RSNO Chorus in Concert
Greyfriars Kirk 14/3/25
RSNO Chorus, Stephen Doughty chorus master and conductor, David Goodenough organ, Sophie Askew harp, Simon Lowdon percussion
It was a great pleasure to welcome the RSNO Chorus back to Greyfriars Kirk, for their annual break-out from the orchestra, in a fascinating programme of American music, featuring the magnificent Greyfriars organ and some of the RSNO percussion and harp players.
The concert began with a glorious Andante Maestoso, the final movement of Everett Titcomb’s Suite in E for Organ, written in 1955, and played superbly by David Goodenough, a doyen of Edinburgh’s organ fraternity. The audience was turned around tonight, facing the organ with the choir in front, and this made for a splendid visual effect as well as a fine acoustic one. A very decent turn out filled all the central seating of the church, and the applause was warm and generous for the opening music.
The chorus made its first appearance in William Billings’ amusing piece ‘Modern Musick’, written in Boston, slap in the middle of the American War of Independence, in the late 18th century. Despite the chaos in the world outside, Billings created a charming, whimsical choral work in which we hear, in real time, what is happening in the music itself. The basses take the lead, and we hear them, then the tempo changes, as we’ve just been told, and the key change mentioned in the last bar happens immediately. At the end, the last text suggests we in the audience applaud, and as soon as the singing stops, we do!
The next piece was Charles Ives' setting of Psalm 90, for chorus, organ and percussion (of bells and tam-tam). This complex work took 30 years for Ives to complete to his satisfaction and was given a superb rendition by the massed RSNO Chorus.
In 1917, Gertrude Ina Robinson made an unusual arrangement of the slow movement from Dvorak's New World Symphony, and the choir was given a rest, as Sophie Askew (harp) and David Goodenough (organ) reminded us of that lovely tune, inspired either by American melodies, or memories of Bohemia!
We headed for the interval with the European première of Joseph Jay McIntyre's Missa Brevis , a work for chorus, organ and percussion, written in 1991. Its multifarious rhythms and sound effects were played to the hilt by the performers. You may have noticed a thread running through the programme of chorus with percussion and organ, and it was a combination which clearly inspired some excellent music.
After the interval and a jolly warm up piece written by Leonard Bernstein for his Mass in 1971, we heard two pieces,' If Music be the food of Love, Sing on till I am filled with joy' by Jean Belmont Ford, a setting of a poem by Henry Heveningham, and three psalms for organ and percussion (no chorus) by Emma Lou Diemer. The Heveningham poem, based itself on Shakespeare, was an inoffensive piece showing off the chorus's range, and was conducted by Eden Devaney, a singer himself and the current recipient of the Sir Alexander Gibson Fellowship for Choral Conducting. Having myself sung many times with Sir Alec, I am sure the old boy would have approved!
The three psalms by Ms Diemer, who died only last year, are curious in having no text, but rather being a response, for organ and percussion, to the texts of the psalms.
I found these movements very persuasive and David Goodenough and various percussionists made full use of the wonderful acoustic of Greyfriars Kirk.
The final part of the programme and clearly the origin of the whole evening, was Leonard Bernstein's 'Chichester Psalms,' in his version for choir, organ and percussion, dating from 1965.
Specifying the singing of the psalms in Hebrew, Bernstein wrote a work in three movements with great contrasts between and within them. It's quite a test for an amateur choir, but Stephen Doughty has trained the RSNO Chorus very well and they sang with excellent freedom of expression and a wide range of textures. The few small solo parts were well taken by chorus singers, but the stand out performance came from 13 year old Nuala-Maria McKnight, from the RSNO Youth Chorus, who sang the 23rd Psalm in the second movement, with poise, confidence and a lovely clear voice. Definitely one to watch in a few years! Even the dramatic intervention in her solo by the tenors and basses with their aggressive section, 'Why do the Nations rage', failed to trouble her, as she calmly ended the 23rd Psalm in an ethereal and comforting way.
The third movement covers a spectrum of emotions until the piece ends in stillness, with an ardent prayer for unity, something our troubled world could do with remembering!
Sophie Askew (harp) and Simon Lowdon (the RSNO Principal Percussionist) combined superbly with David Goodenough on the Greyfriars organ to provide the instrumental accompaniment to the chorus and brought a most interesting and enjoyable concert to an end.
Most of the same forces repeated the performance on Saturday 15th March in Paisley Abbey.
