This disc is really quite special. It would be a terrible shame
to overlook it in the avalanche of Christmas issues.
Ex Cathedra was founded by Jeffrey Skidmore in 1969. The group
is therefore celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year
(2009), which accounts for the “XL” in the disc’s
title. As well as the main choir the name encompasses a number
of different groups, including a “consort” of eight
to twelve voices and an early music group using period instruments.
This is the first time I have heard Ex Cathedra but I can confidently
say it will not be the last. On this showing it is an absolutely
superb choir. The programme is a wide-ranging one, and the group
enters into the spirit and style of each piece with pretty much
equal success. All the virtues of the finest choirs are here,
particularly the spot-on tuning, and with the added element
of an infectious joy in the music-making which generally comes
only from amateur singers. Jeffrey Skidmore is clearly the guiding
hand here, and I offer him my heartiest congratulations.
Some of the pieces are given with organ, splendidly played by
Andrew Fletcher, and Frances Kelly provides some lovely harp
playing. There is some fine period instrument and percussion
playing too, from musicians too numerous to list here. The booklet
provides the words of the entire programme and carries an endearing
and informative note from the conductor.
This is a superb disc, then, and little more really need be
said. The only feature I would want to change is to do with
the programming. I’m slightly allergic to extracts, and
wish there were fewer here. But that’s my only gripe,
and a very personal one at that.
Unborn is a beautiful and effective processional piece
to words by Vikram Seth. It features a solo tenor, a drum which
marks time and an organ-accompanied chorus which haunts the
mind long after the piece is finished. It is an extract from
an oratorio entitled The Traveller, and a second extract
later in the programme is used as a kind of recessional. Alec
Roth was a new name to me, but this piece makes me want to explore
his other works. Special mention must be made of Susanna Vango,
the soprano soloist in the Wexford Carol. Both here and
in the lovely Scottish lullaby O horo eeree caidil gu Lō
- surely one of those gems choral conductors tend to pass around
amongst themselves - she sings with an easy, folk-inflected
style which is both beautiful and very touching. The harp accompaniments
are lovely. I find the performance of Britten’s In
the bleak mid-winter, taken from his astonishing, youthful
masterpiece, A Boy Was Born, somewhat robust and lacking
in intimacy and mystery. It’s not how I would have done
it, that’s all. John Gardner seems to have taken the words
“the playing of the merry organ” as his starting
point when setting The Holly and the Ivy. It’s
very short and based on an absurdly simple idea. Perhaps it’s
just absurd, full stop. I had no choice but to listen to it
again straight away, and I think I must have heard it ten or
twelve times since the disc arrived. It gladdens the heart,
as does John Joubert’s Joy in the Morning, a setting
of words from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
The setting makes much effective use of repetition of the word
“joy” and sets considerably greater technical challenges
than does the same composer’s ubiquitous and much-loved
Torches. The outstanding choir squares up to these challenges
most successfully, as they also do in John Gardner’s equally
delightful Tomorrow shall be my dancing day. The classic
Darke In the bleak mid-winter sets different challenges:
unanimity of spirit is what’s wanted, and here it is in
spades in this lovely performance. Haji Nakim’s Noël
sounds more like an original composition than an arrangement,
and it comes as no surprise, once one has heard this highly
charged, richly perfumed music, to learn that the Lebanese composer
is in fact an organist who followed Messiaen as organist at
the church of La Trinité in Paris and who studied with
Jean Langlais. Kenneth Leighton’s big, serious piece,
a setting of Herrick, seems a model of restraint after this.
It is a particularly fine example of this composer’s extreme
sensitivity in word setting, and there is an ecstatic quality
to the music which recalls Howells. It receives an outstanding
performance.
The following group of pieces demonstrates the breadth of styles
included in this collection. Two pieces of early music, by Pascual
(with percussion) and Gabrieli (with brass) are included alongside
three pieces by Mendelssohn, the first an extract from Elijah,
the second and third from Christus. There shall be
a star was a particular pleasure, bringing back many memories
of singing the same piece myself in school Christmas concerts.
Frances Kelly returns with her harp to accompany a short extract
from Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. All these
pieces, different as they are, are given with the same easy
mastery, though for this listener it is the Mendelssohn singing
that most stands out.
The rest of the programme features a multilingual Silent
Night which demonstrates better than anything else on the
disc the superb tuning and unanimity of spirit of this choir.
There is some traditional singing from Lapland - the singers
are calling in the reindeer here! - as well as David Willcocks’
adorable setting of the Sussex Carol, familiar to all
users of the green volume of the Oxford Book of Carols,
taken, for my tastes, a little too quickly here. The programme
ends with a work composed by the conductor. It begins with a
bit of cod-baroque polyphony, but proceeds and closes in, shall
we say, an unexpected way.
It only remains to mention the Three Songs for Christmas
by Martin Bates, another name new to me. We learn from the booklet
that he was the choir’s rehearsal pianist for many years,
and so we might expect him to understand perfectly the strengths
of the group. This does not explain his easy mastery of choral
writing, however, nor the musical language based strictly on
tonality but with piquant harmonic touches judiciously - and
deliciously - added to the mix. There are touching moments in
these three songs, and liberal doses of humour too. There are
even touches of jazz, and all of this within a sound-world which
resembles that of no other composer. It is music that deserves
the widest possible currency.
William Hedley
see also review by Jon Quinn
Ex
Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore 