Review Details
THE PURCELL SINGERS
Alan Cooper
18 October 2008
St MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL
The visit of the Purcell Singers to St Machar’s Cathedral is sure to be remembered as one of the truly breathtaking highlights of the current concert season. It is perhaps strange that an ensemble which honours one of England’s finest composers in its rubric should choose to present a programme of entirely French music. Never mind, that music was without exception ravishing and the performance itself went way beyond that.
The first half of the concert consisted of a cappella part songs by Saint-Saëns, Poulenc, Debussy and Ravel. The first and last of these composers (like Wagner who in French Universities is studied as a writer more than as a musician, at least he was when I was there in the sixties), were appearing as poets too, since they themselves were the authors of the texts of their songs. The bulk of the texts for Poulenc’s contributions on the other hand were by his friend the surrealist French poet Paul Éluard except for two of the texts of Sept Chansons: La blanche neige and Marie, which are by fellow surrealist Guillaume Appollinaire. Debussy’s poet Charles d’Orléans (1391-1465) is even more fascinating. He was the son of Louis, Duc D’Orléans and the nephew of Charles VI of France. Captured by the English at Agincourt, he spent twenty-five years as a prisoner of war in England. As a result he composed poetry in English as well as in French.
Deux Chœurs by Camille Saint-Saëns begins softly with a chord rising up from the basses to the sopranos. Right from the start it was obvious that we were listening to not so much a choir as an orchestra of voices. (Members of orchestras tend to regard members of choirs as not real musicians and sometimes they are right, but not in this case). The first stanza of Calme des nuits was softly sung, its meltingly beautiful harmonies mirroring the words. With L’éclat du soleil, the second stanza, the choir opened up to full richness of sound with a startling musical sunrise.
Brighter and livelier, Les fleurs et les arbres matched the composers obvious delight in the sounds of his words themselves. The choir’s French pronunciation was faultless too.
Éluard’s four wintry poems in Un Soir de Neige were written in the first winter of the German occupation of France and it was a particularly cold time both in reality and in spirit. In the first brief song, the sopranos held the lead while Poulenc’s twists and turns of melody and harmony lit up the words giving immediacy to their impression of coldness and impending danger.
In the first and third of the songs of Sept Chansons, the imagery was startling and Poulenc’s pungent writing matched them nicely. In Tous les droits the fine balance of the choral singing brought out the best in Poulenc’s harmonic writing while Belle et ressemblante was wonderfully transparent in its sound. There was lightness and momentum in Marie while Luire brought warmth and sunshine back after the frigid visions of winter landscapes.
Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans opened with a delightful love song in which Debussy’s music translated the old French text to modern times. There was a beautifully sung mezzo solo accompanied by percussive sounds from the choir in the second of the songs and finally the choir energetically castigated winter for its harshness.
Like Saint-Saëns, Ravel was clearly glorying in the joys of the French language, especially in the final song with its spicing of humour. Splendid solo singing once again in the middle song and each of the three had a kind of earthy rustic spirit although since we were dealing with Ravel, the overall impression was one of great harmonic sophistication.
The second half of the concert was devoted to two of the most popular items in the French choral repertoire, Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and his Requiem. In both these works Dr Andrew Morrison provided the organ accompaniment. I was particularly impressed with his playing in the Requiem where his registrations and control of the swell box brought real drama to the opening while later on, in the quieter movements he underlined the singing with admirable sensitivity and tenderness.
The Cantique de Jean Racine was taken quite fast but the warm glow in the singing, especially from the tenors, was spectacular. They seized the limelight in the Requiem as well, especially in the Agnus Dei where their singing drifted weightlessly heavenwards.
The two soloists were quite exceptional. Stephen Metcalfe’s voice shone with the brightness and transparency of a true baritone while Rosemary Naylor’s soprano had just the right pure ethereal treble quality.
I see I have not yet mentioned the conductor and musical director Mark Ford. This is probably because everything he was doing was perfect and nothing more was needed. His performers were a credit to him so his direction came across as subliminal. After all, it is only when things are going wrong that a conductor needs to go in for wild histrionics if for no other reason than to distract the audience. Thank-you Mr Ford, we did appreciate you too.