 aughan Williams CD Review Michael Kennedy: Sunday Telegraph (12/11/2006) In good time for gift-buying comes this pleasing disc of three Christmas works all based on the traditional carols Vaughan Williams loved and many of which he collected. They stretch over his long career, from the well-known short Fantasia of 1912, with Roderick Williams singing the baritone solos most poetically, to the 1926 masque On Christmas Night, based on Dickens, and the concert version of The First Nowell, a nativity play by Simona Pakenham. The music (mainly arrangements of carols) was left unfinished when VW died in 1958 and completed by Roy Douglas. The almost unknown masque is a fascinating piece, with wordless choral writing of the kind heard in his Flos Campi and Riders to the Sea of the same period of composition. Steer away from it if you can’t take folk songs, but if you can there is some magical and poetic music to delight you here. Much the same can be said of The First Nowell, in which the soprano Sarah Fox joins Williams and the excellent chorus. This is safe Richard Hickox territory and he obtains idiomatic and enjoyable performances. Splendid recorded sound. 
 ramophone – Awards Issue 2006
Marc Rochester: The Gramophone (01/10/2006) Inspired a cappella writing inspires these choral forces, too
Requiem for a Tribe Brother was written for the Joyful Company of Singers and they deliver it here with conviction and a real depth of feeling (they did, after all, perform it at Williamson’s funeral a decade later). It is a lovely work full of lush harmonies and evocative soundscapes, revealing a profound personal sense not of loss but of joy in the memory of a young Aboriginal friend whose death inspired the work. Peter Broadbent and his singers relish the music, singing with understated emotion and, in so doing, bringing the real beauty of the score to the surface.
The other works predate Williamson’s appointment (in 1975) as Master of the Queen’s Music, and reveal a more acerbic but never less than inspired approach to the a cappella medium. The impressive five-movement Symphony for Voices is described in the booklet-notes as “one of the most astonishing works in the choral canon”. Astonishing it most certainly is, both in Williamson’s inventive use of the human voice to create quasi-orchestral textures and in its opening movement sung by a single alto; Kathryn Cook shows real authority and impressive vocal control.
For me, though, it is the suite from Williamson’s 1964 opera, derived from Edith Sitwell’s English Eccentrics, which is the most enjoyable thing here. The music is cleverly satirical, witty and technically demanding, but the Joyful Company of Singers are well up to the task. They positively bounce through the delightfully buoyant “The Quacks”, while the gentle parody of English folksongs in “A Traveller” is enchanting. Unfortunately the booklet only gives texts for the Requiem.
 resteigne Festival of Music and the Arts Edward Clark: www.classicalsource.com (30/08/2006) On to St. Mary’s Parish Church at Pembridge to hear a choral concert by The Joyful Company of Singers under Peter Broadbent with Thomas Oxley on bassoon. "Three Latin Motets" by Cecilia McDowall (born 1951) showed a deft touch and feeling for mood, while Adrian Williams’s "My Heart is Steadfast" (for bassoon and choir) evinced a gift for melody rare in contemporary music. Frank Martin’s "Mass" followed, receiving an eloquent and, at times, passionate performance. Next, Giles Swayne (born 1946) showed his skilful command of choral forces in the traditional text of the Magnificat; Arvo Pärt’s setting of this text, however, proved the least inspired music of the concert.
Vasks’s "Mate saule" and "Sava tauta" displayed a natural talent for word-setting, combining melody with a rocking accompaniment, while the concluding bracket of three short pieces by Augstinas, Lūsēns and Tormis were all inspired by their religious or folk background; each made its mark in terms of gentle melodic inspiration. The performances under Broadbent were both dedicated and heart-warming.
 illiamson CD Matthew Rye: The Telegraph (19/08/2006) One cannot help feeling that Malcolm Williamson's heyday was in the 1960s. Although his rate of composition remained high from being appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 1975 to the early 1990s, little from that period seems to have made much headway in the repertoire.
This disc of unaccompanied choral music concludes with one of those late works, however, the Requiem for a Tribe Brother, written in 1992 in memory of an Aboriginal friend.
It is a Requiem in the mould of the comforting line of Brahms and Fauré, rather than the apocalyptic visions of Berlioz or Verdi, but in its simplicity of style could have been written any time in the past 100 years.
More distinctive are the innovative Symphony for Voices, composed to poems by James McCauley in 1962, and a suite of choral portraits from his Edith Sitwell opera English Eccentrics of 1964.
