2014-15

Friday 7th November 2014, Sheffield City Hall

  • Mozart Great Mass in C Minor
  • Mendelssohn Overture: The Fair Melusine
  • Wagner Siegfried Idyll

Northern Sinfonia, James Burton, conductor

Gillian Keith (soprano I), Anna Dennis (soprano II), Sam Furness (tenor), Matthew Hargreaves (bass)

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Gentlemen of Sheffield Cathedral Choir

Saturday 13th December 2014, 3pm and 7pm Sheffield City Hall

Christmas concert

Paulette Edwards (presenter)

Black Dyke BandDr Nicholas Childs (conductor)

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Darius Battiwalla (conductor)

Saturday 2nd May 2015, Sheffield Anglican Cathedral

  • Bruckner Mass in E minor
  • Gorecki Totus Tuus
  • Tavener Svyati
  • Messiaen Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Sheffield Camerata, Darius Battiwalla – Music Director, Simon Turner (‘cello)

Sunday 17th May 2015, Sheffield City Hall, 7pm

  • Schubert Symphony No.3
  • Beethoven Symphony No.9 ‘Choral’

Claire Meghnagi soprano, Hannah Pedley mezzo, Andrew Rees tenor, Paul Carey Jones baritone

Warsaw PhilharmonicJacek Kaspszyk conductor

Tuesday 9th June 2015, Doc/Fest, Crucible Theatre, 8.30pm

  • Holst The Planets

Paul Crowther – commentary;

Sheffield Rep. OrchestraGeorge Morton – Conductor

Women’s voices from Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Darius Battiwalla – Conductor

Embark on a breathtaking voyage to the outer limits of the universe as Gustav Holst’s The Planets is performed by the Sheffield Rep. Orchestra conducted by George Morton and accompanied by images of interplanetary odysseys and newly commissioned visuals by Sheffield creative design agency Human and a commentary from astronomer Paul Crowther. Brought to you by the University of Sheffield Departments of Music and Physics/Astronomy, Festival of the Mind.

2015-16

Saturday 4 June 2016, Sheffield City Hall

A special celebration concert to mark the Chorus’s 80th Birthday and the 60th Birthday of our former Chairman, Julie Smethurst, and to celebrate the music of Vaughan Williams:

  • O Clap Your Hands
  • Fantasia on Greensleeves
  • Dona Nobis Pacem
  • The Lark Ascending
  • Serenade to Music
  • Let All the World in Every Corner Sing

Royal Liverpool PhilharmonicDarius Battiwalla (conductor)

Jenny Rust – Soprano, Joshua Ellicott – Tenor, Oliver Dunn – Baritone

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and Sheffield Bach Choir

Friday 6th May 2016, Sheffield City Hall, 7pm

  • Vaughan Williams – Sympony No. 5
  • Haydn – Nelson Mass Royal

Northern Sinfonia, James Burton (conductor)

Anna Patalong – Soprano, Frances Bourne – Mezzo-soprano, Timothy Robinson – Tenor, David Soar – Bass

James Burton, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and a fine line-up of soloists performed the ‘Nelson Mass’. This great late work of Haydn’s is widely regarded as one of the composer’s supreme achievements. Originally conceived as a response to Napoleon’s aggressive and acquisitive foreign policy, it gained its nickname after Admiral Nelson defeated the French navy at the famous Battle of the Nile.

Saturday 20th February 2016, Sheffield City Hall

Late-night ‘After Hours’ concert

Following the concert in the Irwin Mitchell Hall which featured Sibelius – Symphony 5, this special ‘After Hours’ concert, free to main concert ticket-holders, featured:

  • Sibelius – Rakastava
  • Arvo Pärt – Magnificat
  • Ēriks Ešenvalds – Vakars (Evening)
  • Ēriks Ešenvalds – Lielupe (The River Lielupe)

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Darius Battiwalla (conductor)

Sat 12th December 2015, Sheffield City Hall, 3pm & 7pm

Christmas concerts

Petroc Trelawny (presenter)

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Darius Battiwalla (conductor)

Black Dyke BandDr Nicholas Childs (conductor)

The annual Christmas Concert featured the Black Dyke Band, one of the world’s most celebrated brass bands, joining forces with Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus for the fifth year in a row. This pairing delighted the audience with their seasonal offering of carols and yuletide favourites for all the family.

Christmas 2020

Annual Christmas Carol Concert – 7pm on Saturday 12th December 2020

Sadly, our much-loved carol concert with the world-famous Black Dyke Band at Sheffield City Hall had to be abandoned because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Christmas Carols in the City Hall

However, Chorus and band have been working on a virtual Christmas carol concert, recorded from our own homes. The concert will feature a new version of the 16th century carol Resonet in Laudibus, arranged for brass band and chorus by our Music Director Darius Battiwalla, and the beautiful traditional Welsh lullaby Suo Gan, sung in Welsh with violin, harp and organ.

