REQUIEM – GABRIEL FAURE
The elegant setting of The Chapel of St Augustine at Tonbridge School was the venue for the first concert of the season. Sadly, the seats were not all taken, perhaps the music of Michael Tippett is less familiar to audiences, although Fauré’s Requiem is well known – and has been used in film scores through the decades and is popular on Classic FM!
The Requiem was a lovely faultless, familiar opening piece for the first half of the concert. It was well executed. The choir were in fine voice and gave an excellent performance, strong and confident with good diction.
There were some lovely moments of light and shade, with strong and sensitive support from the orchestra and organ. One never felt that the choir was overpowered by the orchestra – it was all an excellent balance.
The words are so familiar, but it was so helpful to have the translation from Latin into English – bringing the text to life.
The seven sections were all excellent. The main highlights were the pure and beautiful, expressive solo singing of Pie Jesu from Isabella Chambers, a member of the TPS’s First Violins.
The bold singing and playing of the Sanctus, with both the organ and brass section, lifted the spirits (and the roof!) beautifully. The final section, In Paradisum, was a gentle and reassuring finish, giving hope in death.
All in all, it was a wonderfully uplifting beginning to the evening.
A CHILD OF OUR TIME… MICHAEL TIPPETT
The programme notes were excellent and gave an explanation of Michael Tippett’s beliefs and emotional state through the development of this piece, written when he was in his mid-thirties as a response to the events that led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Tippett intended the work to be a warning against intolerance and the ‘offering’ before the WW2 and it is sadly just as relevant today in our war-torn world as when he wrote it. This relevance couldn’t fail to strike the audience last night – and created a thought-provoking and emotional journey that was intense and hard to hear at times.
A Child of Our Time is known to be a challenging piece for an amateur choir and it was a very brave undertaking, but one which gave the choir the opportunity to flex its muscles and musicality.
One choir member confessed that it was indeed a huge challenge, and that they had worked incredibly hard right up to the last rehearsal to perfect it for this concert. The brilliant Naomi Butcher also showed huge determination and physical effort to bring this to concert standard. Her conducting through the whole evening was extraordinary as she willed the words from the choir and the music from the orchestra.
This was not an ‘easy listening’ piece and was – at times – hard work. Each emotionally charged section required concentration; this was helped by the fact it was written in English, making it easier to follow. The choir and soloists delivered the text with excellent diction, making it even more poignant.
The oratorio is in three parts made up of many short sections, and presented a journey from the cold dark of winter through oppression, anger and retribution to acceptance and the understanding that spring always returns – only bringing that feeling of hope in the last few minutes.
The choir opened the piece with huge confidence, accompanied by organ, orchestra and brilliant trumpets. It made everyone sit up and take note.
The soprano soloist was Eleanor Oldfield. She has an expressive voice with lovely light vibrato that suited this piece well. The most joyous part was her voice soaring above the choir during the first Spiritual – breathtaking. The alto, Rebecca Hart, had a deep, resonating, impressive tone that was never lost in the orchestra, every word was clear and precise.
The five spirituals were the highlight of the evening. They pulled the whole work together and we all looked to see what was coming next. With catchy phrasing and great rhythm, as one would expect in a spiritual, the first was ‘Steal away’. It was a joy to listen to, with bold and musical singing, and that glorious soprano soaring above the choir with her clear tone – sung with clarity and feeling. The choir in unison singing the key line to each spiritual to accompany the soloists was extraordinary. This was followed a few sections later by ‘Nobody knows the troubles I see’. Again, the musicality of the choir made this memorable.
By the time the third spiritual came, we were all waiting in expectation and weren’t disappointed. ‘Tell old Pharoah to let my people go’ was extremely powerful and was still in my head the following day when I listened to our current news stories and all the fighting and hatred in the Middle East and Ukraine. I am dearly wanting to hear this again.
The two final spirituals were equally enthralling. ‘By and by I’m going to lay down my heavy load’ and ‘Deep River, my home is over Jordan’. For each of the spirituals there was tremendous soulful support from the orchestra. The soloists were big and bold of voice and all contributed their own distinctive sound. And after all the hard work, it was a very strong performance by the choir.
At times the music was so complex, it felt that there was a huge jumble of notes from choir and orchestra – all challenging each other to be understood.
At the end of the piece there was silence before the greatly deserved applause. It was an emotionally draining performance and gave the audience and probably the musicians much to think about.
Speaking to several members of the audience afterwards, some had not been sure they were going to enjoy the Tippett but were impressed with the piece and thought that the whole society excelled in the delivery.
It was another excellent evening of music making, delivered in the usual ‘Tonbridge Phil’ style.