The Joyful Company of Singers, who premičred the Requiem and indeed sang it at Williamson's own funeral in 2003, performs all this music with warmth and devotion, but special honours go to the contralto soloist, Kathryn Cook, in the challenging solo opening movement of the Symphony.
 lassical: New Releases: Malcolm Williamson: Choral Music Paul Driver: The Sunday Times (16/07/2006) ***
MALCOLM WILLIAMSON
Choral Music
Joyful Company of Singers, conductor Peter Broadbent
Naxos 8.557783
The reputation of the late Master of the Queen’s Music was not high at his death, and he has not been much performed since. Re-evaluation is overdue, as these four works make plain. They include a masterpiece, the Symphony for Voices, written in 1960 for the John Alldis Choir. Although the five movements follow a sort of symphonic plan, what is most arresting is the way that a quasi-orchestral texture (lots of vocalising) coexists with word-setting of exemplary subtlety. It is a haunting and visionary, but infectiously tuneful, evocation of Williamson’s native Australia.
 rlando Consort / Joyful Company Geoff Brown: The Times (26/06/2006) ****
Stunning! And I don’t just mean the waistcoats. For behind the Orlando Consort’s five colourful chests were their glorious voices, tunnelling through medieval polyphony’s horizontal maze with forthright skill and beauty. And behind them stood Peter Broadbent’s Joyful Company of Singers, one of the most agile and flexible choirs in the land, as comfortable tussling with today’s music as they are gliding through plainchant.
The festival’s late concert on Thursday brought the groups together in an inspiring programme. The framework was Guillaume de Machaut’s towering Messe de Nostre Dame, one of Western music’s best early treasures. The Orlando voices navigating its disparate lines and speeds, hiccupping rhythms and harmonic collisions was pleasurable enough. The icing arrived watching them hold their ground, each mouth under separate orders, fused in singing of intense beauty.
Between the Mass movements came not only Gregorian chants, smoothly delivered by Broadbent’s choir, but a magnificent Spitalfields commission, Scattered Rhymes, devised by Tarik O’Regan as a companion to the Machaut. Motifs and chord clashes from the Mass gave him his seedbed; two 14th-century texts about human and divine love by Petrarch and Anonymous gave him his words.
And off he went, pitching both vocal groups into a multi-plane display of soaring lines and rocking rhythms, merging the 14th and 21st centuries in the friendliest embrace.
O’Regan’s gift for lyric flight seems boundless. You might have to reach back to Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, or even Tallis, to find another British vocal work so exultant. The earlier concert by Joyful Company of Singers had its own peaks in the cross-section of music by the composer of CRY, Giles Swayne. We heard the fond indiscretions of youth (Shakespeare settings, parented by Britten and Ligeti) and middle age (gushing treatments of Keats). In the rugged and masterful Passiontide Motets we heard a new searing cry, for peace. He’s a composer of generous passion and imagination, and Broadbent’s singers responded in kind. Joyful company indeed.
 ing, choirs of angels Richard Morrison: The Times (03/12/2005) Despite predictions of doom, choral music is alive and well and singing its heart out, says Richard Morrison.
Nearly everything you read on these pages is about entertainment as defined and supplied by professionals. That’s probably as it should be. The amateur production of Annie Get Your Gun at your local village hall may also be richly entertaining, but possibly for the wrong reasons. And I write as someone who gave the best years of his life to the amateur stage, and still has the nervous twitch to prove it.
But there’s one cultural field in which amateurs reign supreme. I’m talking about choirs. And since we are entering the season of ding-donging merrily on high, I think it’s time to pay tribute to the nation’s army of straining lungs and heaving chests.
Britain does, of course, possess professional choirs. Cathedrals have them. So does the BBC, and those of our opera companies that aren’t bankrupt. There’s also a pool of about 60 freelance singers in London who, between them, seem to metamorphose into at least ten different professional choral ensembles.
But this professional activity amounts to a mere drop in the vast ocean that is choral singing in Britain. And the bulk of it — from the sturdy choral societies, hurling out their mighty oratorios, to those exhausting barbershop groups leaping around like demented frogs — is done by people who have demanding day jobs, but who put their hearts and souls into their weekly sing. With so many choirs, standards are bound to vary. One big design flaw in the human race is the shortage of tenors, or at least the sort of tenors you would like to hear hitting the notorious top A in the Hallelujah Chorus.
Yet I am constantly uplifted by the superlative standards of Britain’s best amateurs. To hear the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus or London Symphony Chorus in full throttle, or a crack chamber choir such as the Holst Singers or Joyful Company of Singers, or a stunning school choir like Belfast’s Methodist College . . . well, you need make no allowance for their amateur status. There are no better choirs of their type anywhere.
For decades, however, people have fretted that this great tradition is dying. It’s true that singing in state schools has declined tremendously. But big efforts are now being made to reverse that trend. And what Britain’s choral scene has gained in my lifetime is a multicultural dimension. Inspired by superb groups such as the London Adventist Chorale, hundreds of gospel choirs have sprung up, enthusing thousands who might not necessarily be turned on by Bach.
That’s great. Choral singing has an undeserved reputation as a prissy middle-class pastime. It was never so. The great 19th-century choral societies drew their singers from the mills and factories, and most of today’s amateur choirs are equally classless.
What they celebrate, in fact, is the power of harmony in its broadest sense — the philosophy that, when we work together, we are so much greater than the sum of our parts. So choirs aren’t just about music. They represent an attitude to life, society, the Universe and everything. Besides, being one of 200 people blasting out Handel’s Messiah is still the best fun you can have with your clothes on.
oncert: John Rutter 60th Birthday Gala Neil Fisher: The Times (28/09/2005) ***
Would you invite a guest to your 60th-birthday party if you were worried that they might upstage you? Nor me. But then John Rutter devotees probably don’t think he is upstageable, and they have some pretty powerful reasons to argue their case. Where would so many choirs of Britain and America be without his eminently singable music? What would happen to the classical record industry without his seemingly unshakeable commercial appeal?
But whether Rutter’s music can actually withstand close comparison with those composers he names as his greatest influences is a thornier question, and one that was put into stark relief by the opening two numbers of this tribute concert. You can’t exactly dislike the good-natured verve of Rutter’s A Choral Fanfare, but when followed by the astonishing, exuberant harmonies of William Byrd’s Sing Joyfully (set to the same words) Rutter’s homage seemed weak and pallid in comparison.
It was the same story when it came to the three short a cappella hymns selected for this celebration. There was the poignant yearning of Herbert Howells’s tribute to the assassinated JFK, Take him, earth, for cherishing, and the thickly resonant, concentrated drive of Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God. But between the two was Rutter's own Hymn to the Creator of the Light: tuneful for sure, but soothing and safe where the others are complex.
At least Rutter’s indestructible Gloria was there to remind us what this composer does best: careful word-setting, buoyant melodies, and the tasteful insertion of jazz-inflected rhythms to keep any choir on their toes. Even in this choral staple, though, one yearns for some thematic variation or development of the existing melodies beyond simple dynamic shifts, while the enthusiastic scoring for brass and percussion tends toward the banal.
But Rutter’s music is probably not aimed at the carpers of the concert hall, and the Joyful Company of Singers under Peter Broadbent gave it their all — particularly when it came to the Barber Shop cuteness of Rutter’s own Birthday Madrigals. Sweet, fun, almost loveable: the main inconvenience remained the music ringing in one’s ears from defter sources.
 oyful Company of Singers Paul Conway: The Independent (27/09/2005) Just as Malcolm Arnold has penetrated the nation's consciousness through his film scores, so John Rutter's carols and church music have made his sound-world reassuringly familiar, though sadly, today, few school and church choirs are left to sing his music. He has written almost exclusively with specific performers and specific occasions in mind, and most of the works featured in his 60th birthday concert were in this category.
Despite his instantly recognisable style, he is an unashamedly eclectic composer. There were echoes of Britten and Vaughan Williams, and especially Walton's ceremonial manner in Rutter's Gloria (1974) and Psalm 150 (2002). Both these big, celebratory works represented Rutter speaking in his assured public voice, stirring enough in its brassy self-confidence, but the delicately wrought opening of the Gloria's central movement agreeably revealed a more individual musical character beneath the surface rhetoric.
Cantus (1997), for choir and brass ensemble, intrigued with its atmospheric, subtly shifting textures. Though "Alleluia" was the only word sung, this introspective piece was worlds apart from the numbing grind of "holy minimalism". The composer ensured that every declaration of the word was clothed in different colours. The result was deeply affecting, as kaleidoscopic fluctuations of temper artlessly embraced a conflicting variety of emotions. Birthday Madrigals (1995) found the composer in relaxed and humorous mood. Juxtaposing jazzy, Mancini-like settings of texts from the madrigal era with more traditional English part-songs, this piece elicited spontaneous applause from the audience.
The choir was on excellent form, visibly responding to Peter Broadbent's assured and relaxed direction. This was not the slickest show in town, as the brass players were unconscionably late for their first appearance and one of the timpanist's sticks flew into the audience. No matter, for here was hearty, fervent music-making among friends, which is surely how this dedicated composer would have wished to spend his significant birthday.
 joyful celebration Barry Millington: Evening Standard (25/09/2005) From the wafting spirituality of the Anglican tradition to the doo-wop harmonies of the King’s Singers, the music of John Rutter has many reference points, invoked in this skilfully devised celebration of his 60th birthday mounted by the Joyful Company of Singers under Peter Broadbent.
Rutter’s exquisite Hymn to the Creator of Light for unaccompanied double choir looks back to William Harris’s Faire is the Heaven, for similar forces, and to Herbert Howells, whose Take Him Earth, for Cherishing, written for the memorial service of J F Kennedy, was heard in close juxtaposition. In both these and in John Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God, the Joyful Company’s excellent tuning and good diction stood them in good stead.
They sustained the lovely long lines of Stanford’s The Swallow and the Blue Bird impressively, too, the former enlivened by attention to textural detail (the flash of the swallow was nicely done), the latter winging off gracefully into the blue sky.