We are thrilled that our new Patron, BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny, has kindly agreed to present the concert, something he has done at the City Hall a number of times over the last few years.

With the Chorus accompanist Rachel Fright on the piano, and Music Director Darius Battiwalla on the Leeds Town Hall organ, this will be a virtual concert not to be missed!

Programme

Resonet in Laudibus arr. D. Battiwalla. Chorus, Black Dyke Band, Darius Battiwalla (organ)

Suo Gan (Welsh traditional) Chorus, Susan Voss (violin), Eira Lynn (harp), Darius Battiwalla (organ)

Deck the Hall arr. Langford. Chorus (a capella)

Gaelic Blessing John Rutter. Chorus, Rachel Fright (piano)

The Holly and the Ivy John Gardner. Chorus, Rachel Fright (piano)

Hark the Herald Angels Sing Mendelssohn. Chorus, Black Dyke Band, Darius Battiwalla (organ)

‘Awake Arise’ – our Christmas CD – an ideal Christmas gift

Our Christmas CD

Buy our Christmas CD ‘Awake, Arise! A Yorkshire Christmas Carol Collection for Brass and Voices‘, recorded with the world-famous Black Dyke Band. This collection has a real Yorkshire flavour and includes some of the Sheffield carols, traditionally sung in Sheffield pubs over the Christmas period.

It also includes arrangements by the Chorus’s gifted Music Director, Darius Battiwalla, of such Christmas classics as Joy to The World and O Holy Night, a firm favourite at our annual Christmas concerts at Sheffield City Hall. Other favourites include I Saw Three Ships and Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the band playing the March from Tchaicovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and the wonderful Sleigh Ride from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé.

To order your copy for £12 including postage and packing, please contact

You might also like to check out our most recent CD Anthems, Hymns and Gloria for Brass Band, which reached Number One in Classic FM’s specialist classical albums recently, as well as being Album of the Week. The CD, directed by Professor Nicholas Childs and Chorus Music Director Darius Battiwalla, was recorded in St Oswald’s Church on Bannerdale Road in Sheffield. It features eleven tracks composed by Rutter and arranged for brass band by Belgian conductor Luc Vertommen, including the Pie Jesu from his 1985 Requiem, and This is the Day composed for the wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. For further details and how to purchase, see Anthems, Hymns and Gloria for Brass Band

Carol Singing

Each year members of the Chorus volunteer to sing Christmas carols at a range of venues around Sheffield. Sadly none of the singalongs proved possible this year. However, the Chorus has contributed music from the ‘Awake Arise’ Christmas CD with the world-famous Black Dyke Band, to a virtual carol concert in aid of youth homelessness charity Roundabout.

Also, St Luke’s Festival of Light Service of Remembrance will be virtual rather than a live service this year. We were very keen to contribute to this very special event, as we do every year, and you can hear us sing ‘We Saw Three Ships‘ from our Awake Arise CD on the St Luke’s website

See What’s On this week in Sheffield on the Classical Sheffield website

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Tickets

Look out for special offers! Some concerts are FREE for under 12s, or for under 16s. See individual concert details.
For Sheffield International Concert Season concerts at the City Hall, you can get 10 tickets for just £10 each, no matter where you sit – a great opportunity to get together with friends and family in the best circle seats for a third of the standard price!

Sheffield International Concert Season

Irwin Mitchell Hall

Most of our concerts form part of the prestigious Sheffield International Concert Season and take place at Sheffield City Hall in the magnificent Irwin Mitchell Hall, a visually stunning auditorium tiered on three levels.

Sheffield International Concert Season ticketing is explained on the City Hall website. Tickets are available from the Sheffield City Hall Box Office, and may be purchased

  • online via Sheffield City Hall Ticketmaster; however follow the links on our Current Season Concert page. Please note that booking fees apply.
  • by telephoning the City Hall Box Office on 0114 2 789 789 Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 6.00pm and Saturday from 10.00am to 4.00pm.
  • in person from the City Hall Box Office, open Monday to Saturday from 9.00am to 5.30pm, or up to one hour prior to the start on the day of the concert

Self promoted concerts

We also present self promoted concerts, which may take place at a range of venues, including the beautiful Art Deco ballroom at Sheffield City Hall, in the gorgeous acoustic of Sheffield Cathedral, at St Mark’s Church Broomhill, at the Victoria Hall or in the lovely Upper Chapel. We are committed to encouraging  young people to enjoy creating, making and listening to all kinds of music including classical, so we make sure that tickets are free for under-16s.

Tickets for these concerts may be purchased

  • online
  • at the door
  • from chorus members

However please follow the links for individual concerts on our Current Season Concert page.

See What’s On this week in Sheffield on the Classical Sheffield website

Current Season

2024-25 season

SPC is looking forward to another full season of fantastic concerts in 2024-25. Do come and see us – we we are the Resident Chorus at the City Hall and continue to enjoy glowing reviews (check them out here). We are Royal Philharmonic Society Award nomineesone of four shortlisted for the Inspiration Award in 2024.

 

Friday 15 November 2024, 7pm Sheffield City Hall 

  • DEBUSSY Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
  • BOULANGER Psalm 130: De Profundis (Out of the Depths)
  • SAINT-SAЁNS Fantaisie in Eb major for organ
  • SAINT-SAЁNS Symphony No.3, “Organ”

Our season in Sheffield will start with a fantastic concert featuring works by French composers, in the City Hall with Resident Orchestra the Halle, award-winning conductor Delyana Lazarova and our own Darius Battiwalla playing contrasting pieces by  Saint-Saens on the magnificent City Hall organ.

Delyana Lazarova, winner of the inaugural Siemens Hallé International Conductor’s Competition, will begin this concert with Debussy’s sensuous evocation of the poet Mallarmé’s dreams and desires of a faun. Delyana will then directs the massed forces of the Hallé, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, a rising RNCM star and the stunning mezzo-soprano, Hanna Hipp, in Lili Boulanger’s ominous setting of Psalm 130, widely believed to be a reaction to the outbreak of World War One. Written from her sickbed in the year before her untimely death aged just 24, the work formed her own personal requiem and reflects her grief, anger and despair.

In the second half Chorus Musical Director and leading organist Darius Battiwalla will pull out all the stops in music by Saint-Saёns. His first published organ work, Fantaisie, has two contrasting movements: one, full of elegance and charm and the other, strong and confident. The concert concludes with his monumental, fascinatingly-textured “Organ” Symphony. – a very popular work that will leave you uplifted and exhilarated in equal measure.

The Hallé

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus
Delyana Lazarova conductor
Hanna Hipp mezzo-soprano
RNCM vocalist tenor
Darius Battiwalla organ

Pre-Concert Talk with BBC Broadcaster Trisha Cooper: 6pm

Tickets from £22.95, students and u-18s £10.50, available online and from the City Hall box office.

Special offer – gather 10 friends and family together and book at the same time for just £10 per ticket – no matter where you sit!

BUY TICKETS

 

Saturday 14 December 2024 Sheffield City Hall at 2.30pm

Christmas Concert with Black Dyke Band

Christmas Carols in the City Hall

A Christmas tradition like no other! The Black Dyke Band and Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus return once again for this wonderful seasonal celebration with carols for choir, singalongs for the audience and gems for the band. Presented by the multi-talented broadcaster, presenter, actor and author, Zeb Soanes, who will guide us through a programme that includes perennial favourites such as Sleigh RideWinter Wonderland and O Holy Night as well as newly-arranged pieces by one of the most successful of all living composers, John Rutter. There will also be local Sheffield carols, including Hail Smiling Morn, and a long-forgotten carol by Barnsley composer, Arthur Godfrey, entitled Christmas Eve.

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus

Darius Battiwalla – conductor

Black Dyke Band

Nicholas Childs – conductor

Zeb Soames – presenter

Tickets are available from the City Hall box office, online, and on the door on the night.

BUY TICKETS

 

Saturday 23 March 2025, St Marie’s cathedral, Sheffield at 7.30pm

Fauré Requiem

undefinedThe Chorus is pleased to be closing the Classical Sheffield Festival Weekend 2025 with a programme featuring two world premieres and Fauré ‘s beautiful Requiem in the wonderful acoustic of St Marie’s cathedral.

The first half will feature two new compositions by composer and broadcaster Stephen Johnston, who has made hundreds of radio programmes, most notably as presenter of Radio 3’s critically-acclaimed Discovering Music, where he explored pieces of music in detail, playing extracts to help discover what makes them work. Read more about Stephen on his website. Past programmes are available on the Discovering Music Archive

The first half will conclude with the world premiere of the winning works from the Stella Jockel Young Composer Competition. Set up by the Chorus in 2022, the competition is open to young people from Sheffield and is funded by a generous legacy bequeathed by Stella, who sang alto with the choir for many years before her death in 2019.

The second half features Gabriel Fauré ‘s much-loved Requiem, composed between 1887 and 1890. Fauré was extremely pleased with this work: “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

  • Stephen Johnston: two new works
  • works by the winners of the 2nd Stella Jockel Young Composer Competition
  • Interval
  • Gabriel Faure: Requiem

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus

Darius Battiwalla – conductor

Ticket prices to be added. Available online (small booking fee), from choir members and on the door by cash or card,  Tickets for those in wheelchairs and with limited mobility are available , please email .

