Music
Edinburgh Royal Choral Union
Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce, Four stars
The only specific mention of St Cecilia on her feast day in the this Sunday evening concert was Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia, the last of his collaborations with WH Auden, which was the weakest of the choir's performances, a fine blending of their voices marred by a lack of crispness in both words and notes. But I can't imagine the patroness of musicians was in any way displeased with the rest of the offerings chorusmaster Michael Bawtree, a fine quartet of soloists and "the Choral" brought to the table.
Jonathan Dove's The Far Theatricals of Day from 2003, setting Emily Dickinson, and Thea Musgrave's new The Voices of our Ancestors, first heard in London in July and receiving its Scottish premiere, are both co-commissions by JAM (John Armitage Memorial), the musical trust that has done so much to create new choral repertoire, and both share the accompaniment of organ (Simon Hogan) and brass quintet (Glasgow's BrassLab).
Dove's piece is the more theatrical, as its name suggests, the brass players taking up stations around the space and the chorus ebbing and flowing onto the staging behind individual solo showcases, culminating in the mightiest ensemble sound of the night with the instrumentalists after a dialogue with tenor Peter van Hulle.
But it was the Musgrave that demands the swiftest possible repeat performance. There will never be a bad time to hear music that so eloquently combines these elements (Emily Mitchell, Annie Gill and Julian Tovey completing the soloist line-up, and adding the young men of Edinburgh Academy as a second Chamber Choir) but there seemed special echoes in setting texts older than either the Bible or the Koran at the present time.
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