The Sum Of Many Parts Monday 17th August 8pm

The Chorus of the Great Malvern Festival of Singing
17th August 2026 | 8.00pm
The Chapel of Malvern College

Few musical experiences are as overwhelming — or as quietly transformative — as hearing a great choir weave many independent voices into a single, breathing whole. The Sum of Many Parts is a celebration of choral music at its most intricate, spacious, and luminous: works in which multiple vocal lines combine to create something far greater than the sum of their individual strands.

Performed by The Chorus of the Great Malvern Festival of Singing, this one-hour programme brings together some of the most profound and beautiful works written for multi-part choir, heard in the resonant and atmospheric setting of the Chapel of Malvern College.

The evening opens with Allegri’s Miserere, whose soaring lines and haunting plainsong echoes have captivated listeners since the Sistine Chapel of the 17th century. Tallis’s monumental Spem in alium — written for forty independent voices — remains one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance polyphony, its sound unfolding like an architectural miracle in music.

Romantic warmth and intimacy come to the fore in Brahms’s Geistliches Lied and Rheinberger’s Abendlied, both radiant expressions of faith, tenderness, and consolation. Biebl’s beloved Ave Maria layers simple chant with glowing choral harmony, while Pearsall’s Lay a Garland spins an exquisite web of yearning and grief.

Completing the programme is Charles Wood’s Hail, gladdening Light, a work of noble sweep and luminous sonority that crowns the evening in sound.

This is choral music at its most generous, immersive, and transcendent — an hour to be surrounded by sound, stillness, and beauty.

Tickets Just £10