As part of its 70th anniversary celebrations the Club has commissioned a new history which has been written by club member, David Edwards. “Some Splendid Noise: 70 years of Aldeburgh Music Club 1952-2022” was published in May 2022. Copies may be purchased from The Aldeburgh Bookshop, or by contacting publications@aldeburghmusic.club
In memoriam Edmond Fivet CBE
It is with great sadness that Aldeburgh Music Club reports the death of Edmond Fivet on 1st November 2021, after a short illness. Edmond had only recently retired as the Club’s Director of Music, after 13 years and some 40 concerts with the choir.
Edmond was formerly Director of the Royal College of Music Junior Department, and for eighteen years from 1989 to 2007 was the Principal of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. On retiring to Aldeburgh, he became increasingly involved in local music making, first conducting the Aldeburgh Music Club Choir in May 2007. Soon after, he was appointed the Club’s Music Director and over the following years conducted many memorable concerts with the choir, both at Snape Maltings and elsewhere, including performances of Messiah, Belshazzar’s Feast, Creation, the rarely-performed Alexander’s Feast, Carmina Burana, Rio Grande, Elijah and Requiems by Mozart, Fauré, Rutter and Verdi, and Masses by Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Karl Jenkins. In addition to the classical choral repertoire, he championed the work of new, young composers, commissioning Joanna Lee to compose Merman to celebrate the Music Club’s 60th anniversary, premiered at Orford Church in March 2012, and Joseph Phibbs’ Choral Songs of Homage, premiered at Orford in May 2013.
In 2008, along with Elizabeth Fivet and Pam Munks, he created the Prometheus Orchestra, in response to the wishes of a number of East Anglian musicians keen to perform together. Not only did the Orchestra accompany most of the Music Club concerts to an extremely high standard, it promoted its own concerts around the region, including regularly at Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall.
Edmond was appointed CBE in the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours for services to music and education.
Edmond was in rehearsal for a performance of Bach’s Easter Oratorio to be sung at Snape Maltings Concert Hall in March 2020, but both that and his final scheduled concert with the choir in May 2020 were cancelled because of the pandemic. His last concert with the Music Club therefore was a performance of Verdi’s Requiem to a full house at Snape on 23rd November 2019. In his own words, he felt that this was “a fine performance much admired by the audience.”