From prestigious cathedral choirs to small ensembles, Michael White enjoyed concerts of the highest quality.
I’m never sure what it is that compels us with peculiar force in deepest winter to gather together and sing – or at least gather together and hear other people sing – but imagine it’s something programmed into our collective psyche, to do with finding comfort in the cold. It can’t be an accident that choral culture tends to flourish more abundantly in northern countries (Britain, Scandinavia, the Baltic states) than in southern ones. And the whole Christmas period is undeniably a time when choirs come into special focus.
Aside from church services, they accounted for almost every concert I went to in December. And it seems to me that, with the ever-increasing number of elite professional vocal groups establishing themselves as role-models, standards in this country have never been higher. Concerted singing has become one of our great national achievements; which is something to hold in mind at a time when church and cathedral choirs – the places where we Brits have traditionally learned to sing – are under threat as low priorities for spending and support.
I’d be hard pushed to say which were the best ensembles I heard over Christmas; there were so many of such merit, usually doing seasonal mixed repertoire in the familiar carols/anthems/readings format. But the Birmingham-based Ex Cathedra, singing a London concert at St Martin-in-the Fields, stood out for the way they combine technical excellence with human-ity and warmth. They’re seriously professional but also love the music into being, and I don’t think any choir in Britain does that better. They’d be a definite contender for top place.
But at the same time I was dazzled by the virtuosity of Tenebrae, in con-cert at St James’s Piccadilly, as well as that of The Sixteen who turned up all over the place. And of the Oxbridge collegiate choirs who burst into action at Christmas, I loved the youthful energy of Clare College, Cambridge at St John’s, Smith Square, performing with remarkably good intonation, clear diction and enough across-the-board professionalism to disguise the fact that these are students who have to fit their singing around full-time study.
There were three more choirs that in different ways impressed: one being that of St Paul’s Cathedral, which is maybe the best of London’s ecclesiastical choirs right now – battling as ever with a terrible bathtub acoustic but triumphing over it magnificently at their Christmas Eve carol service.
Another was a small ensemble drawn from what’s essentially an opera company called Wild Arts, doing Messiah in the atmospheric if constrained space of the Art Workers’ Guild in Holborn. Scaled down to the minimum, with soloists doubling as their own chorus and a tiny orchestra led from a chamber organ by Orlando Jopling, it delivered a paradoxically massive punch – enlarged by elements of theatre that had been programmed in by stage director Tom Morris. I’ve seen many a Messiah in my time but few as powerfully engaging as this little show which held me in its grip from start to finish.
And on the subject of surprise, my other stand-out choir was the London Choral Sinfonia: an ensemble whose fusty name might suggest middle-aged ladies with heaving bosoms but is actually a group of young, on-the-ball professionals with their own orchestra and bags of enterprise – conducted by the ultra-enterprising Michael Wald-ron who has been serving as interim music director at Trinity College, Cambridge since Stephen Layton left.
The LCS were at Smith Square with a familiar words & music programme, but it included the not so familiar fantasy on Christmas carols by Holst (written in 1910, two years before the better-known one by Vaughan Will-iams), and the not obviously seasonal Gloria by John Rutter: a composer whose Christmas credentials are so established it hardly mattered that this piece doesn’t in fact come with holly. What it actually comes with is a whopping debt to William Walton, in whose soundworld Rutter was clearly immersed when he composed it back in 1974. But no matter: it’s a great, exhilarating sing. And if Walton ever heard the score (he was still alive in 1974), he’d doubtless have enjoyed it – before ringing up his lawyers.
There was no shortage of Rutter around at Christmas – though strangely I didn’t hear one performance of his heartfelt classic What Sweeter Music: the vogue this year seemed to be for his early, evergreen, annoyingly addictive Shepherd’s Pipe Carol. Also much in vogue this year were Will Todd’s seductive My Lord Has Come (sung at every speed from brisk to funereal) and the sublime mischief of John Tavener’s God is With Us – always guaranteed to rattle first-time listeners when the organ blasts in without warning near the finish. At St Paul’s on Christmas Eve I saw two thousand or so people jump out of their skins. Along with barely suppressed smiles on the cherubic faces of a dozen choirboys.
This article first appeared in the February 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.
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