Music

Tenebrae

St John’s Kirk, Perth

Keith Bruce, four stars

THE FAIR city of Perth may now boast one of the finest concert halls in the country and a beautifully refurbished theatre for its annual festival, but for some events the church in the heart of the city that has hosted events since its inception remains beyond compare as the ideal venue.

Nigel Short established the professional chamber choir Tenebrae when he departed from the King’s Singers at the start of the new Millennium, and has been winning acclaim for its performances of four centuries of repertoire since then. This programme tended towards the contemporary end of that time span, loosely pegged on the anniversary of the end of the First World War.

That most clearly applied to the second half of the recital, in which Parry’s six Songs of Farewell were preceded by Holst’s The Evening Watch, composed for the Three Choirs Festival of 1925.

Parry’s work, with its mix of style and timbre, culminating in a setting of Psalm 39, seems to be grappling with the whole question of remembrance in a secular age in a way as we still do today. If its increasingly complex music is attainable by less accomplished choirs, if not with the same finesse, the first half had featured work that was much more of a challenge to sing.

Judith Bingham’s A Walk with Ivor Gurney was premiered by Tenebrae five years ago, and is in some measure a bold excursion into the troubled mind of the earlier composer for whom it is named. His own Since I Believe in God the Father Almighty, which preceded it, is no less demanding, full of radical voicings for its time (also 1925). The Bingham demands careful placing of the sections of the choir in the space, a technique Short deployed throughout to great effect, with hymns of remembrance by Edward Elgar, John Tavener and Herbert Howells completing a programme performed with polish precision by voices from the purest sopranos to the most resonant bass.