CHORAL RECITAL

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22504, 12 September 1938, Page 3

CHORAL RECITAL

SCHOLA CANTORUM

PROGRAMME AND PERFORMANCE OF HIGHEST QUALITY

Musical sincerity, total absence of showmanship and of effect-seeking,-the avoidance of even the thought of personal display in any solo or duet passage, and the desire to give nothing but true interpretations (as the result of long and thorough study, of attentive control, of the summoning of right mood for everything sung, and of keen personal-.and collective enjoyment of , the art of music making)—these were some of the outstanding impressions that one received on Saturday night at the Radiant Hall when listening to that excellent body of selected singers from Wellington, Stanley Oliver’s “Schola Cantorum.”

Singers, pianist, conductor, they are one. They are, even as they are named, a school—disciplined certainly, but disciplined rather by a high, unified purpose than by rigid outward direction. True it is that the central direction and inspiration are in that fine musician, their conductor, Stanley Oliver; but they and he are, nevertheless, a unit, and do not exist as singers and soloists with an accompanist and with a conductor. It will therefore be better at this moment to refer to the excellence of the painofdrte work of Mr Clement Howe in all the accompanied numbers, to the admirable interpretation of “Drunken, Alice” which Miss Molly Atkinson gave during the course of “The Tunning of Elinor Humming” (Vaughan Williams) to the beauty of the blend and the cleanly-timed work of the duettists. Miss Muriel Hitchings and Miss Molly Atkinson in “Fear No Danger,” from Purcell’s "Dido and Aeneas,” and to the charm of Miss Olga Burton’s solo obbligato, which appeared towards th'e end of Rachmaninoff’s "To Thee, O Lord, Do I Lift Up My Soul,” for by so doing it will not be necessary in what follows to speak of the interpretations in any other way than as the work of the whole Schola, for throughout the evening they performed in that manner.

The programme they brought to us obviously had the purpose of spreading a knowledge of quite a number of modern English choral works, ior they gave three numbers from Moeran’s “Songs of Springtime,” three from "Pastoral” by Arthur Bliss, Holst’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” . (from his “First Choral Symphony"), “The Tunning of Elinor Humming” from “Five Tudor Portraits,” by Vaughan Williams, and Gordon Jacob’s “Donald Caird,” as well as two shorter num-

bers by Peter Warlock, “Tyrley Tyrlow” and “The Spring of the Year.” That this would be difficult listening had been fully realised when the programme was drawn up, for at required intervals groups of charmingly chosen early music ,and one group of church music items were interspersed to provide contrast and easier delight. The early music-consisted of the refreshingly clean writing of Weelkes and Wilbye in "Lady Your Eye” and “Lady When I Behold,” of the deut and chorus “Fear No Danger to Ensue” from Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” in which the choral colouring seemed like vocal trumpets followed by vocal woodwind, and of Thomas Whitehorne’s “Grace Before Meat” and "Grace After Meat,” delightful contrapuntal music sung with a warmth and fervour that belonged to the* sixteenth century, when people were so trained in singing that they could have used with meaning such elaborate graces at meals. The church music group was unusual in its selection, and consisted of three quite contrasted items: “To Thee, O Lord, Do I Lift Up My Soul,” a prayerful expression by Rachmaninoff, in which the singers obtained their most beautiful pianissimo of the evening; “O King, To Whom All Things Do Live,” an interesting motet by Healey Willan, and Gordon Jacob’s arrangement of “Brother James’ Air,” sung with right pastoral simplicity, and perfectly judged tempo. All the big works, too, were sung with an admirable certainty, expressive of complete intimacy with the score, of complete and easy technical control, and of complete grasp of the spirit and meaning of each work. The Warlock numbers were given with delightful unforced tone, clean and precise, yet with never a trace of mechanical timing. Different vocal colourings radiated from the three choruses out of “Pastoral” (Bliss), the contrast being delightful between the pagan hardness of mood in the early part of “Hymn to Pan” and the gentletoned movement of “Shepherd s Night Song,” as it wandered on through beautiful but unfamiliar harmonic pastures. „ . _ „ . Moeran’s “Songs of Springtime,’ too, were lovely. They are both Elizabethan and modern at the same time. Holst’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ sung with charming and appropriate restraint, is quiet, meditative music expressing Holst's conception of Keatsian beauty. One’s impression, much as one enjoyed the work, is that it would need a Delius rather than a Holst to fathom such beauty as that which Keats could sense. “The Tunning of Elinor Rummmg is a typical Vaughan Williams excursion into Middle-English, coarse village atmosphere. It is_ a drunken brawl cleverly expressed in music, kept

going mostly on a quickly-moving triplet basis. It is difficult for the singers, yet never did they express that they had difficulties to contend with, so much was it an interpretation of the coarse, drunken scene that they were picturing. Gordon Jacob’s recent work, * Donald Caird,” stirring, descriptive music with a distinct Scottish flavour, telling of the exploits of the roguish tinker, Donald Caird, as set forth in a Walter Scott poem, brought to a brilliant conclusion a recital of choral music that is not likely to be equalled for a very long time, either in selection or ,in quality of performance. —(E.J.)