'Is there any finer chamber choir in Britain today?' - 5.07.07

[Concert Review: Merchant Taylor Hall, London], Bayan Northcott, The Independent ****

Is there a finer venue for small choirs in London than the Merchant Taylors’ Hall in Threadneedle Street? The shoe-box shape and wood panelling enhance the richness and vibrancy of the choral sound without the slightest loss of definition. But then, after this thrilling programme in the French series that the City of London Festival’s new artistic director Ian Ritchie is running, one has to ask, is there any finer chamber choir in Britain today than Nigel Short’s outfit, Tenebrae?

Short, a sometime member of the King’s Singers, drew his 20 voices from the best young cathedral and operatic talents to achieve a blend of precision and passion. Within seconds of launching eight of his voices into the vibrant “Kyrie” of Guillaume de Machaut’s late-14th-century Messe de Notre Dame it was evident that he is also an inspired director, securing not only perfect tuning and balance of texture but the finest nuances of dynamics, phrasing and expression.

These qualities ran equally through the joyous leapings of Pérotin’s still earlier four-part organum Viderunt Omnes (c. 1200) and, with the full choir, Maurice Duruflé’s gentle, beautifully crafted Quatre motets sur des thèmes Gregoriens (1960).

More questionable, perhaps, was the insertion of short organ pieces between choral movements, finely though they were delivered by Jeremy Filsell of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The interpolation of severely contrapuntal chant fantasias by Jehan Titelouze (c. 1600) into the Machaut Messe worked well enough, but the alternation of Pérotin’s paragraphs with rather motley organ items by the 20th-century French composer Marcel Dupré made for an uncomfortable grinding of historical gears.

Still to come, however, and sans organ, was Poulenc’s motet sequence to Resistance-inspired verses of Paul Eluard Figure Humaine (1943). This is a fiercely demanding score to enunciate, pitch and balance, so volatile and wide-ranging are its shifts of tonality and contrasts of texture. Yet the focus and conviction of these young singers never faltered, rising to an overwhelming intensity in the penultimate motet of desolation and hope, and a wondrous sense of release in the final paean to Liberty. Unforgettable – after which Messiaen’s hushed O Sacrum convivium, by way of encore, came as a benison.