{"id":6999,"date":"2022-12-12T09:11:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T09:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=6999"},"modified":"2022-12-12T09:12:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T09:12:02","slug":"christmas-around-the-world-new-cambridge-singers-graham-walker-conductor-downing-place-united-reformed-church-cambridge-8-december-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=6999","title":{"rendered":"\u201cChristmas Around the World\u201d \u2013 New Cambridge Singers, Downing Place United Reformed Church, Cambridge, 8 December 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ncs-web-graphics-2022-xmas-text_orig.jpg\"Christmas concerts are money for jam, aren\u2019t they? Book a venue, dig out 100 Carols for Choirs, bung in a reading or two, get the audience to sing Hark the Herald<\/em>, job done. Everybody goes home happy, especially the choir treasurer.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are Christmas concerts like that. The New Cambridge Singers concert was, on the whole, not one of them, blending old favourites with less familiar material and grouping the carols by theme, starting with four on the Virgin Mary and moving on to the Shepherds, then the Christ Child and finally Celebration. I suppose one could quibble with the title, because it was really Christmas Around Europe (though America did get a look-in with \u201cJingle Bells\u201d at the end), but it was nonetheless a programme full of variety and interest.<\/p>\n

The Downing Place URC has recently had a makeover, and now offers a bright and welcoming space for concerts and other events. The hard parquet floors, high wooden roof and bare walls however mean it has a very noisy acoustic, and certain types of music work better than others. There was not much hope for Bach\u2019s \u201cEhre sei Gott\u201d with its busy counterpoint, for instance, especially accompanied by an electronic organ distinctly lacking in bite and presence, and the same has to be said for Matthias\u2019s \u201cA Babe is Born\u201d, however alert and agile choir and organist were.<\/p>\n

On the whole it was the slower-moving pieces that worked best. Berlioz\u2019s \u201cShepherds\u2019 Farewell\u201d was a high-point of the first half with a hushed and tender performance from the choir. The singers\u2019 sure intonation was triumphantly demonstrated in the Willcocks arrangement of \u201cQuelle est cette odeur\u201d, which riskily leaves the choir unaccompanied for two verses before bringing the organ back for the coda. Pavel Chesnokov\u2019s \u201cO Tebe Raduyetsia\u201d was written for just such an acoustic as this and demonstrated the choir\u2019s sustained and well-blended tone, though I think you really need to be Russian to be able to perform this music with conviction.
\n–
\nChesnokov (1877-1944) was a new name to me, but I suspect that Simon Beattie\u2019s setting of \u201cAngel and Unicorn\u201d, his own translation of a poem on the annunciation by Rainer Maria Rilke, was new to everyone. This was its second performance (you can see the first one on YouTube at https:\/\/youtu.be\/hFed7Jaw7g4) and the choir conjured up a mood of hushed mystery lit up by occasional piercing dissonances. It was a very Cambridge touch that the performance was preceded by a reading of the poem in the original German, but I can\u2019t have been the only audience member who wished that the English words had been printed in the programme.<\/p>\n

The programme was completed by old favourites such as the Willcocks arrangements of \u201cThe Infant King\u201d and \u201cInfant Holy\u201d, and the Rutter version of \u201cQuem pastores\u201d, all warmly and sensitively performed, though I wondered if Pearsall\u2019s \u201cIn Dulci Jubilo\u201d could have done with another run-through. Things were rounded off nicely with Mack Wilberg\u2019s witty arrangement of \u201cDing Dong Merrily\u201d, dextrously accompanied by Alex Robson, and a close-harmony style \u201cJingle Bells\u201d by conductor Graham Walker. Oh, and \u201cHark the Herald\u201d of course, so I lost at #Harkageddon (look it up) in the second week of Advent.<\/p>\n

William Hale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas concerts are money for jam, aren\u2019t they? Book a venue, dig out 100 Carols for Choirs, bung in a reading or two, get the audience to sing Hark the Herald, job done. Everybody goes home happy, especially the choir … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7004,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions\/7004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}