The
Kent wind was icy, but Tonbridge School
Chapel was warm, and the music-making warmer still, when on 12 February the
Vasari Singers, under their conductor Jeremy Backhouse,
assembled before an invited audience of composers and friends to preview
their ‘21st Century Anthems’ programme. The choir celebrates their 25th
Anniversary this year and, to mark the occasion, has commissioned ten new anthems from a diverse group of
British composers; along with recent choral works from four other prominent
figures this festive cornucopia of new music will be premiered in public at St
John’s, Smith Square on May 15th, with a CD of the programme released at the
same time. And that is why we were there in the airy chapel at Tonbridge, to
hear the pieces in the same space they would be recorded in, by Signum Records,
the following weekend.
About
ten years ago, the chapel was razed to the ground by fire, and a completely new
building was erected on the old foundations. Long and lofty, like a large
Oxbridge chapel, it is an ideal recording venue, with a clear yet resonant
acoustic, and a magnificent four-manual Marcussen organ. From the first bars of
Philip Moore’s finely wrought I saw Him
standing it was clear that the choir was on outstanding form, with a rich
and full sonority, excellent blend and balance, and displaying a meticulous
concern for the niceties of tuning and articulation. What followed was a
fascinating conspectus of compositional approach and aesthetic: Richard
Blackford’s On Another’s Sorrow
was intimate and intense; Stephen Barlow’s When
I saw on Rood, with its weeping glissandi,
featured outstanding solo contributions from Fiona McWilliams and Dan Burges,
atmospherically distanced from the rest of the choir; my own offering, Now
I Have Known, O Lord, had all the refinement and hushed self-communion it
needed while Will Todd’s semi-aleatoric Angel
Song II wove a magical spell with its disembodied vocalise; Barrie
Bignold’s Peace was eloquent and disarming, again with beautiful solo singing
by Fiona McWilliams and Matthew Wood and Ward Swingle’s Give us this day was perfectly poised, its immaculately voiced
harmonies simple yet so telling; Humphrey Clucas’s brief Hear my crying, O God was terse and unsettling in its sparse,
powerful anguish. Several pieces also featured the organ, played with
scintillating virtuosity and coloristic imagination by Jeremy Filsell, including
his own richly-voiced Mysterium Christi
and Francis Pott’s long-drawn, chromatically limpid setting of The
Lord is my Shepherd, which gave the Vasari sopranos and altos a deserved
moment in the sun.
Of
the non-commissioned works the rhythmic exuberance of Tarik O’Regan’s Surrexit
Christus was brought vividly to life, while James MacMillan’s Chosen
was fiercely intense, with a brooding darkness lit up by moments of blinding
illumination. Jonathan Rathbone dared to set a text already given eloquent voice
by Thomas Tomkins in his Absolon, my Son
and responded to the challenge with a work of great emotional directness and
heartbreaking plangency. The programme was brought to a thrilling close by
Jonathan Dove’s splendiferous Bless the
Lord, O my soul, full of torrential virtuosity from both choir and organist,
its teeming invention thrillingly realised.
To
prepare, in a mere couple of months, ten completely new works, all of which make
considerable (and very different) demands of the singers, is no mean
achievement. Throughout the evening the Vasari Singers displayed all the
qualities that have made them the force they are in the musical life of this
country. On current form, there is simply no better non-professional group in
the land. Roll on May 15th - for the anniversary festivities will be splendid
and richly deserved!
©
Gabriel Jackson, 2005