Guest Musicians
Dere Street
Elizabeth Dodd
Lynda Cochrane
Hugh Davies
Venues
St Michael’s and All Angels’ Church, Hawkshead
Austin Friars School, Carlisle
United Reformed Church, Cockermouth
St John’s Church, Keswick
Celtic Routes
Carlisle Cathedral
The Carlisle International Festival closed with an accomplished programme of Celtic songs by the Wordsworth Singers.
The audience were treated to a well-balanced assortment of Celtic moments, which were supplemented by director Mark Hindley’s thorough and extensive programme notes, not to mention his translations of the texts, delivered to the audience with such humour as to draw the audience further in.
The rhythmic opening song Pase el agoa instantly demonstrated the choir’s superior vocal balance and clear diction.
The programme featured the music of Granville Bantock whose arrangements of traditional melodies from Ireland and the Hebrides were quite beautiful and showed that this choir not only blends beautifully, but also consists of individual local talent.
Many programmes this year will contain the music of George Dyson to commemorate 50 years since his death. Ho-ro, My Nut-brown Maiden was a lovely piece with modulations galore, ably negotiated by the singers.
The highlight for me was The Gallant Weaver by James MacMillan. This was stunning. The atmosphere that was created was so pure that even a pin dare not drop and disturb it. The silence after the final phrase was only broken by the richly deserved applause.
Two charming pieces by Jean Langlais finished the concert, the Deux Chansons Populaires de Haute-Bretagne were performed with the wilful exuberance the text demanded.
The choir and director seemed almost symbiotic throughout and the expressive dynamic colours they created together made this a very special performance indeed. A treat for those who attended, and a big miss for those who didn’t.
JONATHAN MILLICAN
Hawkshead
The whitewashed nave and chancel of St. Michael’s and All Angels’ Church provided a visually striking backdrop for the sombre, black lines of the Wordsworth Singers on a quiet, sleepy summer’s evening in Hawkshead. Mark Hindley’s glide to the podium belied his intentions: he might have been whispering to himself “This’ll wake them up!” The unaccompanied choir launched into an explosion of joyous vocal energy with an enthusiasm that was almost startling!
The rousing 15th century Galician song Pase el agoa (anon) burst forth and set the scene for an evening of Celtic contrasts and surprises, guaranteed to hold the listener’s interest throughout the choral performance. The rest of the choral programme explored songs from the Celtic revival from the mid-19th century to the present day.
Granville Bantock’s Arranmore was majestically and lovingly performed with broad sweeping vocal strokes that painted an exquisite pastoral scene. This was followed by Emer’s Lament for Cuchulain. Lovely as the arrangement is by Bantock, it is now such a famous ‘Irish melody’ associated with Danny Boy that it can be distracting when heard with the less famous lyrics of this lament.
George Dyson’s Ho-ro My Nut Brown Maiden was truly charming. The choir made this demanding piece sound effortless, coping admirably with a complex weaving of melody, harmony and phrasing.
Next came the traditional folk duo, Dere Street, performing the first of their two short sets in the programme. The duo comprises Keith Leisk on Scottish smallpipes and Gary Smith on acoustic guitar. Smart as owt in their kilts they played four Scottish reels transitioning effortlessly through the key changes with just a hint of rock ‘n’ roll in the guitar accompaniment. This was followed by the Robert Burns anti-war version of Ye Jacobites By Name. One of Gary’s own songs called The Reivers Ride Again completed this energetic set.
The Wordsworth Singers returned to sing the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of the Manx song Mannin Veen. This was intensely moving, with a yearning and pulling in of the listener that was irresistible at the slow end of each verse. I’ve never been to Mannin Veen (The Isle of Man) but when I do I will do well to take this song with me. From time to time during the concert I was given fleeting glimpses of Stanford’s Bluebird flying high over nearby Windermere, turning his head towards familiar sounds coming from the church: this imagery was strongest and endured the longest during The Gallant Weaver by James MacMillan. The soaring sopranos and basses provided an enchanting atmospheric landscape, textured beautifully by the choir.
Three songs by Gustav Holst followed, the first two of which were sung masterfully in the Welsh language – Y Cariad Cyntaf and Gwelltyn Glas. I Love My Love was sung with such clarity one hardly needed to refer to the lengthy text to keep track of this love story, with minor 9th chords expertly executed to add some darkness to the drama. By the end of the song it seemed perfectly reasonable that the heroine should love her love simply because her love loved her. Simple!
(Time for an interval)
O Cuco arranged by Julio Dominguez introduced the second half of the programme, with refreshingly light, rhythmic passages alternating with more ponderous lines clearly enjoyed by the singers.
Having lived for a time in North Uist, where I heard many fine local Hebridean singers in a variety of settings, I was especially interested to hear how Granville Bantock’s arrangements of three Hebridean songs would travel to the Lake District. The choir sang The Mermaid’s Croon in Scottish Gaelic with alto Anne-Marie Kerr singing the haunting solo verses with great tenderness. The sound of this surreal lullaby set somewhere beneath the waves around the Western Isles was just magical! Anne-Marie’s robust approach in the jaunty Milking Song lifted the mood, with another opportunity to enjoy her undoubted ability to sing in Gaelic. She was expertly supported by the choir. A short and very sweet song. The Death Croon was the longest of all the songs in the concert lasting nearly eight minutes. Anne-Marie, this time singing in English, delivered the verses with a gentle passion. The song had a relentless and hypnotic quality and was very moving. Bantock’s Hebridean songs travelled very well indeed.
Dere Street returned for another short set featuring again a selection of reels on Scottish smallpipes and guitar. Keith Leisk’s song about ‘a homesick Scotsman’ featured a pleasing introduction on low whistle. This was followed by a song most often associated in these parts with the great Dick Gaughan – Both Sides the Tweed. The duo had been billed as smallpipes and mandolin, which I feel would have been an excellent choice of instruments for this concert.
The choir returned to sing The Phynodderee by Haydn Wood. It was voluptuous and whimsical, even quirky at times, seeming to slip in and out of barber shop. Well, anything can happen when the subject is that of a fallen hairy faery knight banished from faeryland to labour on the Isle of Man and swing all alone in the Tramman (Elder) tree!
Representing Celtic Ireland was Seóirse Bodley’s setting to music of Seán Ó Riórdáin’s famous poem Cúl an Tí, which translates in English to ‘At the Back of the House’. The poem is essentially a protest against ghettoisation in six verses of Irish Gaelic. The choir managed the Gaelic pronunciation with an uncanny ease and at a lively pulsating tempo, projecting rich evocative melody, harmony and phrasing. This was followed by the Irish love song I Will Walk With My Love, sung very sweetly and gently by sopranos Julie Leavett and Fiona Weakley, supported by sensitive, sustained chord progressions from the choir.
The concert closed with two light-hearted songs by the Brittany composer Jean Langlais, La fille entêtée (The Stubborn Girl) and L’amoureux de Thomine (Thomine’s Lover) – a choice end to a supremely enjoyable concert.
Is this a confident choir? Confident enough to compete, live, with the penultimate football game of the 2014 World Cup Football Tournament from Brazil? Yes … the faithful came to Hawkshead.
FRANK DEVINE
The Passion
Elias Canetti described Christianity as a ‘religion of lament’. In Passiontide, we Christians go into lamentation overdrive: the sheer sorrow of the (temporary) death of God, for which, killed by humans, we feel not only sorrow but guilt. And our poets add on layers of drama, horror, and grief. What the Wordsworth Singers showed us last Saturday night was that the Renaissance Church did lamentation big style, and they had not given up sonority for Lent. The massive washy acoustic of Austin Friars’ tall cavernous Chapel in Carlisle proved an ideal space in which to allow the Wordsworth’s 33 voices to produce a full fat sound to do the season proud.
On the menu were monumental polyphonic writings for large ‘a capella’ choirs, produced by German, Spanish and Italian composers inspired by the vastness of St Mark’s Venice, a sound world more bewildering even than Carlisle’s magnificent Citadel railway station. How could any musical offering fill such a space? Oddly an answer came humbly from a single viol player. Elizabeth Dodd treated us to a set of pieces which helpfully broke up each half of the concert with the far more intimate sound of a single instrument.
The choir was able to show off the range of sonorities at its disposal with a strong opening in Hassler’s Miserere: trombone-strong basses grounded full chords, coloured by firm tenors and rich altos and topped by plangent, soaring sopranos. The concluding “Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto”, despite its Lenten context, displayed a gratifyingly visceral magnificence. Yes, those Christians love their grief.
And on to Palestrina, the restrained conservative whose smooth progressions and dissonance are always carefully prepared and controlled (as the Wordsworth’s musical director Mark Hindley put it). Hindley’s direction ensured that the lines of mediaeval chant that underlie the music were ever flowing, and wove deliciously in the echoing space of the chapel above us.
The viol music gave us popular tunes heard by the same writers and singers who would have been handed the wet-ink parts of the choral pieces in our programme. Both the tenor and bass viol (Elizabeth Dodd showed us a little of each) are played a little like a cello but have six rather than four strings, and are fretted like a guitar for better intonation. The richness comes from the bowing of the instrument: a clever player can stroke combinations of strings to produce a harmonised melody. Elizabeth Dodd led us into a world where a single viol player could hold court to a rapt audience, sending out a veritable orchestra of sound.
