Miriam Galea meets Dr John Bethell, music director of the North West Festival Choir, a group of British choristers that brought music to our shores last May
Dr John Bethell is a dedicated and well-meaning man whom I met in one of the halls at Le Méridien Phoenicia. Dr Bethell was winding up a rehearsal with the North West Festival Choir made up of members from around 40 choral societies affiliated to Making Music, the National Federation of Music Societies in the North West of England. When I peeped into the hall, he instantly acknowledged me and wrapped up the gathering of a large group of British men and women, most of them silver haired and pink with the sun.
“It’s an amazing feat for the choir to have come to this lovely island,” Dr Bethell tells me, as we walk out into the hotel gardens to find a spot to sit in the shade. The North West Festival Choir visited Malta last May and spent a week giving concerts in a number of different churches and cathedrals around the island. The choir performed at St Paul’s Anglican Pro-Cathedral in Valletta, the Immaculate Conception Church in Cospicua, St Lawrence Collegiate Church in Vittoriosa and also in the grand ballroom of Le Méridien Phoenicia to mark the hotel’s 60th anniversary.
“A lot of people think that the North West Festival Choir is a ready made choir,” Dr Bethell says, “It isn’t. Making Music is an organisation in the UK which consists of many choirs and organisations, and which is there to advise and help the hundreds of choristers that form part of these groups.” The offices of Making Music are based in London. The North West Festival Choir is assembled every two years when members from the different choirs coming from the North West of England and the Isle of Man come together to sing in one large group. “So most of them would have never sung together before”, Dr Bethell comments. He is the musical director responsible for conducting workshops to rehearse the choristers hailing from different parts of England and to teach the classical works they will perform when they embark on their next tour.
In Malta the choir performed works ranging from Haydn and Vivaldi to a classical piece by local composer John Galea, Missa Ignes Charitatis. Dr Bethell says how interesting it was for the choir to sing to music by a Maltese composer, and is happy that his choir was also joined by two other local choirs, the Amadeus Chamber Choir from Gozo and the Chorus Urbanus, resulting in a large choir of over 200 voices. The choristers were also accompanied by a Maltese orchestra made up of members of the National Orchestra and young music students from the University of Malta. Dr Bethell was thrilled by this musical collaboration, especially when he saw the young people’s involvement. “My role today is to help young people understand music,” he explains, “We’ve got to get youths to understand what it’s like to sing oratorio. It’s not boring music – I animate it and act it out when I direct, so that people can follow and understand what’s happening.” The choir even plans to return to the island in two years’ time, in October however, so that it will be a more ideal time to reach young people who in May are usually caught up with exams.
The North West Festival Choir goes back almost 30 years, to 1979, when they were first invited to visit Denmark. Since then they have been on numerous tours together which took them to several countries such as Denmark, Finland and New York. The North West Festival Choir is a non-profit making group whose members pay all their travel and accommodation fees themselves. In Malta, their concerts helped raise money for the Malta Community Chest Fund, as well as for the organ in St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral in Valletta. The case for this organ, in fact, came from a cathedral in the North West of England. “It is very old and requires Lm80,000 to be restored,” Dr Bethell explains.
Dr Bethell also works as a music director on cruise ships where he works with passengers on board who are willing to make music and perform in front of an audience at the end of the cruise. He is quite an expert in bringing people together and instilling in them his own love and enthusiasm for music. He comes from the Isle of Man, and finds similarities between his homeland and the island of Malta, the latter being smaller but more populated. “We come to make music; that’s all we want to do,” the choirmaster says, “I believe we have to make music more and more alive. We have to sing these great works, and we musn’t let them go out of the repertoire.”
The performances of the North West Festival Choir in the Cottonera and in Valletta were very well received, being packed on many of the nights. The choir performed in front of the President of Malta Eddie Fenech Adami and raised a considerable sum in aid of charity. Dr Bethell also met Fr Mifsud from the Vittoriosa parish and admires the work the Father does with the community there. “I’d love to see more of your beautiful historic island,” he concludes, visibly contented by the warm Mediterranean air and the bright blue sky before him, “I hope to return and spend some time being me here.”