Latest Reviews
[Concert Review – The Pits, Bridewell Hall, London] Michael Church, The Independent – 07 July 2008 (4*)
Why would a singing group call themselves The Pits – because they know they’re rubbish? In fact, the name derives from their debut for some Formula One luminaries, but as members of the chamber choir Tenebrae, they have an impeccable pedigree. And when they took the stage, it was for the laudable purpose of celebrating the sort of domestic music-making that was the norm in Victorian and Edwardian times.
I had never known the origin of that teasing line, sung by women to young men loafing in London rather than getting gassed in the First World War trenches: “We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go.” Nice to discover its full setting in a ditty called “Your King and Country Want You”. Nice also to hear a proper rendition of “Come into the Garden, Maud” – Schubert with a Neapolitan gloss. Elgar, Stanford and Sullivan all turned up trumps, sung with relish and a smile: this music was designed to give pleasure to those who performed it, but that pleasure was guaranteed to rub off on all around. This talented a cappella group could have kept us happily listening all night.
[Concert Review – Merchant Taylors Hall, London / City of London Festival] Richard Morrison, The Times – 03 July 2008
Swiss music, or music influenced by Switzerland, is one theme of this year’s City of London Festival. And it’s being pursued with such zeal that a critic can cover the bases only by hurtling between venues on a bike.
Thus it was that at 8pm on Monday I was in the splendid Merchant Taylors’ Hall listening to Nigel Short’s choir, Tenebrae, premiering his evocation of the Rhine; at 8.30pm I was admiring the Hottingen Guild Band from Zurich delivering alfresco marches in Napoleonic-era blue uniforms; at 9pm I was in Bridewell Hall witnessing two men doing wacky things with alphorns. Rarely have I felt so in need of a beer.
Tenebrae mostly comprises the usual suspects from the ubiquitous London professional choral mafia. Their Schubert partsongs were exquisite, but their Brahms Neue Liebeslieder Waltzer received only the most generalised colouring.
Happily, his own piece, Rhenus Fluvius, made partial amends. Appropriately watery texts by the Swiss poet Jurg Fankhauser were mostly intoned by narrator or sung by basses, while the other singers produced gently overlapping backing harmonies. Holst and Vaughan Williams set folk songs the same way a century ago. But Short’s harmonies were beguiling, and his work expertly tailored.
[Concert Review – Merchant Taylors Hall, London / City of London Festival] Barry Millington, Evening Standard – 01 July 2008
Unaccompanied choral music may not be everybody’s idea of heaven but when the music is as imaginatively selected as this, and the choir as egregiously flawless as Tenebrae, the repertoire ought to win over the stoniest hearts.
In fact, parts of the programme, including the opening Neue Liebeslieder Walzer by Brahms, were accompanied by two pianos (the excellent Joseph Cullen and Jeremy Filsell). Tenebrae, directed by Nigel Short, has more than its fair share of solo potential, and several of its members took the limelight with aplomb.
Picking up one of the thematic threads of this year’s City of London Festival – namely Switzerland – Short’s own new work, Rhenus Fluvius, seeks out the source of the Rhine high in the Swiss Alps.
Jurg M Frankhauser’s text draws on the Romanch dialect, as well as Latin and German. French, Middle High German and Dutch are promised for later sections.
The verse bubbles and gushes like the river itself, while Short’s setting, at first reluctant to settle for obvious word-painting, finally achieves its own organic synthesis of line and colour.
The Mass for Double Choir by the Swiss composer Frank Martin, one of the masterpieces of the genre, was given a thrilling performance, the poignancy of its entreaties and the potency of its acclamations heard to tremendous effect in the Sanctus.
Motets by Brahms and a group of Schubert pieces were delivered with the impeccable intonation and stylistic authority that mark out Tenebrae as one of the country’s most outstanding vocal ensembles.
[Concert Review – Merchant Taylors Hall, London / City of London Festival] Ben Hogwood, Classical Source.com – 01 July 2008
In the splendid setting of the Merchant Taylors’ Hall, Tenebrae explored two of the themes of this year’s City of London Festival – Goethe and Switzerland. The programme, first half secular and second half sacred, sandwiched an interval courtyard performance of traditional Swiss marches and waltzes from the Hottingen Guild Band of Zurich.
Brahms’s “Neue Liebeslieder” opened the concert, and the eighteen-strong choir gave ‘Verzicht, o Herz, auf Rettung’ plenty of lift. The solo numbers were nicely done, in particular alto Ruth Massey’s ‘Wahre, wahre deiren Sohn’, and when singing in full ensemble the choir had incisive clarity, though the soprano range was occasionally coarse when singing at full volume.
