REVIEW: A Garland of Song from Worthing Choral Society

[AK] Haydn, Insanae et Vanae Curare [Insane and Stupid Worries Flood our Mind, from Il Ritorno di Tonia, The Return of Tobias]

Ola Gjeilo, The Rose [Christina Rosetti poem, Olly Parr piano with choir]

[SB] Sam Barton, The Wedding Song [poem by bride Erin Linford-Tierney]

organ solo – Dieterich Buxtehude, Fugue in C BuxWV174

[AK] Handel chorus from oratorio Messiah, Lift up Your Heads, O Ye Gates

Elgar, Go Forth Upon Thy Journey, Christian Soul [from The Dream of Gerontius with Sam Barton in The Priest baritone solo role]

[SB] Howard Goodall, The Lord Is My Shepherd [Psalm 23, sop solo Penelope Corp]; Love Divine [All Loves Excelling]

organ solo – Eric Thiman [English, 1900- 1975], Meditation on the Irish Tune ‘Slane’ [Be Thou My Vision]

Gershwin arranged by Christopher Clapham, I Got Rhythm [sop solos Olly Parr, Becca Nguyet-Lord]

[AK] John Stainer, God So Loved The World [from Crucifixion]

Mozart completed by Sussmayer, Lachrymosa, Lux Aeterna [That Tearful Day and the concluding Light Eternal, from Requiem; sop solo in Lux Aeterna, Olly Parr]

Aedan Kerney, A Gaelic Blessing (alto solo Tamsin Cundy]

Good news on the Worthing classical scene from the Worthing Choral Society camp. Associate musical director Sam Barton’s presence of several years is now helping produce a concert sound from the choir strengthening its presence among the three main ones in the Worthing area, alongside Angmering Chorale, and The Boundstone Chorus who are Lancing-based.

WCS’s evergreen 81-year-old director since 2009, Aedan Kerney (The Boundstone Chorus founder), invited Barton in as a young pianist, tenor, double bassist with musical directing experience in London and Toronto as well as his Brighton base. Recent orchestra conducting studies under high-level tutors Denise Ham and Dominic Grier (who is also the Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra and Angmering Chorale director) may also be Barton factors now developing WCS’s concert delivery, resulting from this two-man directing dynamic.

Evidence on Saturday was in the choir’s pitching strength and rounder sonority in chorus work, with fuller-bodied top range, and advancing assurance in a capella singing unaccompanied. The chorus point was made in the powerful and punchy less-performed Haydn, the familiar Handel, Elgar and Mozart. And the a capella performances achieving more transparency now, made that dual point across several styles – in Barton’s own composition The Wedding Song and Kerney’s A Gaelic Blessing, as well as the Stainer and the witty, more rhythmically adventurous Gershwin. All reassuring facets of this concert.

There has been some audience fearing a waning of WCS strength along with the ever-advancing years of the town’s core classical choristers. But this concert will be seen contrary to that, setting up future WCS concerts to attract renewed audience interest. The WCS’ young fully professional pianist Olly Parr, and she The younger soloing voices voices of Barton and Olly Parr are beginning to diversify the vocal texture and musical flexibility. Parr is also their fully professional partnering pianist.

This presentation was an intelligent, not a mere routine blending of favourites with a surprise (the Haydn) and some beautiful new music, with two in-house composers anything but frightening audience away. The popular Norwegian, Ola Gjeilo’s 2018 song The Rose, written when he was 48, created a warmth of atmosphere in universal praise of the flower, including wordless singing. This piece was selected here in relaxed secular counterpoint to Goodall’s two more inquiring but still easily enjoyable religious pieces. And Philip White-Jones’ organ pieces brought a welcome change of composer to interlude in this kind of concert.

The great Gerontius extract could not help being a highlight. Elgar and Kerney are from the same Worcester city, and Barton’s lower range as The Priest had more than the necessary clarity and conviction in leading the earthly folk’s farewell wishes for Newman’s worried sinning hero, The Soul. The chorus were fully there. Rare was this chance for WCS to be heard in such multiple-part singing. And illuminating was Kerney’s secure control in his directing a profound extract of a work that surely must be viscerally of lifelong significance to him.

Nor could the two newest pieces fail to impress, each with their own legend attached.

