07 November 2024

Music review: Until I see Thee as Thou art (Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh)

CHURCH TIMES, 1 November 2024

Garry Humphreys joins a commemoration of Wolsey in Aldeburgh

THE 550th-anniversary celebration of the birth of Thomas Wolsey began in Ipswich — in Wolsey’s home county of Suffolk — in March 2023 and was planned to last a total of 550 days, comprising many events: exhibitions, tours, walks, as well as activities involving local schools.

As this project draws to a close, there was an opportunity to hear in concert local composer Ben Parry’s specially commissioned Wolsey Mass, in a performance by two choirs from establishments with Wolsey associations: the Church of St Mary le Tower (the civic church of Ipswich, soon to be Ipswich Minster, where Wolsey is said to have attended school in the north transept) and the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace (Wolsey’s creation, from more humble beginnings as an “ordinary country house”), under their respective directors of music, Christopher Borrett and Carl Jackson.

The concert — bearing the overall title “Until I see Thee as Thou art” — was held in the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, the principal venue of the Aldeburgh Festival, with its Britten-Pears connections, until the building of the Snape Maltings. It is a venue as unlike an ecclesiastical building as one could imagine, satisfactory for Vivaldi’s popular Gloria, which ended the programme, but perhaps more challenging for the earlier works in the first half, such as Byrd’s Ave verum corpus and Tallis’s Salvator Mundi.

In the event, the performers were unfazed by the venue, and both choirs were more than a match for each other. The first part was directed by Carl Jackson — whose conducting emphasises line as well as rhythm — Parry’s Mass being divided by the Byrd and Tallis works mentioned above.

I would have preferred to hear it as a concert piece, without interruption, but it certainly made a big impact, sonically very much in the tradition of Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor or Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. Parry’s experience as a singer as well as a choir director and composer was very much in evidence. He understands voices.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to see a copy of the score, but, as the excellent programme notes pointed out, the idea of pairing parts — trebles with tenors, altos with basses — and the staggering and layering of entries building up to powerful climaxes are characteristic features of this attractive piece. Here, as elsewhere, the Jubilee Hall’s acoustic lent a vivid clarity to this and to all the pieces. Before the interval, there was a stupendous performance of Dering’s Factum est silentium.

After the interval, Christopher Borrett conducted Vivaldi’s Gloria, so well known that I imagined that there would be little to say about it; but it turned out to be one of the best performances I have ever heard, Borrett recognising that a drier acoustic permits brisker tempi. The exciting beginning — joined by an orchestra comprising string quintet, and one each of oboe, bassoon, and trumpet, and organ (Carl Jackson) — established the mood for the rest of the piece.

The solos were taken by members of the choir: superb singing by unnamed boy trebles of the duet “Laudamus te” and the solo “Domine Deus, Rex coelestis” and “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” and “Qui sedes” by the Hampton Court countertenor Hamish McLaren — a voice to watch!


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