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Reviewer:
Alexandra Coghlan
We all know what you get from an Oxbridge choral disc – at least we did until Graham Ross arrived at Clare College, Cambridge, in 2010. Since then, the young Director of Music has taken the Oxbridge model of purity and precision – solid performances of core repertoire, often English, mostly Renaissance – and spiced it with an intelligent, unexpected approach to programming. We still get all the classics, but also plenty of premieres and commissions, as well as neglected or unfashionable repertoire unearthed with Ross’s unerring taste. The combination is a heady one. Working their way through the Church seasons (we’ve already had Advent, Christmas, Passiontide, Pentecost and All Souls), the choir now arrive at Easter. Gone is musical penitence and in its place we have a collage of celebratory motets. Joy is always harder to sustain as a mood than Lenten gloom but Ross’s programme balances extrovert Italian and English polyphony with works by Rachmaninov, Wesley and Vaughan Williams, as well as a premiere by Matthew Martin.
Light on their feet and
silvery-bright in tone, the choir romp through Bassano’s Dic nobis Maria
and Byrd’s setting of the title text. Haec dies effervesces just as it
should, its unaccompanied thrills set against Martin’s more muscular setting for
choir and organ. Syncopated rhythms unite the two in a dancing sequence of
rejoicing. Lhéritier’s Surrexit pastor bonus offers a moment of
contemplative respite – poised and beautifully shaped. If Rachmaninov’s Dnes’
spaseniye and Vaughan Williams’s ‘Easter’ from the Mystical Songs are
less successful, it’s only because the choir’s youthful sound doesn’t currently
have quite the pyramid shape this repertoire needs, lacking anchoring weight
from its basses to balance the brightness of its strong upper voices. |
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