The Bach Choir unite in concert for the NHS nurses who saved their tenor's life

Over the last year and a half, I have seen many friends and colleagues in the music industry lose hope and turn to other jobs to put food on the table and many have not returned to the nomadic existence of a freelance musician. The pandemic was similarly unkind to singers and, for the 250 committed members of The Bach Choir – amateur singers with regular day jobs who sing at a professional level with the choir in concerts and recordings - interrupting the weekly Monday evening rehearsal was breaking a tradition of nearly 150 years.

On Sunday, after an absence of 18 months from the concert platform, The Bach Choir and I were finally able to give our first concert together, marking the occasion by uniting with the NHS to reflect on the pandemic. The Choir took this opportunity to tell their personal stories, commissioning new works using texts written by members of the Choir, including a mathematician and playwright.

In March 2020, The Bach Choir had just departed for a US tour which was almost immediately aborted on arrival in the States. Shortly after our return to the UK, Peter Johnstone, a choir member and a Cambridge Fellow of Mathematics, was admitted to hospital with Covid-19. At Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge he remained on a ventilator for 3 months and while in this coma, Peter had a striking vision of a garden. Embarking on 2 months in recovery, Peter was finally able to walk (with the help of nurses and a with a zimmer-frame) outside into the hospital’s Jubilee Garden and, to his amazement, he discovered the garden of his dreams was a reality.

Months later when Peter returned to Addenbrooke’s for a check-up, his doctor presented him with the diaries the nurses had compiled while he was mostly unconscious on a ventilator. The diaries helped Peter to separate out fact from the drug-induced delirium and he learnt that the medical team had played music – Handel’s Messiah – to him while he was sedated. Overwhelmed by the care and attention he received from these complete strangers Peter discovered that at the end of their shift, each nurse had written daily reports wishing him a swift recovery.

After a lunch in Cambridge where a fully recovered Peter had shared his story, I approached choral composer Richard Blackford to commission him to set Peter’s extraordinary journey to music. Richard took the diaries - contextualised by Peter’s own account of his journey through the ICU including the realisation he had contracted Covid-19, hallucinations, and gradual rehabilitation - and set them to music.

Vision of a Garden opens with the nurses who cared for Peter introducing themselves: ‘Hi Peter, my name is Sini, me and Alvin are looking after you tonight, Hi Peter, my name is Jericho, the late shift nurse.’ Then the choir takes on the role of a united nursing staff singing ‘I truly hope you feel better soon…Keep fighting! Get out of hospital soon. Keeping fighting! Continue to fight. All the best! I hope you continue to improve.’ Richard’s handling of the text is supremely well-crafted and very moving whilst avoiding sentimentality.

Peter has dedicated the cantata to all the NHS staff who nursed him back to health. We invited Addenbrooke’s Intensive Care Unit nurses to come to last Sunday’s concert to hear the new piece. Talking to ITV News before the concert, Peter described the occasion as the biggest day of his life.

Before Blackford’s cantata, the NHS Chorus-19 and their Director Anna Lapwood joined the Bach Choir in performing the Tallis hymn on which Vaughan Williams based his famous Fantasia. In the spirit of reflection and renewal, the choir asked its members to come up with their own settings for the hymn to reinvent Tallis’ original work. Caroline Hoffman’s new words of hope perfectly recognise the challenges and wonders of living through the pandemic as she writes movingly about hearing birdsong during the silence of lockdown.

The choir also commissioned a new work by Gabriel Jackson, again written during lockdown and featuring the natural world. Gabriel set powerful words by Laura-Jane Foley, a playwright and soprano in the Choir to illustrate the journey from darkness to light during the pandemic. We loved what Laura-Jane and Gabriel had written so much that we created a short film with We Dream Films, following the story of a young girl who becomes entranced by the beauty of the forest despite the grave threats of the climate crisis. Faces of choir members, filmed individual singing their part during lockdown, are superimposed onto the rocks in the forest in the short film.

Finally, the programme concluded with Faure’s immortal and beloved Requiem, performed in remembrance of all those we have lost over the past 18 months. It was a great occasion for uniting people in the many and varied soundscapes that music provides, alongside the solace and affirmation we all crave. The Bach Choir has made its name championing choral masterpieces with some new commissions – soon we will release our recording of six new chorales by six award-winning young composers who we commissioned – but this concert responded directly and immediately to world events. Giving a voice to the choir’s individual members has brought us closer to our collective experience of these destabilising times.

The pandemic has taught us many things, not least taking anything for granted. Our cultural industry is essential to the well-being of every person: it isn’t about being elitist or niche and curiously, I get the sense that there is a growing public realisation of this vital importance. The sight of 250 beaming faces on the stage of the Festival Hall was a hugely emotional moment but the biggest applause on this occasion was for the audience of Intensive Care Unit nurses who saved Professor’s Johnstone’s life.