Cadogan Hall
Palestrina:
Stabat
Mater
Tallis:
Lamentations
of Jeremiah (Part 1)
Poulenc:
Quatre
motets pour un temps de penitence
Lassus:
Stabat
Mater
Byrd:
Ne
irascaris, Domine; Civitas sancti tui
Brahms:
Warum
ist das Licht gegeben,
op.74 no.2; Schaffe in mir, Gott,
op.29 no.2
Choir of King’s College,
Cambridge
Ben Parry (conductor)
Time was I could hear the Choir
of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term
time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s
Voices.) Not that I did, of course: I tended to go to my own chapel services more
than others’; I also tended to prefer the services down the road at St John’s,
less packed with tourists and thus seemingly less of a ‘concert’. I also
preferred, in many ways, the more ‘Continental’ sound of St John’s to the
typically ‘English’, whiter sound of King’s. Nevertheless, it was always quite
an experience, first to set foot in that masterpiece of late Perpendicular
Gothic – pay no heed to its cultured despisers, the same sort who will tell you
that St Paul’s is a monstrous hybrid – gowned (and thus in slightly better
seating than the non-Cambridge congregants), and to hear that celebrated choir,
which, through radio and other recordings, I had known for so long before my
time in the city that was essentially my home for fifteen years.
Ben Parry, an old boy from the
choir and Assistant Director of Music at King’s, substituted for Stephen
Cleobury, who was recovering from a bicycle accident. Parry certainly knew the
choir and how to play to its strengths; it is difficult to imagine anyone
having been disappointed, even in the almost diametrically opposed (to its echoing
Chapel home) acoustic of Cadogan Hall. If some tempo choices, perhaps
especially in the closing Brahms motets, seemed chosen more to help the boys
than on ‘purely’ musical grounds, there is no great harm in that. The business
of a collegiate (or other) choral foundation, after all, is far more than
providing concert material; indeed, that is not really its business at all.
Perhaps those works by Brahms, Warum ist
das Licht gegeben? and Schaffe in
mir, Gott, the latter a setting of part of Luther’s translation of the Miserere (Psalm 51), will have flowed
more readily, especially in the relationship between different sections, and
indeed have benefited from surer intonation, but there was much to enjoy,
especially in their respective closing sections.
Two settings of the Stabat Mater, by Palestrina and Lassus,
opened the concert’s two halves. Both were nicely shaded, without jarring (to
my ears, without any) anachronism. The performance of the former imparted, when
called upon, a real sense of ‘dec and can’ (decani
and cantoris) antiphony in a
different setting. It perhaps sounded closer to Monteverdi than often one
hears, less ‘white’ than I had expected. Whatever the Council of Trent’s
suspicion of the poem, I was struck by the essential simplicity, however artful,
of the music and by the guiding role of words. Lassus’s setting came across as
darker, a little more Northern perhaps. (He was, after all, Kapellmeister in
Munich.) Within the context of an undoubtedly ‘Anglican’ performance, full of
tone yet not too full, the sound seemed – or maybe it was just my ears
adjusting – to become a little more
Italianate as time progressed.
Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence offer a challenge, not least intonational, to any choir, and are more often heard with older (female) voices. In these forthright performances, there was – rightly, I think – no great attempt made to ape other performing traditions, but there was nevertheless sometimes a harshness, even perhaps, in the closing ‘Tristis est anima mea’, an anger, we do not necessarily associate with the choir. The shading of ‘Vinea mea electa’ was intelligent, fuller than Anglican reputation would have you believe. If intonation proved far from perfect, especially in the opening ‘Timor et tremor’, nor should one exaggerate; one always knew where the music and indeed the text were heading.
Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence offer a challenge, not least intonational, to any choir, and are more often heard with older (female) voices. In these forthright performances, there was – rightly, I think – no great attempt made to ape other performing traditions, but there was nevertheless sometimes a harshness, even perhaps, in the closing ‘Tristis est anima mea’, an anger, we do not necessarily associate with the choir. The shading of ‘Vinea mea electa’ was intelligent, fuller than Anglican reputation would have you believe. If intonation proved far from perfect, especially in the opening ‘Timor et tremor’, nor should one exaggerate; one always knew where the music and indeed the text were heading.
The music of Tallis and Byrd is
home territory for King’s – albeit here without the trebles. Naturally, in
their absence, countertenors came more strongly to the fore. Parry wisely made
no attempt to do too much in terms of word-painting in the Tallis; the words
speak for themselves, and did so here especially on the Lenten cries for ‘Ierusalem,
Ierusalem’ to return to her God. The two Byrd motets offered, for me, the
highlight of the concert. Without a hint of blandness or routine, there was
simply – or not so simply – that ineffable sense of ‘rightness’, of ease with
the music, the composer’s recusancy notwithstanding. Music and words spoke
freely, in greatly satisfying performances. As we heard in both, ‘Sion deserta
facta est, Jerusalem desolata est.’ And yet, there was comfort to be had, if
not in the wilderness and desolation of Jerusalems heavenly and earthly, then
in their artistic representation – which is doubtless as it should be.
