REVIEW: A Season To Sing concert by The Boundstone Chorus

The works with the texts they set:

Aedan Kerney, ‘Song of The Seasons’: narrator Richard Brunton, semi-chorus Anna Maxim, Kirsty Deacon, Simon Markwick, Isaac Hussey; piano Philip White-Jones, conductor Aedan Kerney. Poems: Come With Us (Tom Brown), Winter (Brown), Darkness (Anna Gregory), Spring (Brown), Nothing Is So Beautiful (Gerard Manley Hopkins), Her I Love (John Clare), Summer, Autumn (Brown), Peace At The Last (John Henry Newman), Winter (reprise, Brown), Finale.

Joanna Forbes ‘L’Estrange, A Season To Sing’ (Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ concertos re-imagined); organ Philip White-Jones, conductor Mattea Leow.

A Time To Dance (text, Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 from King John).

SPRING – Welcome Spring (Thomas Morley madrigal, Now Is The Month of Maying, and J. Forbes L’Estrange/ Zecharia 10:1/Song of Solomon 2:11-13), Music, Sweet Music (Eliza Cook poem Spring vv2-3), To The Bagpipe’s Sound (Morley opp cit)

SUMMER – Sing Cuccu (Emily Bronte poem Moonlight, Summer Moonlight v1/ anon, Sumer is icumen in), Trees Lending Shelter (Bronte opp cit, vv1-2), Summer Storm (Psalm 77:17-18).

AUTUMN – Song Of The Harvest (Henry Alford hymn Come Ye Thankful People Come, Exodus 34:21), Falling Autumn Leaves (Bronte poem Fall, Leaves, Fall v1), Make A Joyful Noise (Psalms 100: 1-2 & 150:3-6).

WINTER – Winter Freeze (Vivaldi sonnet, L’Inverno), Cosy Indoors While Outside It Pours (wordless jazz scat), While Earth Remaineth (Genesis 8:22)

A Time of Peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1 & 5-8 and Requiem Mass.

IN HIS 80th year, and still Aedan Kerney MBE is creating music for Lancing and people from anywhere alert to his regular concerts. Including those in his home venue with The Boundstone Chorus, the choir he formed more than 40 years ago of the 50 he has been the teacher, organist, conductor and composer. Domestically and internationally, he is Lancing’s most important and celebrated figure in its post-war history – as one hopes will be described in salute around his birthday in June.

His musical package here this time? Song Of The Seasons: an updating extension of his 2013 composition which sprouted from his 1990 community musical To Harvest the Dream, a four-seasons portrait of Lancing and Sompting’s 20th century horticultural economy, landscape and working people.

Its musical pairing here, A SeasonTo Sing: a newly-hatched egg Kerney has taken a double hand in helping to lay, but composed by a 54-year-old contemporary and avante-garde singer, Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. She writes tuneful music for amateur choirs to smile instead of struggle through –and here she lets male and female voices get going on Vivaldi’s most famous and best-loved instrumental music.

Both musical works accompanying screen projections illustrating the times of year: monochrome archive local images with the Kerney piece, and brilliant full-colour general ones with the Forbes L’Estrange.

Kerney’s two choirs, The Boundstone Chorus and Worthing Choral Society, subscribed in advance to support and commission the production and publication of this Forbes L’Estrange’s composition project. From among 55 choirs joining in this worldwide, the Boundstoners, who already have performing link with the Hertfordshire-based musician couple, Alexander and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, were here giving the work’s fourth British performance, a week after its launch. Two days later it was in Sydney Opera House. Nine days before, it had been in Vietnam’s Ho Cho Minh City. Worthing Choral Society’ performing turn will be in at St George’s Church on 21 June (see below).

Joanna’s composition marks the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and this re-imagining is prompted by Vivaldi’s use of verse to seed his musical pictures. Joanna fits her own selection of text to the season’s subject and Vivaldi’s music, with unexpectedly few musical tinkerings.

Hers must have been a lengthy words hunt. She book-jackets front and back with settings of Ecclesiastes’ familiar A Time For, this being among seven biblical extracts among the 13 texts. Four are from poems, another is from Vivaldi’s own Winter sonnet for its freezing first movement, a madrigal is used twice, Joanna twice adds her own words, and one movement has no words at all – yet vocally depicts rainfall. This is one of the best Forbes L’Estrange touches – novel because it uses wordless Swingle Singers’-type jazzy vocal scat, logical because Joanna (also a classical-jazz singer) formerly directed the famous Swingles.

She calls for a strong organist but, like Vaughan Williams in his area of utility composing for community useage, and indeed is Kerney, she is catering for singers like you and me who vocalise along at home to the Vivaldi without the fond chance to let rip in ensemble. The choir whistle spring birdsong like the solo violin and hum the bagpipe’s drone. Their snapping fingers are the warning raindrops of the summer storm and their feet stamp the thunder.

The unaccompanied hymn, Song of Harvest, becomes a happy march, the Bronte words work especially well in the slow Autumn middle movement of falling leaves. And I had but few misgivings. Cook’s bubbling descriptive that concludes Spring is paired with oddly static-feeling music, the Summer storm seems rather short-lived, and having Vivaldi’s Winter sonnet extract untranslated in the programme impaired the attention flow for those reading along.

