Easter Weekend 2019
It’s not often we have the opportunity to perform the same programme twice on consecutive days, but that’s what we did on Good Friday and Holy Saturday this year. Our Good Friday recital was Bath Camerata’s 32ndannual performance at Wells Cathedral and the following day we performed at St. George’s Bristol.
The programme included a mix of the old and the new. There was a suite of five passion motets from the 17thcentury, by Schütz. There were two motets and a Chorale Prelude by J.S. Bach from the 18thcentury. From the 20thcentury there was a suite of four short pieces by Friedrich Cerha and from the 21stcentury there were three motets by James MacMillan.
We began with two exuberant pieces by MacMillan. Data est mihi, written for Ascension Day, starts with the whole choir on a single note but immediately breaks into a huge chord which then cascades in parallel intervals. The sopranos and altos continue to cascade down while the tenors and basses chant “alleluia” before the piece returns to the harmonies of the opening section for the final full-choir alleluias. This was followed by Benedicimus Deum caeli, a piece which flows seamlessly from beginning to end in joyful harmonies.
The two Bach motets were written for double choir, so the choir split either side of the chamber organ for these and the Schütz motets. Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit aufis a fast-moving funeral motet in three movements. The first sets the two choirs in imitation, the second is a fugue and the third a four-part chorale. Komm, Jesu, komm, also thought to be a funeral motet, probably needs no further explanation except to note that it is the only motet that Bach wrote which contains no Biblical text. Both are glorious to sing, but technically difficult as Bach’s compositional style is more instrumental than choral.
Between the two Bach motets came the Cerha, Vier Hölderlin-Fragmente. Although composed in 1969 our performances were UK premières for the pieces. They comprise settings of four fragments of poetry by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. The music is the most atonal I have ever encountered, and on first listening I thought they were almost impossible – not only is the harmony extremely alien but the rhythmic interplay between the parts is also very complex. However, during the rehearsal process they became more and more coherent. By themselves the vocal lines are quite lyrical and the music is very expressive. By the time the concerts came I was looking forward to performing the pieces and all in all they went well. There’s a certain amount of enjoyment for the performers in successfully negotiating all the challenges, but I wonder what the audiences thought of the music?
After the Cerha the choir was given a well-earned break as Peter King played a Chorale Prelude by J.S. Bach, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, on the organ.
The suite of five passion motets by Schütz set the words of Psalm 115. The music is very expressive and the harmonies hold some surprises for modern ears. The choir was split in two. The first four movements were taken alternately by the two halves of the choir which then combined for the fifth movement.
The programme finished with Macmillan’s Miserere. This is quite a substantial piece. It starts cold and emotionless in the lower voices, there’s an intricate duet between the higher voices, chanted sections and solos over an increasingly dissonant held chord. This all resolves into a long crescendo and diminuendo of the most sublimely concordant music. A great way to finish what was a neatly symmetrical programme.
So, how did the two performances compare? One noticeable difference was in the acoustics. The speeds for the more lively pieces had to be held back in the resonance of Wells Cathedral, but other pieces, like the Schütz sounded well-suited to the building. For me the highlights of that performance were Komm, Jesus, kommand the MacMillan motets, which sounded most at home there. In the drier acoustic of St. Geroge’s Der Geist hilftwas much clearer and more exciting and some further tweaking during the afternoon rehearsal gave for a more-assured rendering of the Cerha.
Both performances were greeted enthusiastically by the audiences. At Wells there were cheers, at St. George’s there was stamping on the floor. We don’t often get immediate feedback from our conductor, Ben, but as we walked off stage on Saturday he declared “that was very, very, very good.” He knows what he’s talking about.