Another side of Rutter was exemplified in his Gloria and Psalm 150, both adding brass ensemble (the accomplished English Players), percussion and organ (Alistair Young) to the vocal parts. Broadbent and his forces worked hard to deliver them with the necessary pizzazz, and though they weren’t given much help by the dryish acoustics of the Cadogan Hall, the buoyancy of the performances served to remind why Rutter is one of the most popular composers in the field of choral music.
Yet another side of him was seen in the Birthday Madrigals, originally written for ex-King’s Singer Brian Kay to conduct in celebration of George Shearing’s 75th. The trademark smoochy harmonies and catchy syncopations were neatly and uninhibitedly caught by the Joyful Company. For the infectiousness of his melodic invention and consummate craftsmanship, Rutter has few peers.
n Spital Fields Richard Morrison: The Times (24/06/2005) Jonathan Dove at Christ Church, Spitalfields
*****
This brilliant 75-minute cantata is the best piece of community music-making I have seen in several years. It wasn’t just that the 200 performers — amateurs and professionals, tots, teens and grannies — were totally assured in voice and movement. Or that, time and again, the composer Jonathan Dove conjured breathtaking effects, ravishing tunes and spine-tingling ensembles.
Or that Alasdair Middleton’s libretto swooped like a well-read magpie on what seemed like every poignant or shocking piece of prose or poetry ever penned about the East End — from Dickens and Pepys to Jack London — and then wove them cleverly into a cogent narrative. Or that Clare Whistler’s simple but gripping production managed to utilise every aisle and gallery of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s monumental church.
No, what made this piece compelling was its total fidelity to the spirit of the place that inspired it — Spitalfields, that teeming patchwork of tiny streets in the heart of London, reborn with each new wave of immigrants, which has witnessed so much pain, poverty and dark tragedy over the centuries. While being nothing like a history lesson, On Spital Fields captured this most characterful of London hamlets in a series of sparse yet atmospheric tableaux: the benighted Victorian destitute huddled in the churchyard; the degradation of the silk-trade sweatshops; the riots born of desperation; the rude vigour of the market traders; and finally the birds and herbs that flourished in Spitalfields Garden, despite all the squalor, to keep alive the flame of hope and beauty.
All this Dove evoked stunningly. To his massed choruses of local children and residents he gave simple refrains, but always with an unusual twist, and often piled up into exhilarating, overlapping climaxes (impeccably marshalled by the conductor Gerry Cornelius). He also used a much more accomplished choir (the Joyful Company of Singers) to deliver rapid passages of declamation — a bit too rapid, sometimes, for complete comprehension — and two fine opera singers (Mary Plazas and Mark Wilde) to convey more intimate testimonies.
There were moments of ear-splitting apocalyptic brutality when Dove unleashed cacophonies of baleful brass (Royal Academy of Music students, up in the galleries) — to convey, for instance, the anger of the weavers’ rebellion. But he also used the chamber ensemble Chroma to produce both sinister shadows and moments of ethereal beauty, including one exquisitely calm, quasi-Elizabethan song for solo soprano and harp.
It is entirely in keeping with Dove’s selfless composing philosophy that he has written a piece of such craftsmanship that may well never be performed anywhere else. But that only makes this Spitalfields Festival production the more precious.
 east of unaccompanied music at its very best Bruce Pennick: Brentwood Gazette (27/04/2005) The organisers of Hutton and Shenfield Union Church Arts Festival have once again served the arts in Brentwood well by arranging a cleverly balanced musical programme to satisfy a wide variety of musical tastes. This closing concert presented unaccompanied choral music at its best.
Entitled 'From Byrd to the Beatles' it encompassed a vast range of choral styles, in each of which these accomplished singers, artfully directed by Peter Broadbent, demonstrated their enviable vocal skills.
Great acclaim
Exceptional qualities of blend, balance, intonation and expression have justifiably won the Joyful Company national and international acclaim ever since their foundation in 1988.
The opening items, by Byrd and Morley, got the programme off to a confident start, only the slightly uneasy changes in tempo and the unusual balance between tenors and basses making one wonder if this was the Singers' happiest style. The following items found them successively more at home, beginning with three part-songs by Elgar, which illustrated their meticulous tuning, perfect ensemble and the complete gamut of dynamics.
Difficulties increased in Britten's Five Flower Songs, where the harmonies and rhythms are even less predictable. Once again, precision and intonation were immaculate: the Evening Primrose was haunting and Green Broom appropriately hectic. In Vaughan Williams's incomparable Shakespeare Songs vocal control and fine degrees of tuning and shading were again remarkable.
