The latest series of free lunchtime concerts in Chichester Cathedral launches on Tuesday, September 10.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Now, obviously
00:06for centuries, music has been absolutely central to the life of Chichester Cathedral, and one
00:12of the lovely aspects of that music is the lunchtime concerts. Now, Tim Reveld, who's
00:17Assistant Organist at Chichester Cathedral, is in charge of putting together the programme
00:22for the lunchtime concerts. The next bunch of, the next term of lunchtime concerts start
00:28on Tuesday, September the 10th. Now, what do you look for when you're putting together
00:33a programme? You've got a lovely, lovely list of performers coming up, it looks great. What
00:38do you search for?
00:40We are looking for excellent performers, people who bring interesting and distinctive repertoire
00:48to the series, and we're looking for variety. We're looking for people who can balance a
00:53programme to take a 40 or 50 minute programme and make it internally balanced and interesting.
01:00And we are looking for a balanced series, so we're looking for variety between concerts
01:07as well as within them. What we really love as well is the balance between the familiar,
01:15the well-known, the well-loved, the famous, and the unknown, the hidden gems, the music
01:22that might have been lost to history sometimes, unless somebody has really dug around and
01:27rediscovered it. We've got a few of those coming up.
01:30That sounds great, and we should point out that these concerts are, of course, free,
01:34aren't they? But tell me more the significance of them being lunchtime concerts. Does that
01:39make them instantly less formal? Is it a different nature to the concert for the fact it's at
01:45lunchtime?
01:46I think it probably does. If something's happening at lunchtime, then you simply have
01:52to integrate it into your day. You've probably done something in the morning. You're probably
01:56off to do something in the afternoon. You won't have dressed up specially to come up
02:01to this concert, at least I don't think anybody does. And yeah, it's different. It feels different
02:08from an evening concert. It's light outside, unless we're in really the depths of winter.
02:15It's meant to be sunny outside in our summer series, though this year it hasn't been. Yes,
02:20it certainly feels different. And I think performers respond differently as well. I
02:26think they choose different music at a lunchtime rather than at an evening. I think that the
02:32whole sense is a little bit less formal.
02:35Yeah, and the lovely thing is, you were hinting, that it's a series that's envious of the cathedrals
02:41that work so well.
02:43Well, maybe that's putting it a little bit strongly, but we are really fortunate in Chichester.
02:49We get a lovely, large audience who are interested, willing to engage, willing to listen to music
03:00that they haven't heard before, as well as happy to hear old favourites. And it's an
03:07audience that really is happy to concentrate and listen properly and seriously to this
03:13music. So it's not a trivial exercise, even if it might be, say, less formal than an evening
03:20concert. It's still a serious business. And that really comes from some special interaction
03:27between performers and audience.
03:29Fantastic. Well, the first one is, they're always on a Tuesday, aren't they?
03:35They're always on Tuesdays.
03:36Tuesday, September the 10th. Tim, lovely to speak to you. Good luck with that series.
03:41You too, Phil.