The flowing lines of Giovanni Croce’s O triste spectaculum are in my notes, but utterly obscured in superficial memory by what followed. Carlo Gesualdo is precious to early musicians: he allows us gentle folk to imagine we are as glamorously dangerous as no doubt he was. He gained a reluctant notoriety as a butcher recluse, having killed his wife and her lover (oh, and several others) and retreated to his walled castle to evade vengeance and write exquisite but fascinatingly weird choral music. The Wordsworths obviously loved this one (O vos omnes), which to me had strange premonitions of Bruckner some 250 years later. As Gesualdo looked to his God for salvation, we glimpse a terror worthy of any Gothic thriller.
In Melchior Franck’s Inspice vulnera [‘Gaze on his wounds’], Mark Hindley proved his worth in keeping an energetic tempo, resisting the obvious temptation to allow richness of sound (palpable and pleasing) to deteriorate into self-indulgence.
The Guerrero motets that began the second half showed off the lapidary dignity of the basses, whose sweeping chant lines made the music sing, while the upper voices decorated their work.
Then in Victoria’s Vexilla Regis we heard from both upper and lower voices in Gregorian chant verses, interspersed with polyphony leading to a ringing cantus firmus from the sopranos and a warm velvety ‘Amen’.
Who would have predicted fireworks at the end? Two delightful riffs from the sopranos topped off the evening, in Anerio’s Stabat Mater. Yet another huge piece that suited our lofty venue, showed off the consistency of the singers who divided self-confidently into three equally strong antiphonal choirs, and proved that lamentation, and our human longing for hope in our darkest hours, inspire the greatest art.
PAUL IM THURN
Immortal Bach
It was billed as ‘an evening of radiant choral music by J S Bach and some of the many composers profoundly influenced by his genius, including Brahms, Mendelssohn, Cornelius and Nystedt’, and so it was for the almost capacity audience who attended the Wordsworth Singers’ concert in Cockermouth’s URC Church last Saturday, 8th February.
For those of us who rate Bach’s music as some of the finest ever written, particularly for its astonishing variety and technical mastery, the title of the event, “Immortal Bach” was immediately an exciting and intriguing prospect. Nor were we disappointed. The choir and their guest pianist, Lynda Cochrane, excelled and thrilled us throughout the concert.
The venue, with its low, almost flat, ceiling – so unlike most churches and chapels in the county with their high pointed naves, – could have been a difficult location for this 30-strong choir, perhaps tending to overwhelm the audience with sound during the climaxes. However, under Mark Hindley’s expert direction, the dynamic range was perfect for the setting – sitting on the back row I heard every word in the quiet passages, including several soloists from within the choir, while the loudest sections were full-bodied, perfectly filling the church with rich vocal sounds.
Bach’s Singet dem Herrn provided a thrilling start to the evening’s music making: it was performed confidently, with great vigour in the first and third sections, which contrasted nicely with the more reflective middle section. Immediately after this, Busoni’s transcription for piano of Bach’s organ Chorale Prelude Nun komm der Heiden Heiland was played with great colour and excellent phrasing by Lynda Cochrane. She then followed this with the second Menuet by Edward MacDowell, based on one of JSB’s short pieces in the Anna Magdalena Notebook, with great poise and delicacy.
The choir returned to sing Peter Cornelius’ popular The Three Kings, in which the soloist’s excellent bass voice rose beautifully above the choir’s chorale accompaniment. There followed Heinrich Kaminski’s beautiful Vergiss mein nicht from his set of six chorale settings, in which the chorale melody was probably written by Bach himself – here the choir relished the late Romantic harmonies to the full, in a highly polished performance.
The most unusual work of the evening was Immortal Bach (the title piece) by 20th Century Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt. Although starting simply with the first few bars of Bach’s chorale melody, the choir then separated into several sub-choirs, singing the music at different tempi, which produced some astonishingly dissonant harmonies, which would tax the intonation of any group of singers. However, the Wordsworth Singers held their nerve (and pitch) triumphantly!
The second half of the concert started with Brahms’ motet Warum ist das licht gegeben, an extended work based on texts from the Biblical books of Job and Lamentations, as well as the letter of James. It was sung with great poignancy – the phrasing was beautifully executed throughout. This was followed by two more of MacDowell’s delightful Menuets, which provided some lighter relief, after Brahms’ intensity, as well as George Shearing’s Get off my Bach – this was certainly modern jazz, but included a large number of musical ideas derived from Bach.
Mendelssohn’s Warum toben die Heiden is a fairly lengthy setting of part of Psalm 2, whose structure owes much to Bach, but the harmonies are distinctively those of Mendelssohn, who was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Bach’s music in the early 19th Century. This was a particularly moving performance, with two 4-part choirs matching perfectly, plus solo sections, whose voices blended beautifully with the overall ensemble.
