choral music
Richard Bratby
Just over a decade ago it was predicted by those supposedly in the know that Ilan Volkov would succeed Sakari Oramo as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In the event, the gig went to Andris Nelsons, and it was probably for the best. An artistic temperament as inquisitive and uncompromising as Volkov’s probably wouldn’t have been well suited to the box-ticking and base-touching involved in planning full length seasons for an orchestra with the CBSO's civic responsibilities. Which is not to say that the orchestra doesn’t have a noticeable rapport with Volkov – or, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
William Christie kicked off Passion season in London this year with a particularly sombre reading of the St John. The veteran conductor brought his French choir and orchestra, Les Arts Florissants, and a line-up of relatively young soloists to the Barbican. They turned out to be variable, but the best of the voices elevated proceedings, as did Christie’s sensitive shaping of the music, the results always lyrical and engaging.At the risk of labouring tired stereotypes, the performance here sounded more French than German. The orchestral tone was less distinct, quieter and lacking focussed in Read more ...
David Nice
Asked to choose five or ten minutes of favourite Berlioz on the 150th anniversary of his death (yesterday), surely few would select anything from his giant Requiem (Grande Messe des Morts). This is a work to shock and awe, not to be loved - music for a state funeral given a metaphysical dimension by the composer's hallmark extremes in original scoring. It cries out for an ecclesiastical edifice to resonate with the masses and provide the voids, but St Paul's Cathedral has always been one step too far: glorious to be in, not the place for a true musical experience. All things considered, John Read more ...
David Nice
Would Verdi and Puccini have composed more non-operatic music, had they thrived in a musical culture different to Italy's? Hard to say. What we do know is that they both became absolute masters of orchestration – Puccini rather quicker than Verdi, living as he did in an entirely post-Wagnerian era. Verdi left us one great mass, the Requiem, Puccini a youthful and honest expression of the liturgy as well as other early pieces he mined for Manon Lescaut and La bohème. It made a pretty, occasionally stirring climax to an evening which could have done with an absolute masterpiece.One such, even Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
A day devoted entirely to the life and work of György Ligeti celebrated this composer’s remarkable oeuvre through a sequence programme of film, talks and concerts of his music. The final two of these performances were a short recital of his choral works, given by the BBC Singers in St Giles’ Cripplegate, and a concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra of some of Ligeti’s orchestral masterpieces in the Barbican Hall.Under their chief conductor Sofi Jeannin – who led with style, clarity and precision – the BBC Singers (female members, picured below at the later event) opened their concert with Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Monteverdi Vespers are usually a grand affair, but Harry Christophers showed they can work just as well on a smaller scale. Cadogan Hall has a dry acoustic, at least compared to St Mark’s Basilica, so there is little opportunity for billowing waves of choral declamation, echoing through the galleries. Instead, Christophers aims for focus and clarity, with swift tempos and a modest dynamic range. His singers and players respond well, with good balance and ensemble, although the virtuosic demands of the melodic lines were often taxing for the soloists.Christophers (pictured below by Marco Read more ...
Robert Beale
Berlioz called it a "concert opera". His telling of the Faust story is in scenes and highly theatrical, but a bit of a challenge to put on in the theatre, with its marching armies, floating sylphs, dancing will-o’-the-wisps and galloping horses. It seems he expected it to be a kind of giant cantata, and that’s the way the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder perform it. But it’s still operatic in concept, and that very theatricality demands much of its chorus as well as its soloists – the assembled choir has to represent "peasants, penitents, drinkers, gnomes, sylphs, soldiers, students, will-o’-the- Read more ...
David Nice
Practitioners of musical authenticity and scholarly research, so guarded and protective of their territory in the early days, now like to spread the love around. So if an amateur choir of 100-plus like the BBC Symphony Chorus, celebrating its 90th anniversary, and selected members of a symphony orchestra want to tackle Bach's B minor Mass – as anyone in their right minds would wish to, since it's a monumental masterpiece – then they could hardly do better than entice the dynamic John Butt away from the small forces of his Dunedin Consort for a one-off spectacular.Or could they? As Butt beat Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In 1955, Sylvia Plath attended the Advent Carol Service at King’s College in Cambridge. Like countless other visitors, listeners and viewers before and since, she was entranced by “the tall chapel, with its cobweb lace of fan-vaulting” lit by “myriads of flickering candles”, and above all by the “clear bell-like” voices of the choristers, with their “utterly pure and crystal notes”. The American poet told her mother in a letter that “I never have been so moved in my life”. For a century now – the first Christmas service took place in 1918 – the “unearthly silvery glitter” of carols sung by Read more ...
David Nice
Like the fountains that sprang up in the desert during the Holy Family's flight into Egypt - according to a charming episode in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew - Berlioz's new-found creativity in the 1850s flowed from a couple of bars of organ music he inscribed in a friend's visitors book. That became the Shepherd's Farewell to Mary, Joseph and Jesus as they depart from Bethlehem, loveliest of all Christmas carols; then Berlioz added two movements around it, and later two low-level dramatic sequences either side of "The Flight into Egypt" (the scene pictured below by Carpaccio). The triptych - Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Like a supermarket "Christmas Dinner" sandwich, cramming the delights of a full festive lunch into every bite, Epiphoni Consort’s The Christmas Truce was at once historical play, choral concert and carol service, and so wonderfully enjoyable I didn’t want it to end.It was also for me the discovery of another great London-based choir. Founded in 2014 by conductor Tim Reader, Epiphoni (pictured below by Kaupo Kikkas) is peopled predominantly by young singers with advanced vocal training who have followed careers outside music. They make a terrific sound: the upper voices are very good, the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain Apollo’s Fire/Jeannette Sorrell (Avie)Subtitled "an Irish-Appalachian celebration", this disc follows the Scottish and Irish immigrants who pitched up in rural Virginia in the 19th century, fleeing unemployment, exploitation and famine. In Jeannette Sorrell’s words, “Appalachian music is the voice of the down-trodden,” and that Christmas is an ideal time to sing in celebration of “history's greatest advocate for the poor.” If you buy just one Christmas CD this year, my advice would be to get this one, an electrifying sequence of folk songs, traditional Read more ...