It was a delight to hear the Joyful Company responding impeccably to the intimate direction of their conductor in all these demanding pieces. Then, after illustrating Percy Grainger's elaborate vocal colouring, the Singers went on to indulge us with John Rutter's When Daisies Pied. Peter Broadbent's arrangement of four Beatles songs, composed after recording Paul McCartney's Garland for Linda, brought smiles to Singers and audience alike, as did their encore, Rutter's It was a Lover. A third visit cannot come too soon.
 aster Musical Weekend - Snape Maltings Tony Cooper: Easter Musical Weekend (31/03/2005) The weather may not have been up to scratch - it was very Grimes! - but for the youthful and gifted performers from the Britten-Pears Orchestra and the European Union Youth Orchestra it was a totally different matter. Their commitment to music (and their enthusiasm) showed through! They may actually lack a bit of performing experience but they truly make up for it in their crammed week of rehearsals.
The opening concert saw the Britten-Pears Orchestra join up with the Joyful Company of Singers for a performance of MacMillan’s liturgical work Seven Last Words from the Cross. The composer conducted and it was a performance hard to fault and it made one truly reflect and meditate on the real meaning of Christ’s message on the most sacred day of the Church’s year - Good Friday.
....................................
It was a glorious weekend of music making and, once again, Snape Maltings showed its special charm and magic!
 iving Composers inspired by the Liturgy Raymond Harris: Petworth Observer (29/07/2004) A concert of unaccompanied singing of religious music, all composed by living musicians enthralled a capacity audience at St Mary's church last Saturday. The international fame of this chamber choir had preceded them, but few realised how unfamiliar the music would be.
From the start, the presence of an outstanding choir was evident - from the immaculate control of their conductor, Peter Broadbent, to their own immaculate response to every nuance of his gestures. The first work, a Magnificat by Giles Swayne (b.1946) opened and closed with an earthy, declamatory sound; but the middle sections were so subtly shaded, one could imagine the conductor was turning a volume control knob, so precisely did the whole choir respond. I also remarked some clever key changes introduced by short glissandi from the tenors. It was full of technical surprises but never at the expense of the sense to be conveyed.
Douai Missa Brevis by Roxanna Panufnik (b.1968) was the next and for me the most satisfying work. The familiar sequences of the mass guided one's attention throughout, allowing time and space to enjoy the piquant harmonies and melodic lines. As so often, the Agnus Dei inspired some really memorable music with highly chromatic recitatives by soloists Clare Porter and Andy Mackinder alternating with richly harmonic Misereres from the choir.
Of the four shorter works which followed, who will forget the amazing Pange Lingua by Geörgy Orbán, (Romanian b.1947). The rapid repetition of the title words of the piece was hypnotic! Several other works by one English and two other East Europeans, showed the choir's familiarity with the rich store of new religious music from the East - the legacy of such composers as Kodály and Bartók and of the choirs they trained.
I thought the most spectacular work came after the interval - a Magnificat by Tarik O'Regan (b.1978), the youngest of the composers, who was present at the concert. The work uses a solo cello (Sophie Rivlin) and a concertante choir of four voices. There were moments of magic such as when the cello seemed to draw a thread of gold from the choral sound - a beautiful device. There were mere suggestions of tradition - in some plainsong, and in some antiphonal singing with the quartet, but so originally managed and performed that words fail me! The work ends with a fugal Gloria. This composer's work is a most encouraging harbinger of the future of church music - even of music itself - at a time when faith rooted in the past is being deserted. Rather than cramping their style, these composers seem to be drawing from the Christian liturgies a new inspiration and a direction to their work; something which is often perceived to be lacking in much purely secular music.
The last three works were more overtly liturgical, especially Salus Aeterna by Gabriel Jackson (b.1962), a modern working of plainsong with faux bourdons, and Sir John Taverner's well known Song for Athene, a beautiful Orthodox offering to end a remarkable event. Watch Choral Evensong for further appearances of these composers. And next year perhaps we can hear the Joyful Company of Singers perform O'Regan's Nunc Dimitis.
The Festival is indebted to Mr. and Mrs. J Beveridge for generously sponsoring this event.
 ach's St. John Passion David Murray: Financial Times (13/04/2004) By and large the irreligious English may have given up church-going, but Easter still draws them to quasi-worship - above all to hear one of Bach's Passions, which they do with rapt piety and in impressive numbers.
At Easter those Passions sprout up all over the country: usually the much-loved one "according to St. Matthew" but sometimes the St. John, and once in a while the recently "reconstructed" St. Mark (a lost score, but plausibly re-assembled from other cantata movements Bach is thought to have cannibalised from that Passion).
St. Matthew has long been the favoured choice, for St. John is shorter and starker, like that Gospel itself; but on Good Friday Nicholas Kraemer, his singers and the City of London Sinfonia, complete with an expert period lute, gamba, viole d'amore and oboes da caccia: the days of clumsy period-instrument playing are safely past - gave his grateful Barbican audience a St. John Passion that was as richly satisfying, various and yet sharply focused as could be.
