The Big Picture
Cecilia MCDOWALL (b 1951)
A Time for All Seasons (2016) [17:15]
Bob CHILCOTT (b 1955)
Songs and Cries of London Town (2001) [16:47]
Judith WEIR (b 1954)
The Big Picture (2019) [19:51]
Nina Bennet (soprano)
Hannah Lawrence (clarinet); Oliver Butterworth, Oliver Pooley (percussion);
Ian Tindale, Annabel Thwaite (piano)
Music Makers of London
Bristol Youth Choir
Bristol Choral Society/Hilary Campbell
rec. 2020, St George’s Hall, Bristol
Texts included
DELPHIAN DCD34242 [53:56]
As someone who sings in a choral society myself, I greatly welcome this CD on a number of counts. In the first place, it’s great to find one of the UK’s many provincial choral societies making a commercial CD – their first, I believe – and, moreover, to find the choir in such fine fettle. Secondly, it’s greatly encouraging to hear the Bristol Youth Choir making an excellent contribution because we must hope these young singers will be the next generation of members of adult choirs. And it’s a further cause for celebration that the programme for this CD consists entirely of music written in the present century, offering proof that choral societies are far from mired in the past when it comes to repertoire. Moreover, two of these works here receive their first recordings. I wondered if any of the three pieces had been written for Bristol Choral Society, but such is not the case. All credit to them and their Musical Director, Hilary Campbell for seeking out and taking into their repertoire recent music that was composed at the behest of other organisations.
Bristol Choral Society was founded in 1889. Their association with Hilary Campbell is, of course, much more recent: she became their Musical Director in 2016 in succession to Adrian Partington. Though this is the first time I’ve heard Ms Campbell directing a full-size choir, I’ve heard and greatly admired several CDs which she’s made with her London-based chamber choir, Blossom Street, most recently an impressive disc of highly demanding music by Arnold Rosner (review). This present disc also involves another choir which she directs, Music Makers of London; they take part in the work by Judith Weir.
The programme opens with Cecilia McDowall’s A Time for All Seasons, which is scored for solo soprano, SATB choir, children’s choir, piano and percussion. The latter is used very sparingly; unless I’ve missed something, the percussion part is restricted to a few contributions by stick cymbal. I’ve long admired this composer’s fresh, inventive music and this is another excellent example of her work. The text is a poem by Kevin Crossley-Holland (b 1941) – coincidentally, a poet frequently set by Bob Chilcott – with the addition of verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the middle of the piece. From the outset I was struck by the firm, well-supported sound of the adult choir and when the Bristol Youth Choir join in their sound is pleasing and fresh. The music itself is very attractive. Crossley-Holland’s lines are set to music that is moderate in pace, appealingly melodic and understandingly written for the voices. In the middle section the female voices and the children sing the lines from Ecclesiastes (the men join in right at the end) to lighter, quicker-paced music. This episode is highly appealing. The soprano soloist makes an appearance in the opening section of the work but is much more prominent in the closing section. Nina Bennet has a warm, evenly produced voice and she sings very well. A Time for All Seasons is an attractive and very effective piece; I should imagine it’s fun to sing. It’s performed very well here.
It appears that Bob Chilcott’s cantata Songs and Cries of London Town has been recorded before but I haven’t been able to track down the previous recording. The work was new to me. This work, which falls into five sections, played without a break, was inspired by Orlando Gibbons’ The Cryes of London. Indeed, the first and last sections use words from, or adapted from, seventeenth-century texts. The piece is scored for adult and children’s choruses, piano duet and percussion.
