Latest series of free lunchtime concerts in Chichester Cathedral launches

The latest series of free lunchtime concerts in Chichester Cathedral launches on Tuesday, September 10.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Now, obviously

00:06for centuries, music has been absolutely central to the life of Chichester Cathedral, and one

00:12of the lovely aspects of that music is the lunchtime concerts. Now, Tim Reveld, who's

00:17Assistant Organist at Chichester Cathedral, is in charge of putting together the programme

00:22for the lunchtime concerts. The next bunch of, the next term of lunchtime concerts start

00:28on Tuesday, September the 10th. Now, what do you look for when you're putting together

00:33a programme? You've got a lovely, lovely list of performers coming up, it looks great. What

00:38do you search for?

00:40We are looking for excellent performers, people who bring interesting and distinctive repertoire

00:48to the series, and we're looking for variety. We're looking for people who can balance a

00:53programme to take a 40 or 50 minute programme and make it internally balanced and interesting.

01:00And we are looking for a balanced series, so we're looking for variety between concerts

01:07as well as within them. What we really love as well is the balance between the familiar,

01:15the well-known, the well-loved, the famous, and the unknown, the hidden gems, the music

01:22that might have been lost to history sometimes, unless somebody has really dug around and

01:27rediscovered it. We've got a few of those coming up.

01:30That sounds great, and we should point out that these concerts are, of course, free,

01:34aren't they? But tell me more the significance of them being lunchtime concerts. Does that

01:39make them instantly less formal? Is it a different nature to the concert for the fact it's at

01:45lunchtime?

01:46I think it probably does. If something's happening at lunchtime, then you simply have

01:52to integrate it into your day. You've probably done something in the morning. You're probably

01:56off to do something in the afternoon. You won't have dressed up specially to come up

02:01to this concert, at least I don't think anybody does. And yeah, it's different. It feels different

02:08from an evening concert. It's light outside, unless we're in really the depths of winter.

02:15It's meant to be sunny outside in our summer series, though this year it hasn't been. Yes,

02:20it certainly feels different. And I think performers respond differently as well. I

02:26think they choose different music at a lunchtime rather than at an evening. I think that the

02:32whole sense is a little bit less formal.

02:35Yeah, and the lovely thing is, you were hinting, that it's a series that's envious of the cathedrals

02:41that work so well.

02:43Well, maybe that's putting it a little bit strongly, but we are really fortunate in Chichester.

02:49We get a lovely, large audience who are interested, willing to engage, willing to listen to music

03:00that they haven't heard before, as well as happy to hear old favourites. And it's an

03:07audience that really is happy to concentrate and listen properly and seriously to this

03:13music. So it's not a trivial exercise, even if it might be, say, less formal than an evening

03:20concert. It's still a serious business. And that really comes from some special interaction

03:27between performers and audience.

03:29Fantastic. Well, the first one is, they're always on a Tuesday, aren't they?

03:35They're always on Tuesdays.

03:36Tuesday, September the 10th. Tim, lovely to speak to you. Good luck with that series.

03:41You too, Phil.