Why 152? I am sure many of you will be looking at the name of our group and wondering where it came from. We are certainly not the first group to be called a number. The Sixteen, are a very prestigious choir in the UK but their name is more to do with the make up of their group, we do not have 152 performers.

Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed that in a past performance, the Bach Cantata we performed had the reference number BWV152. This was the first concert for “152” and it was conceived to perform this cantata so it seemed apt to pick this number, but why a number at all?

It is easy to forget the importance of the music. Classical music was the pop music of its day. There were no recording, or top 40 at the time of Handel or Puccini, but gossip and news would be rife with the latest composition by Mozart, did you see that opera by Verdi, did you hear what happened at Stravinsky’s last performance. By extension of this premise the composers were the rock stars, living the rock star life style. The young think they invented badly behaved musicians, the wine, women and song life style. They are wrong, we know better.

So 152 actually means nothing. It is no more important than a room number. The message is, “The Music is more Important”. We, as performers, are here to give interpretations of the music. Hopefully you will enjoy the performance but when we are long gone the music will live on. No one will remember the number 152 in 100 years but Bach and Purcell will still be Eternal Rock Stars.