Fairhaven Singers\u2019 annual \u201cMusic for a Summer Evening\u201d concert has long been a staple of the Cambridge musical menu, and not just because you get a bowl of strawberries and a glass of sparkling wine included in the price of your ticket. It would be easy to trot out the same repertoire at this kind of concert every year, but this is a choir which explores parts of the repertoire that other choirs do not reach. This year we had an almost unknown cantata by Schubert, choral arrangements of songs by Elgar and Vaughan Williams and several recent settings of classic English poetry, including the first performance of a new work by Alan Bullard.<\/p>\n
The first half had an aquatic theme, very welcome that evening in the sweltering atmosphere of Queen\u2019s College chapel. A madrigal by Monteverdi and a chorus from Mozart\u2019s Idomeneo showed off the choir\u2019s warmth of tone and even blend. The big work was a late work by Schubert, his Mirjams Siegesgesang<\/em>. This five-movement cantata for soprano solo, chorus and piano sets a versified account of the flight of the Israelites through the Red Sea, starting in triumphal march mode, moving into a breathless narrative of the pursuit of Pharaoh\u2019s host (with rather Erl-King<\/em>-like piano writing) and finishing with a celebratory fugue. It was certainly fun to hear once, though not perhaps a piece from Schubert\u2019s top drawer. I did hanker for a bit more drama from the choir, and in particular a more heroic tone in the taxing soprano solo part (shared among members of the choir). Despite possessing only the usual number of hands, Ralph Woodward managed the difficult feat of both directing the choir and playing the tricky piano accompaniment.<\/p>\n Samuel Barber\u2019s lovely To Be Sung on the Water<\/em> is a staple of the \u201cSinging on the River\u201d concerts held on the Cam at nearby King\u2019s College, but the Fairhavens had no need to fear the comparison. Delicately and gracefully performed by the choir, it was the high point of the first half, and probably of the whole concert.<\/p>\n After the interval we moved away from the water for a sequence of works setting classic English poetry, a theme inspired (a year late as so many of these commemorations are at the moment) by the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of John Keats. The opening chorus of George Dyson\u2019s once-popular Chaucerian cantata The Canterbury Pilgrims<\/em> worked well as a partsong, sensitively performed by the choir. It might have been a risky proposition for a hot night as the alternate passages for a capella voices and accompaniment would have exposed any saggy tuning, but the challenge was almost perfectly surmounted here. Michael Berkeley\u2019s Farewell<\/em>, a memorial work for Linda McCartney, set valedictory lines from Shakespeare, Milton and Elizabeth Speller; its lush chromatic harmonies were perfectly suited to the choir. A more extended work was Parry\u2019s La belle dame sans merci<\/em>, an elaborate setting of the Keats poem from late in the composer\u2019s career which sounded almost like a secular version of one of his Songs of Farewell.<\/em> This again is a style in which choir and conductor are very much at home, though it seemed to me that the wildness and strangeness of Keats\u2019 vision was somewhat lacking.<\/p>\n I was unmoved by M\u00e5rten Jansson\u2019s sentimental take on Thomas Hardy\u2019s The Choirmaster\u2019s Burial<\/em>, which rather incongruously combines the narrative of an English village funeral in the nineteenth century with phrases from the Roman Catholic burial service. Alan Bullard\u2019s Beauty, Joy,<\/em> a setting of the opening of Keats\u2019 Endymion<\/em> came much closer to the spirit of its text, loading every rift with harmonic ore in a richly-scored diatonic idiom. This was a new commission by the choir and singers and piece were again well-matched, though there were a few understandable signs of tiredness by this point in a hot evening. Everybody woke up for the encore \u2013 an a cappella arrangement of So In Love<\/em> from Cole Porter\u2019s Kiss Me, Kate which was sung with real warmth and feeling, and left me feeling that \u201cBe more Cole Porter\u201d should be an injunction to every choir.<\/p>\n William Hale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fairhaven Singers\u2019 annual \u201cMusic for a Summer Evening\u201d concert has long been a staple of the Cambridge musical menu, and not just because you get a bowl of strawberries and a glass of sparkling wine included in the price of … Continue reading