What is Cathedral at Height?
Our brand new guided tour will take you take you behind the scenes at Chester Cathedral, providing an unparalleled level of public access. Our tower tour with a twist will allow you to immerse yourself in our unique blend of medieval and modern history. See one city, two countries and five counties from the top of the cathedral tower. Climb through 900 years of history and discover our hidden spaces.
Explore our bell-ringing chamber
Get up close and personal with our stained glass
Peer down on our fourteenth century quire stalls and Victorian organ
Amble along our galleries
Take in a panoramic view of the city and beyond from the roof
Discover the hidden cathedral
Tickets for the tour will be charged at £8 for adults and £6 for children. Individual bookings can be made in the cathedral on the day of the tour. For group bookings of six or more people contact Chester Cathedral Box Office on 01244 500959.
Please note that due to the fabric of our historic building the tour contains lots of steps and twists and turns. 216 steps up and down. Very small doorways. Spiral staircases. Narrow passageways. High walkways. No children under 8
More info
here
Photos of
Chester Cathedral
Life And Death In An Art Gallery
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Saturday 2 March 2019
Chester Cathedral 7.30
Rachmaninoff Isle of the Dead
Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
Conductor - David Chatwin
Katherine Lacy (Clarinet)
This evening’s soloist is the principal clarinet of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Katherine, will perform Mozart’s beautiful and haunting Clarinet Concerto. The Concerto was written in the same year of Mozart’s death and the first performance took place only three months before he died.
Two pieces in this concert were inspired by paintings. Rachmaninoff saw Arnold Boecklin’s painting entitled Isle of the Dead and composed this splendid Tone Poem. Mussorgsky arranged an exhibition of paintings by Viktor Hartmann and painted musical impressions of the paintings for piano. We have Ravel to thank for the orchestration.
Tickets priced at £16; £12 and £9 (Students £5) are available from Cathedral Booking Office on 01244 500959 or
www.chesterphilorchestra.co.uk
Bach: The Passion according to St John
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Saturday 23 March 2019
Chester Cathedral
Rogers Covey-Crump Evangelist
Quentin Brown Christus
Soloists from the Royal Northern College of Music
Chester Music Society Choir
Liverpool Sinfonia
Graham Jordan Ellis conductor
Bach St John Passion was written during Bach's first year as director of church music in Leipzig and was first performed on April 7, 1724.
The libretto is compiled from recitatives and choruses narrating the Passion of Christ as told in the Gospel of John, with arias reflecting on the action, and chorales using familiar hymn tunes and texts. Compared with the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion has been described as more extravagant, with an expressive immediacy, at times more unbridled and less "finished".
As Easter approaches this sublime work has great significance for the Christian community, but even for non-believers it represents a glorious example of choral and orchestral writing which deserves to be heard by all music lovers. Sung in German.
Tickets: £7 £14 £20 From Cathedral Ticket Desk in person or by telephone: 01244 500959, or at the door subject to availability. Concessions and group discounts available. Tickets are also available on-line at Chester cathedral.
www.chestermusicsociety.org.ukChester Bach Singers - Monteverdi Vespers Of 1610
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Saturday 8 June 2019
Chester Cathederal
The 2018-19 season climaxes with one of the most memorable concert experiences: Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, performed in the inspiring architecture of Chester Cathedral, a worthy stand-in for St Mark’s Venice. This sequence of vocal and choral masterpieces, composed just at the time when opera was taking off, is unique in its colour and vivid, virtuosic vocal writing. Chester Bach Singers performs alongside the talented young singers who make up the Fieri Consort, whose debut CD in 2017 focused on the music of Monteverdi and who the BBC Music Magazine described as ‘giving some of the best in the business a run for their scudi’. Accompanied by regular partners the Eighteenth Century Sinfonia and, for the first time, The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, this should be a high point of Chester music making in 2019.
Love, Life And Death
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Saturday 29 June 2019
Chester Cathedral 7.30 pm
Hindemith :- Symphonic Metamorphosis of themes by Carl Maria von Weber.
Shostakovich:- ‘Cello Concerto
Prokofiev:- Romeo and Juliet
Conductor - Marco Bellasi
Findlay Spence (‘Cello)
How better to close our Season of Life and Death in music than to hear these three very unusual, yet well known, pieces of (fairly) modern classical music. The Hindemith, with possibly the longest title in the musical repertoire, with it’s first orchestral performance in 1943 is tuneful with toe tapping exuberance. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto was composed in 1959 for Mstislav Rostropovich and is unusual in that the final three of the four movement work are played without a break. Folk tunes form some of the themes and there is even a reference to Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. The Prokofiev is probably the best known of all the contributions to this evenings concert. It is surprisingly the oldest of the three pieces being composed as far back as 1935. The Ballet for which it was composed was however not performed until 1940. The music is of course programmatic and tells the story of Romeo and Juliet in musical form. The fight between the Montagues and Capulets is well known as the introductory theme to the BBC Programme “The Apprentice”. Our soloist Findlay Spence is a young up and coming star from Scotland. He is currently Cellist and Composer studying at the Royal College of Music in London, and Musician in Residence at St. Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge.
Tickets priced at £16; £12 and £9 (Students £5) are available from Cathedral Booking Office on 01244 500959 or
chesterphilorchestra.co.uk
