Madeleine Venner – a new season with the London Philharmonic Choir

Tue 15 Sep, 2026

As we look ahead to a new season of music-making together, we caught up with the London Philharmonic Choir’s Chorus Director Madeleine Venner to reflect on her first year in the role and look ahead to what’s next.

It’s hard to believe that we are already into my second season as Chorus Director of the London Philharmonic Choir. The first year flew by; it was a varied and busy programme of musical projects, and also a chance to establish some new initiatives to further enhance this glorious choir.

We kicked off in October with Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. It was wonderful to work with him again after building such a close relationship during my time as Choral Director at the Hallé. To get to know and work with the LPO’s Principal Conductor, Ed Gardner, has been a real thrill – he, David Burke, Jesús Herrera and the rest of the team at the LPO have been brilliantly supportive and welcoming from the very beginning. We traversed quite some ground, from the extraordinary virtuosity of John Adams’s Harmonium to the restrained beauty of Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater.

A continuous thread throughout 2025/26 was the Choir’s warm relationship with our Guest Associate Chorus Director, Bo Wang, who coached the LPC magnificently in Mandarin for the Symphony Kūkai by Zou Ye; Bo brought his own choir, the London Chinese Philharmonic Choir, to sing alongside us under the baton of Tan Dun for the UK premiere of his own choral concerto, Nine, with the LPO. This was lots of fun to rehearse, and brought out a gift for the dramatic in our singers!

After the mammoth effort of nine straight performances of The Lord of the Rings films at the Royal Albert Hall, we closed the season with a concert as part of the St John’s Waterloo Festival (accompanied by the wonderful Jonathan Beatty and Iain Farrington), and then a Prom in late July with the BBC National Chorus of Wales, singing Szymanowski again and Lili Boulanger.

Aside from preparing the Choir to the highest standards for all these engagements, I’ve been focused on getting to know singers individually and finding new ways to help us develop collectively. We set up vocal check-in sessions, which enabled me to hear individual voices and to chat in an informal way about technique and choir. We’ve been reconsidering our rehearsal set-up, looking at venues which can offer a few more amenities such as tea/coffee at the rehearsal break (an important pick-me-up for singers who’ve just raced over from their day’s work). And we’ve initiated a series of one-to-one sessions for members with a vocal consultant; it’s been a delight to be joined by Norbert Meyn and Bo Wang for these.

So, what next? It’s an incredible season we have coming up – four extraordinary programmes, all under the baton of Ed Gardner. Britten’s shattering War Requiem opens the season on 26 September, and then a tour to Hong Kong later in the autumn. There, our Associate Chorus Director, Victoria Longdon, will lead the Choir as they reprise their colossal April 2025 performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, this time with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. What makes this season particularly special is that the LPC celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2027. I am so grateful to Ed and Jesús for marking this milestone with a stupendous choral programme: what better way to celebrate than by performing a brand new piece written for us by Dame Judith Weir? Our 27 February concert opens with the world premiere of her intensely beautiful new work, Respire, Inspire, alongside Vaughan Williams’s moving Dona Nobis Pacem and Fauré’s Requiem – always a firm choir favourite. After that, Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri (10 April) will provide a fascinating new challenge, before we close the season with Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius on 24 April.

We always welcome new members, so if you would like to be part of the amazing ensemble that is the London Philharmonic Choir, please visit the website.