Review:
Concert - St Saviour's Church Oxton
24th November 2007
Vivaldi / Pergolesi / Mozart
“What is your favourite piece of music?” Quite often the correct response is “The one I heard last.” On Saturday evening Birkenhead Choral Society presented their Autumn Concert at St Saviour’s Church, Oxton . Three pieces of 18th Century Church music made up their attractive programme and perhaps demonstrated the truth of this reply.
They began with the well-known and well-loved Vivaldi Gloria. A splendid start – the choir threw down the challenge: “Don’t you dare ignore us!” They attacked it with confidence and after the loud declamatory first movement, demonstrated many of the more subtle aspects of choral singing: controlled contrasts, crescendo and diminuendo, staccato and legato to name but a few. The choir were aided by a team of soloists provided by the Royal Northern College of Music and accompanied by an orchestra of professionals, assembled and led by Arfona Griffiths.
Of course it was not perfect (what live performance ever is?) but most of the shortcomings were of minor significance. The balance between choir and orchestra was fine but when soloists Rebecca Goulden (soprano) and local singer, Abigail Iveson (mezzo-soprano) combined in the duet Laudamus Te, the orchestra was rather too loud and some of their artistry was lost. At one point the men of the choir appeared to be slightly behind the beat. But there is little else to criticise. There is much to praise including the balance of the choir, much improved these days by the increase in the number of men. As I check my notes, I find I have written words like Good attack, excellent sustained crescendo,confident, fine! Great! Towards the end I wrote Good baroque sound. So well known and well-performed, this was thoroughly enjoyed by the large audience. Is this our favourite piece!
The Gloria was followed by the much less familiar Magnificat by Pergolesi (or at least ascribed to him). This and his celebrated Stabat Mater show that his early death at the age of 26 was a great loss to music. Whoever the composer, it is worthy of a wider audience and we should be grateful to BCS for providing us with this rare live performance. Fresh, lively, tuneful, it is an example of baroque music at its best. Lasting only about 12 minutes it says what it wants to say and moves on! At the end of a delightful duet between Chris Turner (tenor) and Andrew Heggie (baritone), as at the end of the whole piece, we were left wanting more. The choir had clearly taken to it and perhaps persuaded the audience that we should add this to our list of favourites.
As they assembled after the interval we had opportunity to reflect on how well presented they were as a choir. This includes their splendid new staging, part funded by the National Lottery and Wirral’s Area Community Funds. The ladies’ neat, simple uniform and the men’s bow ties added another touch of professionalism to this wholly amateur body’s appearance. The second half of the concert presented the main work of the evening, Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Not without reason is it described as “The Great”! It is a major choral work. The orchestra is bigger, including trombones and horns. The excellent continuo player, Graham Eccles, had moved from harpsichord to organ. Much of the writing is for eight voice parts. This was altogether a greater challenge than either of the other two works. Mozart wrote longer movements which allowed him to develop his musical ideas in a way that scarcely happened in the first half pieces.
But the choir rose to this challenge magnificently both in the “straight“ passages as well as in the difficult fugues. They dealt admirably with the difficult rhythms particularly in the movement “Qui tollis”. Although towards the end of quite a long evening there was some sign of a little tiredness creeping in from both choir and orchestra, this was a splendid performance and the two “Osanna” movements brought the concert to a fine conclusion. David Holroyd, the musical director, who conducted the concert, must have been very proud and well satisfied that the weeks of rehearsal resulted in such a magnificent outcome. He had demanded much of the performers, particularly in terms of tempo, and they responded admirably. Very few of the audience and probably none of the choir would have gone away with any doubt that THIS was their favourite choral piece!