Tenebrae at the City of London Festival - 3.07.08

[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.