The so-called “London version” of the Brahms Requiem, with the orchestral accompaniment adapted by the composer for piano duet, has become popular with choirs in recent years. It allows groups who can’t afford an orchestra, or who couldn’t be heard over one, to perform one of the great Romantic choral works, and it must be admitted that the combination of choir and four hands on a piano is a very effective one. But you can’t do the Brahms every year, and there aren’t that many other pieces for these forces. For their Remembrance-tide concert however, the Fairhaven singers premiered no less than four piano-duet versions of choral-orchestral works by Holst, Brahms, Delius and Schubert, arranged by their ever-enterprising conductor, Ralph Woodward. The arduous task of playing these adaptations was undertaken very effectively by choir-members Hayley and Gordon Ogilvie. Their efforts deserved a better piano (more of that later), but there isn’t room for a concert grand in Queen’s College chapel.

It was a taxing programme for both choir and players, and as a contrast with all the dead white males (and respite for the performers) the pieces were interspersed with poems by Maya Angelou and other female poets of colour, read by young actor Alena Patel. It was a nice idea, but combining the spoken word with music is a delicate art, and here the two elements didn’t really come together.

Holst’s Ode to Death inhabits the same universe as his better-known Hymn of Jesus, but perhaps has too off-putting a title to be popular in an age in which the d-word seems to be more or less unsayable. The choir’s sure intonation brought out all Holst’s incandescent harmonies, and well-controlled pianissimos conjured up the unknown regions that composer and poet Walt Whitman sought to explore. Only a rather peculiar vowel sound on the final “Come!” detracted from the atmosphere.

Brahms’s beautiful Nänie was the work in which the piano duet arrangement seemed to work best. Here the pianists were joined by oboist Rose Hilder, whose lyrical tone provided a welcome additional colour. It was a particularly fine performance by the choir which managed to produce a suitably Brahmsian amplitude of tone, sustaining their long lines with ease despite their limited numbers.

Delius’s Songs of Farewell, again setting Walt Whitman, make strenuous demands even on a big choir, with sliding chromatic lines that test a singer’s tuning and stratospherically high writing for the sopranos. It could be a very painful experience with an inadequate choir, but the Fairhavens surmounted the difficulties convincingly, with truly heroic work on the top notes. It was here however that I most missed the sound of the orchestra – much of the effect of the piece lies in the instrumental sonorities, and without these Delius’s choral writing seemed a little monotonous. (It didn’t help that at this point the sustaining pedal of the piano developed a persistent squeak like a dog’s chew toy, which rather spoiled the transcendent mood.)

After this late-Romantic luxuriance, Schubert‘s Intende voci orationis meae (the only Christian piece on the programme, and ironically the only one unconcerned with death) seemed positively classical. It’s an attractive setting of a verse from the Psalms written shortly before his death, and for it choir and piano were joined again by Rose Hilder and also by tenor Alessandro Cortello, whose robust Italianate tones made a striking contrast with those of the chorus.

William Hale