From a properly urgent, anxious start with the opening chorus, Kraemer sustained both dramatic tension and musical meaning throughout. His excellent choir (rather than the mere solo quartet, or at most a double quartet, that some musicologists argue was all the "chorus" Bach would have had) was the 30-strong Joyful Company of Singers, lucid and stylish.
His "Evangelist", the story-teller, was the reliably acute Jeremy Ovenden, who also delivered all the anonymous solo-tenor meditations with communicative tone and deep feeling.
The bearded bass-baritone Matthew Hargreaves sang the "Christus" figure with fraught gravity. Carolyn Sampson's soprano arias were bright, eager and true-pitched, a lovely tonic; baritone Peter Harvey's sustained lyrical weight in his best solos answered her beautifully. The "mezzo" part went to the intrepid counter-tenor Robin Blaze, clean and vividly high-flying.
The story-telling maintained a tight dramatic grip, and the essential moments struck home with gravity.
It could be years before we hear another St. John Passion as scrupulously illuminating and balanced. Curious how an act of soberly religious re-telling can become a purely aesthetic event.
t. John Passion Tim Ashley: The Guardian (12/04/2004)
Was Bach anti-Semitic? The question is guaranteed to make most people jolt, given his reputation as being the most sincerely religious of composers, though it also hovers at the back of my mind whenever I hear the St John Passion.
No one would doubt that the score ranks among the greatest ever composed, nor can one deny that to hear it in performance is to undergo an experience at once harrowing and ennobling. Yet even though St John's Gospel doesn't contain the offensive "blood libel" line incorporated into Mel Gibson's messy film of the Passion, it does present an alarmingly baleful account of Jewish connivance in Christ's death. Bach, meanwhile, sets the utterances of "die Juden" as a series of sibilant fugues that should make us flinch rather than accept them unquestioningly.
Qualms about the work aside, the Barbican's performance, with Nicholas Kraemer conducting the City of London Sinfonia and the Joyful Company of Singers, was pretty momentous, marred only by some miscalculations on the part of the soloists. Tenor Jeremy Ovenden, incisive and committed in the arias, was overly dramatic in his delivery of the Evangelist's narration. Baritone Peter Harvey was his antithesis, tremendous in his characterisation of Peter's guilt and Pilate's dithering, yet disengaged in the arias.
Matthew Hargreaves was a dull Christus, though counter-tenor Robin Blaze and soprano Carolyn Sampson were exceptional. Blaze was hauntingly eloquent in his contemplation of Christ's suffering while Sampson sharply differentiated the soprano's initial confidence - complete with the sweeping statement that she, unlike Peter, would never deny Christ - from the awed figure she becomes after the Crucifixion.
Kraemer was faultless, finding violence as well as pity in the score, as the protracted dissonances that sting like lash strokes gave way to moments of timeless serenity. The choral singing was clear, committed and often flawless in its beauty.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,11712,1190103,00.html
lum Pudding John Quinn: www.musicweb.uk.net (01/11/2003) Perhaps it’s not surprising that ASV give Felicity Lott top billing on the sleeve of this CD for she is, after all, a wonderful artist. People buying the disc should be warned, however, that she only contributes to four of the tracks. One of these contributions is the well-known Cornelius/Atkins Three Kings, which I have never heard sung by other than a baritone. Suffice to say, Dame Felicity sings it radiantly.
As I listened through the disc for the first time I began to realise that the programme has been compiled with rare intelligence. There are several items that complement each other. Thus, for example, the reading from the medieval Wakefield Play is followed by Kenneth Leighton’s carol from the Coventry Play. Later on the aforementioned Three Kings is followed immediately by the T. S. Eliot poem, marvellously read by Gabriel Woolf. Those who buy this disc will find that the programme contains further examples of thoughtful juxtaposition.
Though the accompanying documentation does not make this clear it seems that the CD is, in fact, a "live" recording. However, for much of the programme the audience is commendably silent and it was only at track 16 when Gabriel Woolf’s reading of Dylan Thomas rightly raises laughter that one realizes that an audience is present.
I’ve mentioned Gabriel Woolf twice already. No less than 10 of the 24 tracks on the CD are readings by him. He really is an excellent narrator, varying his delivery and accent intelligently and possessing the priceless gift of good timing. The Dylan Thomas reading is one of the very best things that he does. The Laurie Lee reading is another (and how refreshing to find a choice other than the ubiquitous Cider with Rosie.) The Laurie Lee item is one of a few where there is a segue from a reading into the succeeding vocal item, always to good effect.
