For the first time since 2019, Oakfield Choir of Frome perform at the Frome Festival with their early evening one-hour concert of Vivaldi's Gloria along with two of Handel's Coronation anthems: The King Shall Rejoice, and the ever-popular Zadok the Priest.

Vivaldi's Gloria (RV589), a firm favourite with choirs and choral societies across the land, is believed to have been written in 1715, during Antonio Vivaldi's employment at the Ospedale della Pieta, a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice, where he had been engaged as a violin teacher. This Gloria, the most popular of the three that Vivaldi wrote, was probably composed for the Pieta and first performed there.

Georg Frideric Handel, born in 1685 in Halle in modern-day Germany, became a naturalised British subject and spent much of his adult life residing in Brook Street in London. He was commissioned in 1727 to write four anthems for the coronation of Hanoverian King George II. The King Shall Rejoice takes its text from Psalm 21 and is in four movements, ending with a D major double fugue. Handel's setting of Zadok the Priest has been used at every British coronation since 1727 and remains the best-known of Handel's Coronation Anthems. Its instrumental introduction is said to have been timed precisely to allow George II to process up the aisle of Westminster Abbey.

Joining Oakfield Choir for this performance are soprano Amy Carson, mezzo-soprano Marie Elliott, and organist David Bednall, and the concert is conducted by Oakfield Choir's musical director, Neil Moore.

The performance is on Wednesday 6th July at 18:00 in Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Street, Frome, and tickets are available from the Frome Festival box office at the Cheese & Grain in Frome, priced £10. This is festival event 608.