Raising the bar for community choirs
Michael White, 6 November 2008, Ham and High

Ronald Corp is an all-round champion of amateurs - as the conductor of a choral society, orchestra and children's choir and a composer of music for them.

As somebody who has enough trouble dealing with one, relatively uncomplicated life, I'm always perplexed by people like Ronald Corp who deal with several and appear to slip in between them effortlessly.
There's his life as a conductor - which gets an airing this Saturday when he takes the Highgate Choral Society and New London Orchestra (both of them his own ensembles) through an epic programme of Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst at All Hallows' Church in Gospel Oak.
Then there's his overlappingand increasingly successful existence as a composer - with a new recordingof his Christmas Mass issued just the other week on EMI.
And if that weren't enough, there's his late-found vocation as a Church of England priest - with a non-stipendiary appointment at St. Alban's in Holborn where you'll find him every Sunday morning, robed and in the sanctuary.
"I discovered music and religion at the same time", he says, "when I joined a church choir as a teenager. For a nano-second back then, I thought of studying for the priesthood straight away. But, without wanting to sound too pious about it, I decided that music would be my mission.
"So that's what I went for, and didn't get ordained until ten years ago when it finally seemed the right time".
Meanwhile, he wasn't idle.
After a music degree at Oxford, he toyed with academia, started composing, joined the BBC as a music librarian/ occasional producer-cum-presenter - and set up the BBC Club Choir - which began as something informal but then acquired enough prestige to be making its own broadcasts and appearing at the proms.
From there, it was direct route to the Highgate Choral Society which he took on 20 yearsago and has steered doggedly toward higher standards - even though it remains essentially a local community choir.
In the recent past, it's geared up to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the South Bank and a Berlioz Requiem at St. Paul's Cathedral. Next April, there's Elgar's Apostles at the Barbican.
And the challenge of these repertoire dates, says Corp, gives the choir its edge.
"Not every choral society offers you the chance to sing blockbusters like the Berlioz requiem. The fact that we do attracts singers from all over London, with choir members coming from as far away as Chiswick, and plenty of people wanting to audition.
"It's a myth that noone wants to sing anymore. If you're doing interesting work to a good standard, people will always want to take part."
Another factor, though, is having decent soloists. Corp is involved with the grant giving work of the Musicians Benevolent Fund, sitting on audition panels that enable him to catch young artists at the threshold of significant careers and book them before they get too expensive.
"Rebecca Evans", he says with some pride, "sang with us before she was catapulted to stardom. We've also had Elizabeth Watts, who's now doing very well.
"And when the choir find themselves working with voices like that, it's a real incentive to push the boundaries."
As is a relationship with an entirely professional band like the New London Orchestra, which in fact owes its existence to the Highgate Choral Society having started as a pick-up band for an HCS concert 20 years ago.
Turning into a more regular ensemble, it then got a recording contract with Hyperion and developed the commercially astute speciality of English light music for which it's now become famous - Eric Coates, Lionel Monckton et al.
"The absurd thing", says Corp " is that when we started doing this - with a disc of things like the Dick barton theme and Calling All Workers - Classic FM said they wouldn't play it because it because it was 'too light', then it went into the charts, so they had to, and it all worked very well for us.
"But now we've moved on and are looking at entirely different repertoire. Our next project is likely to be music by the mid- 20th century Polish composer Grazyna Bacewitz - a definite shift in direction there."
One of the composers that the NLO will presumably always champion, though, is Corp himself though, and he has a sizeable catalogue of work, including a piano concerto played earlier this year at Cadogan Hall and quantities of choral music written for Highgate and other groups, professional or amateur.
"It's one of my constant complaints that composition students these days come out of college and immediately want to write for the London Sinfonietta or the BBC Singers, forgetting that there's a whole other world of amateurs who need good new music to perform.
"Where are the War Requiems and Child of Our Times of today?
"I can't think of anythingof that quality that's passing into the repertory anymore.
"The one great hope is James MacMillan. But, otherwise, composers don't seem able to pitch it right when they're dealing with big choirs. They need encouragement."
And they especially need encouragement, Corp thinks, to write for children.
An audience close to his heart, in that it is yet another of his projects, is the New London Childrens Choir which rehearses every Sunday afternoon in a Highgate primary school.
Since it was founded in 1991, the NNLC has becoem a standard port of call when major London venues programmes something that requires a sub group of unbroken voices - like the Berlioz Te Deum it was recently adorning at the Royal Albert Hall.
And like almost every other bit of Ronald Corp Enterprises, the NLCC has a disc just out - a compendium of new British music for children's chorus on the budget Naxos label.
Taking its title, Pigs Could Fly, from one of the featured pieces, Howard Skempton, it also has music by John Woolrich, John Tavener, Peter Maxwell, Davies and other - some of it commissioned by the NLC through the years.
"It's been one of my priorities, to help build up this kind of repertoire "says Corp, who doesn't explain how this fits alongside all thebother prioirities in his life, sacred and secular, although it clearly does.
I can't help feeling he should offer master classes in time management. except I daren't suggest it. He would probably say yes.