 

A Saturday in April or May 2025- to be confirmed

Come and Sing in Sheffield

Darius Battiwalla – Conductor

Sunday 8 June 2025 Sheffield City Hall at 4pm

Hayden Creation

The Sheffield International Concert Series season finale will leave you in awe of the wonders of creation. Under the baton of the Hallé’s charismatic Choral Director, Matthew Hamilton, the massed forces of the Hallé and the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus will be joined by a trio of exceptional soloists to breathe hope and joy into Haydn’s divine masterpiece, The Creation. The composer dreamt of a big sound with this oratorio – around 180 musicians and singers took part in the Viennese premiere – and this life-affirming work takes you on a musical journey from chaos and darkness to the creation of a new world. The perfect antidote to a world of despair and tyranny, this concert is a celebration of the beauty of life and the power of music.

The Hallé
Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus
Matthew Hamilton conductor
A trio of exceptional soloists

Pre-Concert Talk with BBC Broadcaster Trisha Cooper & Guests: 3pm

Tickets available from the City Hall box office, online, or on the door on the night.

Special offer – gather 10 friends and family together and book at the same time for just £10.50 per ticket – no matter where you sit!

BUY TICKETS

See What’s On this week in Sheffield on the Classical Sheffield website

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Go to next page: Tickets

Concerts 2010 to 2020

From 2010 to 2020 the Chorus performed works spanning seven centuries and eleven nations, in English, German, French, Hungarian, Latin, Russian and Latvian. We sang works by stalwarts such as Monteverdi, Tallis, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Verdi, Vaughan Williams, Tippett, Schoenberg, Britten and Bliss, but also by contemporary composers such as Wilby, Mealor, Jenkins, Part, Gorecki and Esenvalds.

Click on the links to view details of our performances for each season:

Steve’s Fantasy Concert

Steve’s fantasy concert was a performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in Sheffield’s City Hall in December 2011. The Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus (supplemented by singers from the CBSO Chorus), the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (conductor Michael Seal), Lindley Junior School Choir and three top-class soloists helped to create an extremely moving and memorable event.

Steve says “I chose the War Requiem in memory of my wife, who had died two years earlier, and my mother who died earlier that year, and because it was Britten’s centenary year and I’d worked with him in the 1960s and had admired his War Requiem since I first heard it in 1962. It is an expensive work to perform, but my mother had left me some money – and she’d have been glad that I put it to good use. The whole experience of helping to organise the concert and the emotions of the performance itself have left wonderful abiding memories.

Read why for Jo Briddock, 2nd Alto with the Chorus, her fantasy concert would have to include Brahms’ Requiem.

What’s your fantasy concert? If you have an occasion that you’d love to celebrate by supporting us to bring your fantasy concert to life, contact us now at 

 

Julie’s Fantasy Concert

In 2016 Julie Smethurst lived her dream of creating a large-scale choral concert at the City Hall on 4 June, to celebrate her 60th birthday and the 80th anniversary of the Chorus. “I’d always dreamed of being able to sponsor a classical concert to the extent of being able to say what I wanted on the programme. Vaughan Williams became my favourite English composer in my teens, so the whole concert is made up of his music, including the mesmerising The Lark Ascending. The choices have been chewed over quite a bit but all the pieces I wanted have made it to the final line-up – with no compromises.

Julie Smethurst

But even armed with extensive personal experience and supportive colleagues who have been organizing and promoting concerts for over 15 years, the financial and practical implications make for a long to-do list. Concerts of this nature can take between 2 – 5 years to plan, to allow for venue and performer diary dates to align and partnerships to be devised. These are the real keys to success due to the team of professionals and volunteers needed; members of the Chorus, orchestra, bands, soloists, conductors, music directors, and all the ‘behind the scenes’ personnel who are needed to deal with booking the venue, ticketing, contracting, stage management and publicity.

Is it daunting? “I’d be telling fibs if I said no, but it’s also such a thrill and a privilege to celebrate my birthday so collaboratively, and with a splendid, experienced, and friendly team of people.” Classical concerts on this scale are just about impossible to make commercially viable, hence the importance of finding sponsors. Julie explained “I certainly couldn’t afford this on my own. A full orchestra costs around £20,000, then there’s venue hire and soloists’ fees to name just a few items. So we are all clubbing together to get the event off the ground. This is the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream. I can’t quite believe that the wonderful Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra, four soloists, and two large choirs will all be joining forces to create an unforgettable Birthday celebration. I can’t wait!

Julie was prompted into making her dream a reality when fellow singer, Steve Terry, Bass with the Chorus, donned his ‘executive producer’ hat in December 2013. Read about his fantasy concert here.

So what would your concert be? Read why for Jo Briddock, 2nd Alto with the Chorus it would have to include Brahms’ Requiem.

What’s your fantasy concert? If you have an occasion that you’d love to celebrate by supporting us to bring your fantasy concert to life, contact us now at