A CHOIR from Malvern’s twinned Czech town of Marinaske Lazne is set to grace the local stage for a special performance.
Malvern welcomes the Fontana Choir to perform at Elmslie House at 7pm on Saturday, June 29. The choir will also perform at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Ledbury on Sunday, June 30.
The choir will raise the roof with a repertoire of traditional Czech country songs, religious works and classical pieces by Dvorak and Chopin. In Ledbury Fontana Choir will be joined by The Hills
Singers with whom they sang with great enjoyment in the Czech Republic.
The visit is the latest in a series of performances held in the partner towns including the memorable visit of the Canzona Children’s Choir and Recorder Quartet during Malvern Civic Week in 2015.
The two towns have a rich intertwined history.
As the tumultuous crowd gathered in Prague’s Wenceslas Square in November 1989, Malvern resident the late Laurie Gregory waved his “Love and kisses from England” banner to the amusement and ecstatic applause of the heaving crowd of Czechs and Slovaks during the Velvet Revolution.
Laurie met a young music teacher from Marianske Lazne. A friendship was formed, and no time was lost in organising a visit to Malvern in 1990 by the town’s Youth Orchestra.
The excited young children travelled by coach across the previously forbidden West and charmed Malvern audiences for several days with their high standard of musicianship and obvious enjoyment of their new travel experience.
So successful was the visit that it was repeated in 1991. Many reciprocal visits have taken place over the years.
In 2015 the 30 strong Canzona Children’s Choir and Recorder Quartet from the Fredryk Chopin Conservatoire visited Malvern during Civic Week and in 2018 The Hills Singers from Malvern visited Marianske Lazne during the Czech town’s 200th anniversary celebration of its founding as a Spa Resort.
Now the wheel has turned full circle, and The Hills Singers are delighted to host the visit by Fontana Choir in Malvern and Ledbury.
Tickets at £10 can be booked through www.ticketsource.co.uk or on the door. Refreshments are available.