The Norwegian ambassador among the international delegation, first discussing nuclear arms proliferation in conference at Wiston House near Steyning, then listening to The Boundstone Chorus, unaccompanied, in the nearby small unheated, candlelit church, declared he’d found a slice of heaven to take home from Kerney’s A Gaelic Blessing. It has its succinctly set words ‘deep peace’ ending each phrase of its short text and it’s a piece deserving a kind of regular ritualistic hearing at future Worthing area concerts.

Barton had offered to pen a piece for a friend’s daughter’s wedding but for six months lacked suitable vocal material, until hitting on asking for the bride-to-be’s favourite poem. Better than that, he then received from the daughter her own written poem of wedding day thoughts about her betrothed, their accumulated pre-nuptial contentment, and her hope for her love surviving through perpetuity.

WCS were all in black with a single red rose on their chests. But they kept to themselves the secrets of The Rose’s three verses and The Wedding Song’s four. I don’t mean diction: few choirs can expect their audiences to decipher every word sung. Some of the relevant information in square brackets in the music listing at the top of this report compensates its absence to those at the concert reading their free WCS programme brochure.

The brochure this time dropped in size from the normal A4 to A5, making it easier to take home afterwards, but probably needing more pages than the choir had time to produce, or the money for the extra printing to provide all the vital texts for the audience to follow during the music. Which presents Worthing Choral Society with an artistic dilemma. During choral performance, without having optionally in front of them the words, especially if they don’t already know them and are inquisitive about them, or even earnestly interested, then that proportion of audience is given only half the listening experience. An outcome neither choir nor composer should be satisfied with.

Oh, the pressures on voluntary work forces and budgeting!

Richard Amey

UPCOMING CONCERTS

Assembly Hall concerts - tickets from www.wtm.uk

Saturday 20 June – ‘Water’. St Michael and All Angels Church, Lancing (7.30), The Boundstone Chorus: various choral pieces inspired by this theme. Tickers from www.theboundstonechorus.co.uk

Tuesday 23 June – ‘Classical Threads, Persian Colours’. Chichester University Chapel (7.00). Mahya Mahroomi piano, Laleh Abbasi ney (Persian flute), and guest Ala Zarei (Persian lute). Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Iranian contemporary composers. The ney and setar are traditional wooden wind instruments with a deeply expressive and almost vocal quality, to create a sound world where Western classical forms meet the colours and sounds of Persian music, whose modes, rhythms and sensibilities reveal surprising resonances, emotional depth, and a vibrant conversation between two musical worlds. Rather than fusing East and West into a single style, the concert celebrates their dialogue in a meeting of lyricism, storytelling, and expressive nuance.

https://festivalofchichester.co.uk/event/event-m16-classical-threads-persian-colours/

Sunday 28 June – Worthing Assembly Hall (3), Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra with Brighton 16 Chamber Choir, conductor Dominic Grier, soprano Emily Wenman, baritone Matthew Jelf. Beethoven, Overture Coriolan, Mozart Symphony No 35 Haffner; Brahms, A German Requiem (sung in German).

Saturday 4 July – ‘Songs For a Summer Evening’. St Margaret’s Church, Angmering (7.30). The Angmering Chorale, conductor Dominic Grier. Music including Seal Lullaby (Eric Whiteacre), Alleluia (Randall Thompson), The Girl From Ipanema (Antonio Carlos Jobim), Choral Selection from West Side Story (Bernstein), Choral Selection from Porgy and Bess (Gershwin), Night and Day (Porter), S'wonderful (Gershwin), Let's Do It (Porter).

Tickets £16 (U12s free): https://wegottickets.com/f/20185 or call 01903 776613. Also available from Cooper Adams Estate Agents, Angmering; Barkers Electrical, Rustington; or on the door.

Tuesday 7 July – Christ Church Lunchtimes (12.30): Yoko Ono piano.

Tuesday 18 August – Christ Church Lunchtimes (12.30): Ansel Chaloner-Hughes (WPO Composer In Residence) piano.

Tuesday 8 September – Christ Church Lunchtimes (12.30): Evelyn Harrison clarinet, Beatrice Sales violin, Zhanna Kemp piano.

Sunday 13 September – Worthing Symphony Orchestra 100th Season opening concert at Assembly Hall (2.45): Kalinnikov, Tsar Boris Overture; Mozart, Piano Concerto No 27 (Isata Kanneh-Mason piano), Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 Pathetique.