Spring Concert

David Burgess (Conductor), Mark Dancer (Organ), Julie Bolton (Soprano), Melanie Stephenson (Soprano/Alto), Thomas Jordan (Alto), Peter Fellows (Tenor), Phil Stokes (Bass)

Date Venue
24th Mar 2012, 07:30 PM Saint John's Church, Locks Heath
25th Mar 2012, 07:30 PM All Saints Church, Botley

Reviews

The Invitation of Choral Music

Today, is singing in a choir and listening to a choir popular? Yes, surprisingly, as Gareth Malone on TV has shown. Regularly, everyone in Hampshire has access to some nearby concert by some choir, a concert equally appreciated by performers and audience alike. Botley Choral Society has been involved in this musical feast for nearly a century. On 24 and 25 March they gave their spring concert to enthusiastic audiences in the churches of Locksheath and Botley.

This was exactly the programme to woo newcomers to try a classical concert as listener or as singer. The two works were short and accessible. Dvorák wrote his Mass in D in 1887. This sacred music commission was an unusual venture for him. Yet in 1989 to mark his country’s seismic change the Dvorák nationalistic Mass was sung in Prague Cathedral to celebrate the new non-communist President Václav Havel. J.S.Bach wrote his Magnificat in D over 160 years earlier; for him the massive outpouring of sacred music was part of his genius – and his job.

The choir ably performed both works. They are different but complement each other. David Burgess, conductor since 1990, brought out with precision the romantic tunefulness of the Dvorák and the sublime mystery of the Bach. Similarly Mark Dancer on the organ ably provided the lyricism of the Dvorák in contrast to the complexity of the Bach. Members of the choir stepped in to sing the soprano solos in place of Julie Bolton who was unwell. The other soloists, Melanie Stephenson (soprano/alt), Thomas Jordon (alto), Peter Fellows (tenor), and Philip Stokes (bass/baritone) each came into their own in the short Bach arias, singly or together – local professionals contributing their gifts to the choral resurgence.

Two works, generations and culturally apart. Bach’s Magnificat is an excellent entry to his longer works. It is the more difficult of the two for any choir. David Burgess took the fast passages at a sensible speed in contrast to the pace in some recordings. It is always harder to convey the depth of the music in quieter passages but generally the choir achieved this well. Within the architecture of Botley Church the smaller numbers of the lower voices stand well back in the ranks of the large choir. Some choirs change this setting by successfully bringing some of the tenors and basses forward among the upper voices to help the balance of sound.

This is Sacred Music at her finest. It has been said that “Music is outside space”. Is such music one bridge over the secular chasm that prevents some people from glimpsing the Sacred beyond time and space? Bach would have believed so; Dvorák would have been less sure. The programme reminded us that Dvorák reflected “the atmosphere of a smiling, pleasant Czech region of hills and woods”. The lovely tune at the start of the Credo, in three time, does not fit the transcendence of the words – ‘One God, Maker of heaven and earth’, but elsewhere Dvorák approaches the genius of Bach in the poignancy and the sublime of the emotions in the religious text. Both works have triumphant moments and the choir and organ made the glorious crescendo of Bach’s final Gloria a fitting climax to a great concert.

Humphrey Prideaux