In the first section, ‘Come buy’, the music is vivacious as the choir depicts the cries of street sellers vying for our attention – and custom. The pianos and bongo drums emphasise the rhythmic drive of Chilcott’s music. Here, I much admired the incisiveness of the singing. ‘The flower of cities all’ is a setting of lines from William Dunbar’s celebrated In Honour of the City of London. Here, the music is slow and poetic, suggesting the timeless flow of the Thames. In ‘London Bells’ the children take centre stage. Their music is derived from the famous Chimes of London melody and bell-sounds are heard in the instrumental accompaniment too. I really enjoyed the fresh, enthusiastic and disciplined singing of the Bristol Youth Choir. There follows a setting of Wordsworth’s well-known lines that begin ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’. This is a slow, thoughtful piece featuring gorgeous choral textures. This is the calm heart of the whole work and it evokes the stillness that occurs when the city’s daily hubbub has stilled for a while. That hubbub reappears with a vengeance in the final section, ‘Good morrow!’ We’re back to the street cries again and what Katy Hamilton refers to in her notes as “the joyous bustle of the capital”. The full ensemble is involved in this finale. Songs and Cries of London Town is an excellent example of Bob Chilcott’s gift for creating entertaining and attractive pieces which stretch the performers – though not unreasonably so – but are yet fun to sing. Hilary Campbell and her forces give a winning account of the piece.
Judith Weir’s The Big Picture is the most recent piece on the disc; this is its first recording. It contains the most challenging music, I think, for both performers and listeners but it is highly accessible. The performing forces are divided into three groups. There’s a solo clarinet; a two-part choir (Music Makers of London, I presume) with percussion; and an SATB choir with keyboard accompaniment. The piece was composed to celebrate the opening of a newly refurbished art gallery in Aberdeen, so it’s appropriate that Judith Weir chose five poems that concern various colours.
For ‘Green’ she selected the poem that begins ‘Green groweth the holly’, which is attributed to King Henry VIII. After an arresting introductory fanfare from the clarinet, the poem is set to bright, effervescent music. ‘Blue’ is represented by lines from the poem ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’ by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). During the setting, the two-part choir, accompanied by marimba, suggests the plucking of guitar strings while the main choir slowly sings the poem itself. ‘Gold’ follows without a break. The chosen text is Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’. After a subdued opening, which perhaps echoes Frost’s opening line ‘Nature’s first green is gold’, the music quickly bursts into an iridescent evocation of the golden colour by the choir, vividly partnered by tinkling percussion. Weir’s acutely imaginative ear leads her to portray in sound an image of twinkling jewellery. This is a highly effective setting.
There follows ‘Red, White’. This is a setting of a love poem by the Irish poet John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890) in which the shades of two roses, one red, the other white, are contrasted. Unless my ears deceive me, I detect a reference to the familiar tune ‘My love is like a red, red rose’ in the clarinet part. Weir’s music is very delicate – and the performance matches that delicacy. I was especially attracted by the use of bamboo and wind chimes to accompany the singers. The final section, ‘Colour’ sets lines by Christina Rossetti. The music is well described by Katy Hamilton as “a riotous feast of colours: a zoom through the spectrum with different music and textures for each”. Weir’s setting is full of invention and variety and the singers seem to seize on the music with relish. ‘Colours’ makes an exciting finale to a most inventive work.
The music on this CD is full of interest; all three works exploit the resources of the choir – and of the supporting instruments – to excellent effect. Hilary Campbell and her choirs give vivid and very well-prepared performances; everything is put across with skill and commitment. The instrumental accompaniments are equally well done.
The recordings were made just in the nick of time before choirs were silenced for many months by the Covid lockdown. The sessions took place in Bristol’s St George’s Hall, a concert hall which like so many in the UK is currently facing an existential threat, deprived as it has been for many months of any revenue. We must hope that both the hall and Bristol Choral Society will soon be able to emerge from their enforced hibernation before irreparable damage is done. That said, on the evidence of this CD, Bristol Choral Society was in fine form prior to lockdown and that must augur well for them to spring back as soon as they are allowed to do so.
Most of Delphian’s recordings are engineered by Paul Baxter but on this occasion the engineering was in the hands of Matthew Swan. He’s done an excellent job and the recording is up to the label’s usual very high standards. So, too, is the documentation; Katy Hamilton’s notes provide a very useful guide to the music.
John Quinn
