WAR AND PEACE

WAR AND PEACE

Chelmsford Singers at Chelmsford Cathedral

28.03.15

Seventy years ago, the Allies, Canadians in the forefront, were busy liberating the Netherlands. In a matter of weeks, the war in Europe would be over.

This timely concert commemorates the end of WWII, with a masterly sequence, beginning with Richard Tanner's setting of Desmond Tutu's Prayer for Peace. More of an affirmation, in truth, with powerful singing from the choir, and a moving diminuendo at its close.

The accompanying musicians – Tim Carey, piano, Joy Farrall, clarinet, David Juritz, violin, and Adrian Bradbury, cello, played five movements from Messiaen's extraordinary Quartet for the End of Time, written and performed in a German PoW camp. Farrall exploited the clarinet's versatile voice impressively in The Abyss of the Birds; Carey and Bradbury gave a wonderful account of the mesmeric Homage to the Eternity of Jesus. It would have been good to hear the whole work, especially in the context of this “meditation”, as the Dean called it, which concluded with Annelies, by James Whitbourn.

It is a tuneful musical setting of words from Anne Frank's diary, haunting and heartfelt without ever being sentimental - a unique opportunity to share the experience of this most intimate writing with the musicians, the choir and the audience in the Cathedral. The composer's palette encompasses sounds and symbols from life in the Amsterdam annex, moments of Music Hall, Bach and plainchant, with clarinet and violin giving a Jewish colour to much of the scoring. Nicola Howard, soprano, gave an operatic – in the best sense – reading of her sequences, bringing the character to life, lifting the notes off the stave. The choir, under the empowering baton of James Davy, gave an expressive account of the many different moods and emotions: the determined trudge of We're Jews in Chains, the optimism of the spring awakening, and the passion of the Kyrie, a plea for mercy between Anne's nightmares – the dread of discovery, bitter sadness for the loss of friends.

WAR AND PEACE

WAR AND PEACE

The Stondon Singers at Ingatestone Hall

08.07.14

William Byrd was a frequent visitor to Ingatestone Hall, and to his patron the first Baron Petre. More than four hundred years on, he'd be slightly surprised, perhaps, to find the Hall still here, and lived in, and the eighteenth Baron in the audience for this concert.

War, the theme of Brentwood Arts Festival, is also still with us, of course, and Byrd's Civitas Sancti Tui, graphically depicting the desolation of Jerusalem, reminds us that nothing much has changed since the time of Isaiah.

A very different take on the battlefield in La Guerre, a highly coloured description of a French victory [in Italy, in 1515] by Jannequin, jingoistic avant la lettre, performed with relish by the Stondon Singers under Christopher Tinker.

Their a cappella polyphony sounded especially delightful in the panelled hall. Their themed programme, which also included Tallis, Victoria and two guys named Lobo, ended with an optimistic lollipop, one of Byrd's few secular works, the madrigal This Sweet Merry Month of May. 

for those not fortunate enough to be at Ingatestone Hall, or Stondon Church the previous week, here are The Kings Singers with two of the key works ...