The concert ended with Glenn Gould’s hilarious So you want to write a Fugue? – in many ways a parody of a Bach Fugue, full of characteristic Bach-type figures and counterpoint, together with very amusing words, which the choir evidently enjoyed singing immensely and which brought an excellent concert to a very enjoyable conclusion. Well done, all!
MIKE TOWN
Take Him, Earth
The Wordsworth Singers, a leading Cumbrian chamber choir, directed by Mark Hindley with Hugh Davies at the organ, presented a concert of music by Herbert Howells, Benjamin Britten and others to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of John F Kennedy and to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Britten.
The concert began with Howells’ motet, Take him, earth, for cherishing, a work commissioned for the 1964 Kennedy official memorial service. This deeply felt piece, full of love and pain, reflects Howells’ own experience of the loss of his son Michael at the age of 9 as well as the public grief in 1963 at the death of the young President. The opening line is a single unison line for men’s voices, and as such is very exposed. As the very first item in the concert, this line came over as slightly uncertain, but the choir then picked up the mood and gave this wonderful piece a confident and moving performance.
We moved on to Deus in adjutorium meum, a setting of Psalm 70, one of the many early works of Britten which are being re-discovered in this centenary year. It is full of youthful experiments, and falls into several sections, some using the full choir, some using separate parts. The choir very successfully navigated the joins between these sections, always danger-points, observing all of Britten’s meticulous markings to great effect.
Next, Hugh Davies played on the Arthur Harrison organ which St John’s, Keswick, is fortunate to have. Howells’ Psalm Preludes, rather like the Britten we had just heard, fall into a number of sections, and can easily become rambling and incoherent. Hugh Davies magnificently avoided these traps, giving a convincing and integrated performance of Psalm Prelude No 1 at this point in the evening, and No 2 later on.
By way, perhaps, of light relief, Hugh Davies then played Percy Whitlock’s Folk Tune. Whitlock was active in the south of England in the inter-war years, both in church and secular positions. He was renowned as Bournemouth’s Civic Organist. Programmed to take the emotional temperature down a little, perhaps, but nonetheless well-played.
The Wordsworth Singers then gave us Howells’ Requiem, their performance dedicated to the memory of Keswick-based artist and musician Philip MacLeod Coupe, who had recently died. This piece is much less-known than the Hymnus Paradisi, as it was only published in 1980, though apparently work had begun on it as early as 1932. It uses some parts of the conventional Requiem Mass, but also other English texts and psalms, creating a sense of narrative and movement, from sickness, through death and on to paradise. This is music which is not necessarily easy to sing, but which is easily accessible, which falls into various short sections, and featuring Howells’ very characteristic lines of rhythm, melody and harmony so beloved of the world of cathedral music, but too seldom heard outside those precincts. Once again, the choir was able to weld the performance into a seamless whole: very satisfying. This, along with other parts of the concert, featured several solo singers from among the choir. All were clearly well-prepared and their lines emerged from the choral sections and sank back into the whole very successfully.
After the interval, we heard Howells’ A Hymn for St Cecilia. St Cecilia is honoured as the patron saint of music, and her feast-day is November 22nd, a day before this concert. The text is by Ursula Vaughan Williams. The organ accompaniment and the full-throated choral beginning gave a very confident start to the second half of the concert. I couldn’t help thinking that in programming terms, it would have been better to begin the whole concert with this piece, and put Take him, earth at this point, or even at the very end. Also, perhaps because of the organ accompaniment and perhaps because this music is technically rather simpler than some that we had heard so far, the Wordsworth Singers were able to communicate with the audience in the way that they usually do, but which was less evident in the first half.
Next we had a setting by Howells of I love all beauteous things, a short poem by Robert Bridges. This was written for a festival at St Albans Abbey in 1977. It rejoices in the creation of works for the glory of God: ‘I too will something make/and joy in the making!’ Confidently performed and well worth adding to the repertoire!
After that we had the second of the Psalm Preludes followed by Fidelis for organ, by Whitlock. As in the first half of the concert, this was immensely satisfying Howells, followed by a little relaxation with Whitlock.
The choir concluded the concert with two pieces for St Cecilia: Bernard Rose’s Feast Song for St Cecilia, and Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia. The first was not a piece known to me. It received a confident and satisfying performance, and, like I love all beauteous things, is well worth adding to the repertoire.
With the Britten, we were clearly on ground familiar to many of the choir. It is not without its well known traps and problem links. These were negotiated with great aplomb, except perhaps for a rather hasty move into the third movement. This might have been because the choir was so delighted with the second movement. That one they executed with a nimbleness and speed rarely achieved: this member of the audience found it quite thrilling to see all the technical problems so effortlessly brushed aside. Throughout this piece, as in the rest of the concert, the various solo lines, sung from within the choir, were exemplary.
DAVID G JONES