The singing throughout this collection is first rate. Dame Felicity is in lustrous voice (though I did wonder if her sheer vocal sophistication was just a little too much of a good thing in the Leighton, sacrificing thereby some of the stark simplicity of the piece?). The contributions of Peter Broadbent and his Joyful Company of Singers will also give much pleasure. They offer a beautiful account of Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium and they project vividly Samuel Barber’s dark 1968 setting of Laurie Lee, Twelfth Night. Their performance of the Max Reger piece is gorgeous, featuring some fine solo work from soprano soloists drawn from the choir itself. Here, it seems to me, Broadbent and his singers really convey the spirit of traditional German Christmas music.
No texts are provided. In general this is not a problem since diction is very clear throughout but, of course, several items are not in English. There is a succinct but useful note. There is a minor confusion about the track listing. The reading from E. V. Lucas and The Holly and the Ivy are listed as separate tracks (18 and 19) but in fact the carol is sung during the reading so the subsequent track listings and timings are incorrect. However, as this affects only the last few tracks on the disc it is scarcely a major problem unless one wants to play one of the last tracks in isolation, in which case a little mental adjustment will be needed.
This is a highly entertaining seasonal anthology, the contents of which have been chosen and executed with great skill and no little imagination. In fact, I’m almost tempted to say that the title "Plum Pudding" is a little misleading since it suggests a collection of Christmas sweetmeats. There are some such items, to be sure, but there is some more serious fare also in what is a very well balanced programme. Though one may wish to listen to individual tracks this is certainly a disc that will give most pleasure when listened to straight through for then the whole becomes greater than the sum of the not inconsiderable parts. I predict that this CD will give a great deal of Christmas pleasure and I warmly recommend it.
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2003/Nov03/Plum_Pudding.htm
ngels Sing! Marc Rochester: Gramophone - Awards Issue 2003 (01/10/2003) The passionate Douai Mass was composed in September 2001 for a mixed a capella group and stretches choral technique to the highest professional level. In so doing, it provides a glorious showcase for Peter Broadbent and his outstanding Joyful Company of Singers, and its highly effective quasi-Orthodox chanting and almost oriental decorative lines are magnificently sung by David Rees-Jones and a sumptuous-voiced Bridget Corderoy.
ngels Sing! Andrew Stewart: The Singer (30/09/2003) “ ..performed here with impressive conviction by the Joyful Company of Singers and Peter Broadbent."
ngels Sing! Music Week (30/09/2003) “..beautifully performed by the Joyful Company of Singers.. "
Dinner Engagement / Ruth Geoff Brown: The Times (22/07/2003) As Lennox Berkeley's perky opera A Dinner Engagement approached its premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1954, Benjamin Britten wrote to his friend: "There are most lovely things in the piece, which give me enormous pleasure."
Most lovely things indeed; and how right in Berkeley's centenary to conclude Michael Berkeley's reign as Cheltenham music festival director with a semi-staged performance. Lovely things in Lennox's opera Ruth too, along with less persuasive stretches and dramatic inertia.
The semi-staging rarely stretched beyond a little fancy dress. Singers lined up behind Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia - good for visibility, bad for delivery of the words. In A Dinner Engagement Roderick Williams and Yvonne Kenny's Earl and Countess of Dunmore, down on their finances in postwar Britain, wore aprons. The foreign aristocracy invited for dinner arrived with red sashes and tiara. A French one-act treatment of the subject might have spun into the surreal, but the libretto of Paul Dehn sticks to the English line. Differences of class, burnt toast, pickled walnuts: that's what this comic opera is about.
Anne Collins's Grand Duchess of Montelblanco gave the performance with the most theatrical kick - vowels foreign, hands outstretched as she announced her intentions of inspecting the Dunmores' "grounds". Robin Leggatte's Prince Philippe, intended husband of the Dunmores' Susan (Claire Rutter, beady and bright), should have unbent a little. There was ardour enough in the music; we needed it in the voice too. Still, a sprightly account of an engaging score. It even had melodies.
Ruth had its own lyrical jewels: the women's seed-sowing chorus Early in Springtime proved dazzling, especially with the Joyful Company of Singers. But there's no burnt toast in Eric Crozier's retelling of the biblical story of Ruth: just too many anguished, static scenes of Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, faced with a hard time in Judah until marriage and the harvest. The opera's way of introducing variety is to get the chorus singing vigorously. Attractive music results, but so does the lead characters' twiddling of thumbs.
Not that Mark Tucker's tenor hero Boaz took notice. Utterly engaged, his performance lit up the Town Hall. Alongside, Pamela Helen Stephen's Ruth glowed more quietly; but she could move, too, in the final arias.
erkeley double-bill Rian Evans: Guardian (22/07/2003) Lennox Berkeley's two oneact chamber operas, A Dinner Engagement and Ruth, brought the Cheltenham festival and its Berkeley centenary to a splendid close. Presented either side of a long interval, the first opera, with mentions of chopped mushrooms and garlic and not insubstantial comedy of manners and mores, whetted the appetite nicely. But it was the second, Ruth, with its vivid characterisation of the Old Testament story, that provided the more satisfying fare.
