 – 1592)
• Vox Patris Caelestis William Mundy (c. 1529 – 1591)
• Ave Regina Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951)
• Miserere Mei, Deus William Byrd (c. 1540 – 1623)
• Death on the Hills Sir Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934)
• Cecilia Virgo Gabriel Jackson (b. 1962) 
• Lux Aurumque Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
• Ecce Beatam Lucem Jonathan Dove (b. 1959)

The concert takes place at St. Dunstan-in-the-West on 2nd September 2011. Buy tickets

John Quinn (MusicWeb International) reviews Bach: Mass in B minor, the Rodolfus Choir's recent recording:

I've long admired the work of Ralph Allwood's Rodolfus Choir, an elite group of singers aged between 16 and 25, founded in 1983. Its membership is drawn from past and present members of the annual Eton College Choral Course. I've experienced them in a variety of music but this is the largest work in which I've heard them. They could scarcely have been set a sterner test.

The choir, which on this recording numbers fourteen sopranos, eight altos - male and female - ten tenors and ten basses, made this recording after a couple of concert performances in the summer of 2009. One of these was given in the glorious setting of Tewkesbury Abbey, as part of the 2009 Three Choirs Festival. It was favourably reviewed for MusicWeb International Seen and Heardby my colleague, Roger Jones. At least one of the present soloists, Ben Johnson, took part in that performance.

I enjoyed the recording very much. Inevitably, since the choir is made up of young singers it lacks some of the tonal depth, especially in the tenors and basses, that one gets with choirs that contain more mature voices. However, in compensation, there's a freshness and a lightness about the singing that exerts its own very strong appeal. Allwood comments in the booklet that most of the choir hadn't previously sung the work. I hope I'm not imagining it but the performance does seem to have a sense of joy and excitement about it that suggests enthusiastic discovery.

The Rodolfus Choir's Epiphany Service at Eton College Chapel was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of their season on The Genius of Mozart.

There was great praise for the broadcast, and Paul Frankl, the Editor of The Genius of Mozart season, said it was, 'Utterly, utterly beautiful – and moving too'.

The BBC Radio 3 Epiphany service is still available to hear on the iPlayer (for four more days only!):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wwplg

Details:

First Vespers of the Epiphany from Eton College Chapel sung by the Rodolfus Choir to Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore K 339.

Introit: Venite populi K 260 (248a) (Mozart)
Psalms: Dixit Dominus; Confitebor Tibi; Beatus vir; Laudate pueri; Laudate Dominum (Mozart)
Lesson: Isaiah 49 vv1-7
Hymn: Why impious Herod (Veni redemptor)
Magnificat (Mozart)
Hymn: Brightest and best (Liebster Immanuel)
Organ Voluntary: Fantasia in F minor K 608 (Mozart)

Ralph Allwood (Director of Music)
Tom Winpenny (Organist).