St Nikolas, Pevensey, Saturday 16 February 2019

It was good to welcome back Noteworthy Voices to Pevensey under their conductor Alexander Eadon. While to most of us Christmas is long gone the church’s calendar extends well into the new year and so it was not stretching things too far to mount a concert of a cappella music focussing on the scores created for the period immediately after Christmas Day.

Their eclectic programme ranged from early fifteenth century settings to the present day and ranged across the world for its sources. They opened with a group of English settings – Richard Rodney Bennett’s Out of your sleep, the quiet beauty of Britten’s A boy was born, the rolling cascades of Wishart’s Alleluya! A new work is come and the poignancy of Chivers Ecce puer.

We were then whisked back to the sixteenth century for Victoria’s wonderful setting of O Magnum Mysterium which was immediately followed by a more recent setting of the same text by Morten Lauridsen with its dense harmonies and superbly low lying ending.

Hymns to the Virgin followed with three modern works by Lennox Berkeley, Chris Chivers and Arvo Part surrounding the anonymous Ther is no rose of such vyrtew for high voices.

After the interval the male voices, positioned deep in the chancel, gave us the chanted phrases for the Magnificat, interspersed with improvisations for organ by Jean Titelouze dating from c1600, and played with convincing simplicty by Alexander Eadon. Mateo Flecha the Elder’s Riu riu chiu could hardly have been more different, coming as it did before Kenneth Leighton’s dark setting of the Coventry Carol. The section concluded with two familiar and beautiful works by Peter Warlock –Bethlehem Down and Benedicamus domino. The coming of the Kings brought the evening to a close with Philip Lawson’s Lullay my liking, the very familiar The three kings  by Cornelius – though on this occasion the solo voice almost disappeared within the enveloping warmth of the chorale – a traditional carol, Sing Lullaby, and finally, Jonathan Dove’s The three kings. This concluding item was somewhat disturbing. After the enthusiasm of so much of the music hailing the birth of Messiah and praising Mary, here was a setting darkly aware of the reality of the future for the family – the move into exile, the loss of status, the prophecy of death. It was a strange ending but none the less moving and effective.

Let us hope Noteworthy Voices return again soon.