As the Choral approaches its 190th birthday, what more appropriate than a concert that celebrates the very making of music? As a birthday present, not just to itself but to the whole choral world, HCS has commissioned the composer Kristina Arakelyan to write a companion piece to Elgar’s own paean to music, The Music Makers.

You may well already have heard music by Arakelyan, not only on broadcast – she has had London premieres of a piano concerto and organ toccata already in 2025 – but in our Huddersfield Town Hall Christmas concert last season, when we premiered another HCS commissioned work, the charming Christmas Lullaby. The new commission will be a substantial choral work and a world premiere, and like all good birthday presents it remains wrapped up, and marked ‘not to be opened until …’

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