Kerney’s associated musical director, Mattea Leow, directed the performance with inspiring gusto and joie de vivre. She now heads music at Worthing’s St Andrew’s CofE High School. She, the choir, the music and projected images were greeted with enthusiasm by a full audience grateful for everyone’s fruition work.

Kerney’s Song Of The Seasons had set the scene smoothly, engagingly and absorbingly. He had his narrator behind the audience and his semi-chorus quartet pointing up new angles of narrative from various points around the auditorium.

Winter – associated symbolically with war, according to Kerney’s research into past Lancing lives - began and then eventually closed the story. His voices ‘shooshed’ the effect of icy sea, foreboding wind, then driven snow. Their dissonances of harmony were the insistent and crippling cold. Then enter Spring in unison joy and birdlike piano twittering. Nothing Is So Beautiful injected rhythmic variety. And as the dozen men’s unison Her I Love, the women all went “Ahhhhh!”

“Summer slows you down until you stand still” languidly segued into the relaxation of mellowing autumn and repose in “Peace at the Last”. Winter’s return resumed the vocalised “Shhh”-ing and Brown’s words from a previous era need quotation here in these potentially precipitous times: “The time is night, the place is Lancing, Sussex, the season is Winter, a time of war; our beginning and our end is a Wintertime. . . . but Sussex people are growers, and, in a winter, growers anticipate the Spring.”

In Aedan Kerney, this whole area is blessed.

Richard Amey

CONCERTS FROM NOW TOWARDS SUMMER

Saturday 5 April (7.30) Worthing Philharmonic Strings with trumpets, timpani, harp, organ (conductor Dominic Grier) with Brighton16 Chamber Choir (Matthew Jelf) – St George’s Church, Worthing. (Playing oreder tba) Vaughan Williams, Mass in G minor; Howells, Elegy for String Orchestra; Duruflé, Requiem; Ansel Chaloner-Hughes (WPO Composer in Residence), Elegy for Harp and Strings; arrangement of Ravel’s ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’.

Tickets from fienta.com/b16-wpo-ravel-vaughan-williams-durufle

Sunday 6 April (2.45), Worthing Symphony (conductor John Gibbons), Assembly Hall: Haydn, Symphony No 30 ‘Alleluia’; Malcolm Arnold, Guitar Concerto (Craig Ogden); Vivaldi, Mandolin Concerto (Craig Ogden); Mozart, Symphony No 41 ‘Jupiter’.

WSO concert tickets from www.wtm.uk

Tuesday 8 April (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: Sylvia Akagi & Peter Golden, voices, flute and guitar; classical, traditional blues, and original music.

Tuesday April 15 (1.10), Chapel Royal Brighton Lunchtime Series: Kenny Fu, piano – ‘Chopin Masterpieces’.

Tuesday 6 May (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: Tribute to guitarist Richard Bowen (died 2024), by Paul Gregory guitar, John Collins organ and Friends.

Free admission, retiring church donations welcomed

Sunday 18 May (2.45), Worthing Symphony (John Gibbons), Assembly Hall: Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No 3 (Yi-Yang Chen); Delius, Fennimore & Gerda Intermezzo; Beethoven, Symphony No 8.

Sunday 25 May (2.45pm): Yi-Yang Chen’s ‘voices’ International Interview Concert, St Symphorian’s Durrington Hill, Worthing BN13 2PU. Solo Piano, full performance and Conversations with Guest Interviewer. Features – Ask A Question, Guess the Composer, Give It A Title.

Music, not in performance order: Beethoven, ‘Waldstein’ Sonata; Chopin, Scherzo in C# minor and Opus 17 Mazurkas 1 & 4; Gershwin-Wild, ‘Embraceable You’; Gulli Björnsson (Iceland), ‘Ocean Surface’ (World Premiere); Y-Y Chen, In Memorium 11 March (2011) ‘Twisting Paths’ and ‘Shrine Portrait’; Rautavaara (Finland), ‘Fourths’ Etude; Ingrid Stölzel (Germany-US), ‘In Foreign Lands’.

Info and tickets here (via Facebook) or here (seetickets.com) or buy on the door.

Saturday 7 June (7.30), Worthing Philharmonic (dominic Grier), Assembly Hall: Beethoven, Egmont Overture; Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No 1 (Julian Chan); Schumann, Symphony No 2. With pre-concert talk by Dominic Grier and guests.

Tickets from www.wtm.uk

Saturday June 14 (7.30),The Boundstone Chorus, at St Michael and All Angels Church, South Lancing: celebrating the 80th birthdays of Sir John Rutter and Aedan Kerney MBE. Music tbc. Box office: 01903 762793 / [email protected] / www.theboundstonechorus.co.uk/concerts

Saturday 21 June (7.30), Worthing Choral Society at St George’s Church, Worthing (director Aedan Kerney, associate music director Sam Barton, keyboard Olly Parr, organ Philip White Jones): music to include Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s choral re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – ‘A Season to Sing’.

Tuesday 17 June (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: The Brighton Guitar Quartet.

Tuesday 8 July (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: Yoko Ono piano

Tuesday 12 August (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: South Downs Folk Singers

Tuesday 23 September (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: John Collins organ