After twenty-one years at the helm, Geoffrey Spratt is to conduct the Fleischmann Choir for the last time, with the choir appearing in the opening gala event of the Cork International Choral Festival, held at Cork City Hall on Wednesday, 1 May. Joined by members of the Cologne Philharmonic Choir, soloists Mary Hegarty (soprano), Bridget Knowles (contralto), Robin Tritschler (tenor) and Owen Gilhooly (baritone), and members of the Cork School of Music Symphony, Spratt will be conducting Michael Tippett’s 1944 work A Child of Our Time.

The work, described as a secular oratorio, is inspired by the assasination of a German diplomat by a young jewish refugee in 1938 — and the Nazi’s reaction in the form of the pogrom known as the Kristallnacht. Tippett produced the libretto himself on the advice of T.S. Eliot, and the work’s themes are said to have been influenced by the composer’s experience of Jungian psychoanalysis.

The structure of the work is said to be based on Handel’s Messiah, while the use of American spirituals echoes the chorales of Bach’s Passions. Tippett summarised the oratorio’s three parts as ‘man at odds with his shadow’, ‘the “Child of Our Time” … enmeshed in the drama of his personal fate and the elemental social forces of our day’, and ‘man’s acceptance of his shadow in relation to his light’.

The Fleischmann Choir, founded in 1992, was originally called the Cork School of Music Symphony Orchestra Chorus — its first performance celebrated the music of Aloys Fleischmann, a founder of the Cork International Choral Festival who had died the previous year, and the choir was renamed after the composer shortly afterwards. Geoffrey Spratt is also Director of the CIT Cork School of Music, founder-conductor of the Irish Youth Choir and Canticum Novum.

The Cork International Choral Festival runs from 1 to 5 May with over 5,000 singers taking part. Choral competitions are run throughout the festival, with the Fleischmann International Trophy awarded to the best overall choir.

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