Tenebrae director Nigel Short then gave us Part One of his work in progress, “Rhenus Fluvius”, which on this evidence is set to become a substantial and keenly descriptive work. A cycle of texts from Jürg M. Fankhauser that follows the river Rhine from source, it begins in dramatic style before an extended section for narrator (not credited here) and suspended choir, the slowly shifting backdrop a key feature of the ‘Prologue’. With three languages already used in the four movements, and more planned, Short complements his varied source material with strongly voiced music, always in a tonal grip but harmonically interesting, particularly in this authoritative performance, giving a keen sense of the outdoors.
Though in the ‘secular’ first half, Goethe’s text for Schubert’s “Chor der Engel” is ‘sacred’ in all but function, though the joy implied in its praise was restrained here, Short bringing through anticipations of Bruckner to a lovely, effortless final cadence. Tenors and basses joined in a yearning “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” and an unhurried “Gesang der Geister über den Wassern”, its descriptions of towering cliffs and gushing streams “softly hissing down to the deep” were vividly portrayed by the ten voices in a powerful yet controlled performance.
Centrepiece of the second half was (Swiss composer) Frank Martin’s “Mass for Double Choir”, though with only the ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Gloria’ printed in the programme applause rang out after the latter’s conclusion. To be fair the performance invited it, as the ‘Gloria’ was the epitome of joy itself, Short continually revealing the intricacies of texture and harmony that make this setting so satisfying. A carefully chosen quartet grouping brought through the moving melodies of the ‘Agnus dei’, while the sonorous low Ds of the basses in the ‘Domine Deus’ were beautifully achieved. Early climax points in the ‘Kyrie’ were perhaps a little snatched, though the unusual dimensions of the room – a high ceiling and relatively short length – were less kind to the high notes.
Martin’s work was prefaced by the autumnal warmth of Brahms’s Opus 110 motets, with the conventional hymn-like contours of ‘Ach, arme Welt’ contrasting with the intertwining parts of ‘Wenn wir in hochsten’. Schubert’s setting of the twenty-third psalm followed, with the harp-like sonorities of Jeremy Filsell’s piano part complementing the sopranos and altos in a setting that was serene from beginning to end.
Serene, too, was Brahms’s “Geistliches Lied”, acting as an ideal postlude to the Martin. Beautifully shaped, and with the long notes held particularly well by the men’s voices, the final crescendo and diminuendo were worth the admission alone.
St Magnus Festiblog [Posted by David R. at 9:24 AM ]
Path of Miracles sung by the Tenebrae choir – Wow!
This was one of the best things I have ‘ever’ heard. In fact, I think I’m still slightly in shock. The music must have been written by some mad genius, and the singers some strange mutants with bizarre vocal powers.
In the opening section, a few of the choir stood in a circle (it was in St Magnus Cathedral BTW) and very gradually began to make very low sounds. Think of the Ligetti in 2001 and you’re about a third of the way there. As the sound built to a crescendo, suddenly the female voices crash in from nowhere, scaring the crap out of you. The harmonies are so close, the interference patterns make you fear for your eardrums. It was actually ‘scary’. I realised my heart was hammering and I was breathing too fast.
Throughout the performance, the choir used the space in the cathedral to move around, changing the sound. It really was the height of showing off to sing so superbly while walking about! At one point, the deepest bass went to the back of the nave – his voice was deeper than I thought humanly possible, making our chairs vibrate. You could almost ‘see’ the frequency of the sound waves.
After the wordless(?) opening bits, recognisable words and melody gradually appear. But it’s still not comfortable music. There’s a long middle section where the main words I could make out were “gallows” and “hell”, part of the choir singing a pendulum-like non-melody underpinning the dread. Eventually the audience is gifted a beautiful resolution into tuneful harmony. The final bit, where parts of the choir walked down the each side of the nave and sang right next to the audience, was so profoundly moving I had great difficulty controlling my emotion.
The performance finished and everyone sat in silence for about a minute before someone at the front yelled “bravo”, scaring the hell out of us all I think! There then followed a sustained standing ovation for what was a truly remarkable experience. The late start (10:30pm), the setting (St Magnus Cathedral) and the incredible performance all combined to create a unique atmosphere.
It was one of those times when you can almost believe there are supernatural agencies at work, to result in something so beautiful. G, sitting next to me, said it made 30 years of giving his time to the Festival worthwhile. It was very difficult to move at all, and when we did it was to go straight home: I didn’t want to talk to anyone or hear any more music, just allow the Path of Miracles to resound in my head for a while longer.