Our Society

It is not often we have two musical directors appearing on the same platform in one evening, but for the second concert in their 60th anniversary season the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society invited Tony Gould, musical director in the 1960s and early 70s, to conduct, and their present musical director Robin Morrish to appear as soloist in a performance of the Brahms violin concerto. The...

In celebrating 60 years of fine music-making since its foundation, Tonbridge Philharmonic Society chose to present a special performance of Verdi's Requiem in the magnificent setting of Tonbridge School Chapel. Verdi's masterpiece is acknowledged to be an Everest in the choral and orchestral repertoire, demanding huge resources in scale and talent from singers and players alike. Climbing Everest...

A smaller-than-usual audience was royally rewarded in Tonbridge School Chapel on Saturday by a chorus augmented by the return visit of the Arvoly Choir of Le Puy-en-Velay. If any regular supporters were put off by the slightly austere look of the programme presented by Robin Morrish and his entourage then it is “they of little faith” who were the losers. The programme began with Saint Saens’...

The Tonbridge Philharmonic Orchestra was in fine form in a programme of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven. It settled into the warm and yet crystal-clear acoustic of the Baptist church giving the listener a treat. The standard lamps at the back of the platform suggested something of a chamber music evening, and much of the playing, particularly from the wind group was in that vein. The large...

Time stood still for a couple of hours in St Augustine's Chapel just a week before Good Friday, the day for which Bach composed his Passion according to St John - a form of job interview the like of which surely has never been seen before or since. We, the soundbite generation, take for granted easy and immediate access to music in all its forms today. To attend a complete two-hour-plus...

A new season of concerts by the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society was celebrated with an impressive new format for the programme. The new-style booklet is both visually attractive and helpfully informative. The first part of the evening was devoted to two challenging orchestral pieces. Weber's Overture to Euryanthe set the tone of the evening with accomplished orchestral playing and sensitive...

What a marvellous life-enhancing piece 'Papa' Haydn's 'The Creation' is! And how appropriate that Tonbridge Philharmonic Society's performance on June 26th should celebrate the 20th anniversary of their relationship with their German partners in this concert, the Evangelische Kantorei from Heusenstamm in Germany. Conductor Robin Morrish dedicated the concert to the memory of Harold Best,...

Tonbridge Philharmonic Society broke with tradition in its hugely enjoyable March concert in presenting what conductor Robin Morrish rightly described as a Festival of Youth and Spring - an excellently chosen programme which linked Brahms' Academic Festival Overture with Carl Orff's spectacular Carmina Burana and John Rutter's Feel the Spirit. Youth was a major theme, not least in that the...

The Orchestra of the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society filled Big School recently with an attractive programme consisting of music by two masters of the modern orchestra, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky, together with that most romantic of all piano concertos, Schumann in A minor. Hanlie Martens was the soloist, making a very welcome return to the town; the orchestral leader was Penelope Howard and the...

There can be few works as monumental in scale and conception as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and it was fitting that this work was given a majestic interpretation by the combined forces of the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society Choir and Orchestra at the weekend. It deals with big issues such as war and peace, and big ideas such as Divine glory and the insignificance of man. From the opening solid...