Garleton Singers: Spring Concert

St Cuthbert’s Church - 23/03/24

Garleton Singers | Stephen Doughty, conductor | Gwen Kelso, flute | Julian Appleyard, oboe | Jennifer Dunsmore, clarinet | Robert Newth, horn | Jennifer Kelly, bassoon

The beautiful Parish Church of St Cuthbert’s on the north end of Edinburgh’s Lothian Road was the venue, on the night of Saturday 23rd March, for the first of two performances of Haddington-based amateur choir Garleton Singers’ Spring Concert, under the direction of Stephen Doughty, perhaps better known to concert-goers as the Director of the RSNO Chorus.  A novel accompaniment in the shape of a wind quintet featured throughout the programme, comprised of flautist Gwen Kelso, oboist Julian Appleyard, clarinettist Jennifer Dunsmore, hornist Robert Newth and bassoonist Jennifer Kelly.  Two of the works in the programme featured arrangements for this instrumental accompaniment; the other two were in their original scoring.  Stephen introduced the programme with his customary genial wit.  Attendance was disappointingly modest.

The opening work, ‘At sommernattågernes spind’, a 2015 arrangement by Per Drud Nielsen of ‘Six Songs of Carl Nielsen’, interspersed with short instrumental interludes, was a first hearing for me, and utterly beguiling.  The originals date from the last decade of the 19th century and have a folklike melodic charm, with some glorious harmonies, yet unmistakably Nielsen senior.  The modern Nielsen’s writing for the wind parts, especially in the interludes, pays frequent homage to the master’s deliciously witty 1922 Wind Quintet.  A young ploughman longing for dusk, when he can keep a tryst with his secret love, is the theme of the first song, rich harmonies abounding.  The next two songs pursue a metaphor with birds representing love, perhaps foreshadowing the spirit, if not the substance, of Bacharach’s ‘Close to you’.  The fourth song, my favourite of the set, but undeniably the most challenging to perform, shows a poet seduced by the peace of a starry night in the garden, longing to slip away into eternal slumber.  The music, slow and carol-like, is chromatic and difficult to pitch, and inevitably the pitch did slide downwards.  It was still surpassingly lovely.  The last two songs, at least metaphorically about the fecundity of flowering plants, celebrate in turn pollination and the wind-borne dispersal of seeds, the former a tripping dance with dotted rhythms, the latter a jaunty march.  Both were delightful.  A super piece and a great choice of concert opener.

A more extended instrumental interlude, in the form of the first two movements of Anton Reicha’s Wind Quintet in E-flat major, Op.88 No.2, came next.  A contemporary and friend of Beethoven, Reicha was an avant-garde innovator, music theorist and educator and the first to write specifically for wind quintet.  Within a matrix of Haydnesque charm, the music abounds with quirky departures from the norm.  Flautist Reicha gives a leading role to the flute, but all the instruments have moments of virtuosic prominence, including some astonishingly agile writing for both horn and bassoon, especially in the first movement after the deceptively conventional slow introduction, ‘on its best behaviour’.  The second movement, unconventionally a minuet and trio, a simple songlike melody provided a conversation between the instruments no less charming than in the string quartets of Haydn.  Flute and oboe conversed in the very short elegant trio.  A short mischievous fugato passage in the reprise of the minuet seemed to wink at the listener.  Great chamber wind playing.  New Reicha fans will be delighted to hear that the whole piece features in a programme on 29thJune in the East Neuk Festival.

The first half of the concert concluded with German composer Michael Töpel’s 2017 ‘Gloria-Fantasia for Wind Quintet, Solo Soprano and Chorus’, in a newly-prepared English-language version.  Choir member, soprano Roxane Pryse Hawkins, took the solo role.  The piece focuses on the message of peace at the beginning of the liturgical Gloria, “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis” (Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to people of good will), intensifying it with added emphasis on the words ‘highest’ and ‘peace’.  After an instrumental introduction, the choral voices entered, initially whispering and out of synch, then speaking, then gelling into unison chanting.  Roxane stepped forward and her solo singing was expressive, engagingly compelling and stunningly accurate across the tessitura, with flawless clarity of diction, the instruments and then ultimately the chorus responding in imitation and answering phrases to her meditation.  The chorus then amplified the message of peace.  It is an extraordinary work, clearly challenging to perform.  It received a compelling and committed performance of the highest quality.

The single work in the second half was Dvořák’s Mass in D major Op.86, with an accompaniment for wind quintet arranged in 2013 by German flautist/arranger/engraver/publisher Joachim Linckelmann.  Dvořák’s mass was commissioned for the inauguration of a small private chapel, so the original was for chamber choir with organ, occasional solos being drawn from the choir.  Linckelmann’s Freiburg Pocket Orchestra is a wind quintet and his arrangement is undoubtedly ingenious.  But there are challenges of dynamic balance to be negotiated and the generally excellent acoustic of St Cuthbert’s did not fully cooperate in meeting them.  With the exception of the soprano in the Kyrie and the tenor in the Agnus Dei, the occasional solos were hard to hear over the instruments, particularly in the Credo.  The opposite problem arose in the louder passages for full choir.  Whether because of the acoustic peculiarities of the apsidal half-dome behind them, or some other reason, the tenors high up at the back of the bleachers were seemingly unaided by the instrumental lines and their pitch occasionally slid downwards in the tutti passages.  In every other respect, however, the performance radiated the joy of music making and luxuriated in Dvořák’s melodically and harmonically inventive genius.  The anguished discord on ‘crucifixus’ followed by the triumphant elation on ‘et resurrexit’ in the Credo were dramatic and thrilling and a highlight for this reviewer.  After a pause, the declarative, confident Sanctus was very satisfying.  Notwithstanding the balance issues, the concluding Agnus Dei was top-drawer Dvořák, with music that must have had the composer hugging himself at its exquisiteness.

Another imaginatively-wrought programme from Stephen Doughty and an evening of committed, joyous music-making from the Garleton Singers.