LAUNCESTON Choral Society’s contribution to marking the centenary of the end of the Great War took place recently in the presence of the deputy mayor and mayoress, Cllr Dave and Carol Gordon and the vice chairman of Launceston Royal British Legion, Terry Sully and his wife.

The choir performed Fauré’s ‘Requiem’, which formed the structure of the programmed devised by musical director, Jonathan Mann, with solos by Dawn Felton, soprano, and Julian Rippon, baritone. Other music appropriate to the occasion included three movements from Brahms’ ‘German Requiem’ sung in German and performed with a piano duet especially written by Brahms’ to enable smaller forces to perform the work.

The accompaniment was played on two pianos by guest organist David Crocker and the choir’s regular accompanist, Liz Jones. Other works were John Ireland’s anthem ‘Greater Love’ and Karl Jenkins’ setting of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Hymn Before Action’ from ‘The Armed Man’.

The musical items were in turn interspersed with poems read by Hamish Marshall from the BBC. After his reading of ‘For the Fallen’ by Laurence Binyon, the choir sang Douglas Guest’s haunting setting of the verse which begins, ‘The shall grow not old as we that are left grow old’. This was followed by a two-minute silence after which Dawn and the choir sang ‘In Paradisum’, the heavenly last movement of Fauré’s ‘Requiem’.

Mr Sully then told the audience about the work of the legion in the 21st century and the retiring collection, which followed raised over £400, which was raised to over £600 by Mr Marshall donating his fee to the collection. The audience then retired to the Sunday School hall for refreshments.

Of note was the display at the front of the church provided by Mr Mann, which contained a tin helmet from Vimy Ridge where Jonathan’s Canadian grandfather had fought and two shell cases transformed by recuperating ‘Tommies’ into beautiful vases with raised flower decoration and the inscription ‘Ypres’.