The two works date from the mid-1950s, when the composer was already professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.Though not conceived to stand together, they were a good foil for each other: each concerned with the arrangement of marriages, whether to restore wealth or secure a dynasty, and with the couples in question happening to fall in love.
A Dinner Engagement was lighthearted and, while not biting social satire, had plenty of sharp observation, with Berkeley's woodwind writing pointing up the wit.The instrumentation of Ruth - strings, horn and two flutes, piano and percussion - for all the inevitable echoes of Britten in the piano's punctuation of sections, was mellow and sometimes surprisingly rich. In the latter, emotional tension was carefully built up, the harvest celebrations were vibrant and rhythmically pungent and the impassioned, unaccompanied passage from Boaz (the fine MarkTucker) created a high point in the structure. The dignity of Ruth (the expressive Pamela Helen Stephen) then matched that enlightened heroism to bring a real nobility to the ending.
What emerged in both operas was the clarity and flow of Berkeley's word setting. Ironic, then, that Ruth, with its often strikingly beautiful music and only momentary schmaltz, could have been even better had Berkeley been more ruthless in cutting Eric Crozier's libretto. The performance was billed as a semi-staging, but, with the music stands lined up throughout and costumes used only in the first, it says much for the music and the strength of the dramatic realisation - by conductor Richard Hickox, his stellar soloists, the City of London Sinfonia and the Joyful Company of Singers - that the unprepossessing context of CheltenhamTown Hall could be forgotten and the imagination thoroughly engaged.
helsea: think Assisi Glyn Paflin: Church Times (11/07/2003) Julian Lloyd Webber played a fine cello solo in the premičre of his late father William's oratorio St. Francis of Assisi (1948) in Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, in the recent Chelsea Festival.
Before it began, Bishop Michael Marshall spoke about a possible link between the work and the book The Message of St. Francis of Assisi (1925) by H. F. B. Mackay, the great pre-war Vicar of All Saints', Margaret Street, where William Lloyd Webber was organist in the 1940s.
However that might be, Dorothy Pleydell-Bouverie's libretto, though dated, occasioned varied and attractive music that compares favourably with a work such as Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims. It helped to have the top-notch Joyful Company of Singers, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and six excellent soloists.
With Finzi's "God is gone up" and Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, it made for a long evening: the 8 p.m. concert ended at five past eleven. Sir Edward Heath stayed the course; Michael Portillo didn't.
oyful Company Of Singers, Holy Trinity Church, London Paul Conway: Independent (07/07/2003) There is a certain irony in an oratorio where a saint invokes Lady Poverty in an area of exclusive boutiques, yet Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Street was appropriate - the featured composer played the organ there and was a resident of Chelsea for more than 40 years.
Overshadowed by his illustrious sons, William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982) has only recently begun to appear on recordings as a creator of chamber, organ, and church music with a distinctive, late-Romantic voice.
A miniaturist at heart, he wrote only a handful of pieces for orchestra, notable for their concision and directness - the 100-minute duration of St. Francis of Assisi makes it an Everest among an essentially modestly scored output.
Six soloists, chorus, strings and harp make up the forces required, but Lloyd Webber frequently pares the accompaniment down to solo violin, cello or harp, belying his predilection for chamber music textures.
The string writing is impressive. The chorus is also well served with a string of memorable numbers, the tone predominantly hearty and vigorous. The soloists' material is less memorable, with the exception of gloriously cavernous low notes for bass. Elgarian nobilmente, Grainger in "Handel-in-the-Strand" mode, Delian ecstasy and Straussian richness all feature in the eclectic idiom, while the choral writing is reminiscent of Vaughan Williams (Lloyd Webber's erstwhile teacher) and especially Gerald Finzi.
The strings of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields were consistently alert and polished until the fatigue of playing in a concert lasting nearly three hours finally began to show. The Joyful Company of Singers was in commanding form and made the most of its big choruses. Soloists were uniformly committed, bringing the text to life.
Peter Broadhead's direction was understandably respectful to the score. Yet more drive and less lingering over phrases would have reduced the work's slightly monstrous running time.
If St. Francis is not quite the consummate achievement Lloyd Webber's followers hoped it would be, it contains many enjoyable moments.
The oratorio is brimful of tunes - it should delight those who respond to the works of George Lloyd, for example. The Chelsea Festival has shown great enterprise in undertaking this world premiere and presenting it so successfully.
omments for the Joyful Company ... Luke: Website contact (22/02/2002) I've been lucky enough to see you perform with Tom Middleton / Amba 3 times at the Union Chapel and once at The Big Chill - AMAZING. I've been into the 'club scene' for many years, as well as listening to Jazz and trying to learn more about classical music - These performances were up there with the best I've ever seen. Have any of these performances been recorded, and if so, where can I buy them? Even if I can only get a mini disc or cassette. Thanks in advance and well done. Cheers, Luke
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