Temple Church Choir, London, 24 May 2018

Temple Church, with its lofty fan faulting and intricate stained glass glinting in the early evening sunshine, is a magnificent setting for a concert. And this performance of Haydn’s colourful masterpiece, sung in English, certainly did it justice – in memory of Jonathan Hirst QC who died last year and whose chambers, Brick Court, sponsored the event.

Temple Choir, which has in recent years made quite a name for itself, is authentically male with 12 choir men and 18 choir boys. They were ably accompanied by Outcry Ensemble whose string work is commendably crisp. It’s an unusual idea to place the timps at the back of the choir so that the singers acted as a muffler but it worked.

Roger Sayer, director of Temple Music, has a real passion for detail and the clear, revealing acoustic of the building allows him to fulfil it. From the first bar of the introductory Representation of Chaos, he ensured that we heard every note from every instrument. Later he and his musicians had such fun with Haydn’s witty sound  effects that the audience chuckled aloud at the “flexible tiger” and the stress on “long” and the evocative bottom E for the worm sung by bass, Jimmy Holliday. Another lovely moment was Holliday’s rendering of the descending fourths in Rolling in Foaming Billows with the flute weaving underneath.

Tenor Guy Cutting sang with lyrical warmth and terrific dynamic control especially in “In Native Worth and Honour Clad” and soprano Augusta Hebbert was  delightful in part three when she and Holliday sang their section as Adam and Eve with sparkling smiles to remind us that this is a freshly minted young couple in love. Their voices blended well because each singer was totally attuned to the other.

There was some fine singing from the choir too. Sayer clearly has a terrific rapport with them, conducting without baton and mouthing words. I particularly admired the way they did the Spacious Firmament fugue with energy that lasted right to the end and included a magnificent crescendo. It’s a testing sing for any choir and more often than not flags long before the last note.

Given the effort which had clearly gone into one of the finest – and certainly the most sensitively dramatic –  renderings I’ve ever heard of The Creation, it’s a pity they didn’t hire a harpsichord. Of course Greg Morris played the recit passages more than competently on piano but it sounded far too plummy for music of this period. It didn’t spoil it because everything else was so beautifully done but it would have been even better with harpsichord.

Susan Elkin

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury and touring

Prokofiev’s lush score – with all its minor key melody and those evocative rhythms – dates from 1946 and part of it was written during World War II. Matthew Bourne’s idea of setting it in the London Blitz therefore makes sense, and the “Ball” in the Café de Paris – which was bombed on 8 March, 1941 – is beautiful, poignant and apt. And there are some lovely conceits, such as Cinderella (Ashley Shaw in the performance I saw) being whisked off to the dance by her angel (Liam Mower) on a white motorbike and sidecar. There’s a cinema framing device with lots of Pathe news footage too which works a treat.

This production, which has been around for a while, is currently touring nationwide and Matthew Bourne did a post-show question and answer session for the first night Canterbury audience.

Shaw first appears as Cinderella, drab in grey and bespectacled at home with Alan Vincent, her wheelchair-bound father. Given that this character doesn’t dance other than with his arms it might have been appropriate to cast a wheelchair user which Vincent isn’t – an opportunity missed?

She is bullied by a stepmother (Anjali Mehra – strong) and a chorus of individually characterised step-siblings, each of them good value in the way they convey greasy nastiness. Then, of course, she is whizzed off the glitzy Café de Paris, despite having been denied her invitation, in glittering white. Cue for some lovely muscular dancing by the men and, then for some very engaging duet work between Cinderella and her “prince”, Harry the Pilot who is styled to look like John Cleese but who dances with verve.

Like all the best ballet performances it’s an ensemble piece. The real star is Bourne’s spiky, fluid, story-telling choreography. There is no point work so the dancing feels very natural –  effectively a movement based, Brechtian drama. There’s a splendid scene, for example, when Cinderella is in hospital and her family visit – moving as one round the screens which form doors, pecking menacingly like a flock of vultures. The tiny visual subplot in which a pair of gay men fall for each other is nice too.

The second (but not by much) best thing in this show are Lez Brotherston’s stunning designs for sets and costumes. Most of the clothes are black, white and grey with filmy, flowing 1940s dresses for the women and various sorts of uniform for the men.  He provides a spacious family room at the beginning, a very convincing café de Paris amongst bombed buildings followed by shocking devastation at the end of Act 2. And we even get Paddington station and a rather good train.

This is the sort of show which could, I think attract new audiences to dance productions. Without a tutu or pair of tights in sight it feels much more like a moving piece of musical theatre than a “classical” ballet. Bravo!

Susan Elkin

The Mote Hall, Maidstone, 19 May 2018

An all-Russian evening to end the season – and what a splendid season it has been as Peter Colman rightly notes, with an equally exciting programme in view for the autumn.

The evening opened on familiar ground with Tchaikovsky’s overture Romeo and Juliet. In his introductory remarks – always a welcome start to the evening – conductor Brian Wright had noted that the royal wedding was not in view when the programme was planned and he hoped that the outcome for the royal couple would be somewhat better than that for Shakespeare’s lovers.

The overture opened with a brooding tension which was held throughout, the emotional outpouring coming with all the intensity of snarling brass and rasping woodwind.

Prokofiev’s third piano concerto linked in quite well with the emotional power very much in evidence. Pianist Martin James Bartlett may have had an injury to his thumb but there was no evidence of this is the quality of his playing or the staccato, percussive attack he brought to his reading. The occasional romantic reflections become all the more effective in the midst of such challenging attacks on our senses. His encore, a gentle piece of Schumann, was all the more moving in the light of the contrast to the Prokofiev.

After the interval Shostakovich’s First Symphony sat comfortably within this company. Its tongue-in-cheek opening movements were very well structured, with a strong sense of line and pace. Then came the bleakness of the third movement with its fine opening oboe solo and developing sense of depression. If the finale tries to overcome this darkness it only does so by fits and starts, and Brian Wright’s approach left us wondering just how enthusiastic we should be about the bombast of the finale. For a student piece, this is amazing and makes us eager to hear how Shostakovich develops this near schizophrenic approach to composition in the later symphonies.

The new season opens on Saturday 13 October with familiar works by Britten and Mussorgsky, and Shostakovich cello concerto no1 with Michael Petrov. Season tickets now available and individual concerts at www.mso.org.uk