Review Details
MUSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY In association with S-O-U-N-D and CON ANIMA CHAMBER CHOIR eveningland
Alan Cooper
06 November 2009
Alan Cooper
Friday’s recital by Con Anima Chamber Choir was the first concert for S-O-U-N-D since the opening performance by pianocircus to aim a spectacular visual punch at the audience in addition to a top-drawer musical performance. For their opening piece, Arvo Pärt’s Solfeggio, they were invisible, sending forth a disembodied veil of sound from the back of the Cathedral as the lights were dimmed leaving just the warm glow from a pair of candelabras at the front of the auditorium. All right, so Health and Safety insisted that the emergency lights be left on as well but it still gave the Cathedral a warm meditative ambience that matched Pärt’s sound textures perfectly.
Pärt is rather like a visual artist who abjures any kind of fixed form and wants you to concentrate on and appreciate the beauty of his colours or in the case of Pärt, his sounds. Con Anima poured these out into the darkened Cathedral like an intoxicating breath of musical colour.
The eye-popping impact of the performance was not yet over though. The chorus split in two and carrying lit candles, spread out down either side of the Cathedral to sing the Pater Noster by Pëteris Vasks. This meant that every singer was in effect performing as a soloist yet simultaneously as a choir, probably about the most difficult thing to ask of any but the most professional choirs. The simple warm harmonies of this Latin setting of the Lord’s Prayer sounded absolutely stunning, the voices rising effortlessly to the heights of the Cathedral from everywhere and nowhere.
The choir moved to the front of the Cathedral for more music by Arvo Pärt: his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. In these pieces, the choir seemed like a single finely tuned instrument, an organ, or thinking of the purity and clarity of the female voices, a glass harmonica that was expertly played by conductor Paul Mealor. He would seem to select solo stops (soprano) to set against mixtures (male voices) or when required he would open the swell box and move to full choir. The discipline which Mealor got from his singers was remarkable.
In a lighter vein we enjoyed four Estonian Lullabies by Veljo Tormis. Con Anima sang these with a gentle light touch. I loved the fade to silence with the third of these charming little songs.
The work which gave the concert its title was Aftonland (Evening Land) by Per Nørgård who is regarded as the most important Danish composer of our time. Aftonland is one of his earliest compositions written when he was much taken with the ideals of Nordic music. The texts of the four choral pieces deal with visions of darkening landscapes as a background to thoughts of death, love and the meaning of life, all those things that obsess artists from lands where winter darkness broods over a large part of the year. The harmonies in this music do indeed exude an aura of darkness and they were beautifully sung by Con Anima in a performance that brimmed with atmosphere.
Two final performances of works by Arvo Pärt concluded the concert. Pärt must be one of very few composers who when setting a text like Cantate Domino do not resort to repeating the words. He seemed almost to skip through the text with amazing lightness like a flat stone skimming across the waters of a lake. The Beatitudes, sung in English, sounded richer and more relaxed till the final astonishing choral amen followed by extended thunderous organ chords that finally dissolved into silence (played with a great sense of drama by Ed Jones). This provided a spectacular end to the performance provided by the music alone, thus adding a nice sense of balance to the entire concert.