North Yorkshire Chorus, St Mary’s Thirsk,
21 May 2011
The large
and enthusiastic audience enjoyed
a thoroughly professional, enjoyable summer evening of music. Puccini’s
Messa di Gloria, written as a
graduation
thesis, lay forgotten for 75 years but has gained popularity through
growing
interest in the composer’s non-operatic output. It foreshadows many
Puccini
trademarks: memorable melodies, sumptuous harmonies and unapologetic
theatricality. This energetic and idiomatic performance by the North
Yorkshire
Chorus under the baton of Greg Smith and accompanied at the organ by
Andrew
Christer, was all that Puccini could have wished for. The conductor
displayed a
sure sense of the music’s ebb and flow while the organ, if lacking in
out-and-out power, showed off an attractive range of timbres. The tenor
soloist, Stephen Newlove, sang with an appealing light vibrato, clear
diction
and accurate intonation; the voice of the bass, John Cunningham, while
less
focused, projected great drama through a broad dynamic range. Internal
balance and
rhythmic discipline within the choir, and between choir and soloists,
were excellent.
Rossini took life, himself and his music
much less seriously than did Puccini. As a result, his compositions –
however
superficially frivolous or undemanding – achieve an integrity and
heartfelt
simplicity that often eludes Puccini. His Stabat
Mater is a late work, and has long been a favourite of choral
societies and
audiences: the former, because Rossini writes instinctively for voices,
the
latter because there can be no doubting the sincerity of the piece.
There is no
‘grandstanding’ here. The male soloists from the Puccini were joined by
the
soprano Andrea Ryder and the mezzo Joyce Tindsley. As a quartet, the
blend was
musical and satisfying. The challenging high soprano lines were
dispatched with
ease, if at times with too wide a vibrato. The mezzo solos were warm in
tone
and fervent in delivery. Here, the bass soloist sang with greater
clarity of
pitch, while the tenor succeeded in making the famous Cuius
animam a model of restraint. Chorus, organ and conductor
again played their parts in a performance that was skilfully scaled to
the
acoustic of the church, allowing individual lines to be heard clearly
and yet
achieving considerable power in climaxes. While there were no obvious
weaknesses, the ending was especially successful and moving in
conveying the
emotional power of Rossini’s recapitulation of earlier themes, a
structural
device that, in a less coherent performance, can sound a merely arid
academic
exercise.
Andrew Bennett
(An edited version of this review
appeared in the Darlington
and Stockton Times on 27 May 2011)
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