Londinium: London to Edinburgh
Owing to a small editorial confusion two of our reviewers, Donal Hurley and Brian Bannatyne Scott, have provided very positive reviews of a recent concert by Londinium at Stockbridge Parish Church. We think both are of interest and are publishing both.
Stockbridge Parish Church - 11/06/23
Reviewer - Donal Hurley
Stockbridge Parish Church in Edinburgh was the venue on the afternoon of Sunday 11th June for an hour-long recital by Londinium, a 40-strong London-based chamberchoir, conducted by Andrew Griffiths. The programme was titled ‘London to Edinburgh’ and subtitled ‘A Celebration of British Choral Music’. Particularly featured in the programme were three songs by Kenneth Leighton, who lived and worked in Edinburgh for much of his life, and whose choral music is the subject of the choir’s most recently issued recording. Edinburgh, or at least Scotland, featured also in two Macmillan pieces and a Vaughan Williams Burns setting. In the 400th anniversary year of their deaths, Elizabethan composers Byrd and Weelkes also featured. Printed programmes, complete with texts, were available and, in the well-lit venue on a sunny afternoon in June, fully legible. I strongly approve.
Leighton’s ‘London Town’ (1968) opened the programme with a Masefield setting, ironically eulogising the city with crisply delivered jaunty melody, yet slower contemplative solo soprano and tenor interludes revealing a poet’s yearning for his native rural West Midlands. Clarity of diction was impressive, as was the rhythmic exactitude. Andrew Griffiths’ conducting style is clear, fluid and elegant and had the full attention of all performers.
The rest of the programme was introduced in pairs by the conductor. Judith Weir’s 1997 Herbert setting, ‘Love bade me welcome’, a flowing ¾ melody with some intriguing modern harmonies, was very lovely. Robert Pearsall’s ‘Lay a Garland’ (1840), romantic in style yet with reference to earlier glorious polyphony, showcased excellent dynamic balance and range, supported by the warm acoustic of the venue.
Authentic Elizabethan / Jacobean polyphony, sustaining the same excellence of balance and blending, was delivered next in the form of Byrd’s ‘Exsurge, Domine’, a barely disguised and vigorous exhortation to God to intervene in defence of persecuted Catholics, followed by Thomas Weelkes’ poignant portrayal of grief in ‘When David heard that Absalom was slain’. For the latter, and before some other items on the program, the singers rearranged themselves – I expect that this served the balance and blending when the parts were divided SSAATTBB – aspects of performance that were indeed truly impressive throughout.
A pair of modern funerary anthems followed: Macmillan’s ‘Who Shall Separate Us?’, commissioned in 2011 by the late queen and first performed at her funeral in 2022, and William Harris’ 1959 setting of Donne, ‘Bring us, O Lord God’. The Macmillan, radiant with defiance and power, culminating in blazing Alleluias and subsiding to the morendo Amens of a prayerful afterglow, was very moving and, for me, the highlight of the afternoon. The Harris was also performed in the 2022 royal obsequies, but in St. George’s Chapel. Rich in harmonic inventiveness, what it lacks in dynamic power, it delivers in uplifting positivity and optimism.
Irishman Charles Wood’s joyful, dynamic ‘Hail, Gladdening Light’ (1912) was followed by a Leighton carol, ‘Sleep, Holy Babe’, dating from 1948 in his student days and typeset by Londinium from the manuscript in Edinburgh University Library.
Two very different Burns settings were performed next. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 1922 setting of “Ca’ the yowes” (with pleasingly correct Scots pronunciation) featured a fine tenor solo line with shifting harmonic vocable accompaniment in the choral voices. Macmillan’s 1997 setting of ‘The Gallant Weaver’, with its three rhapsodic soprano lines weaving canonically around each other, was truly magical and justified Andrew Griffiths’ assertion that it is a great favourite of his.
The recital concluded with two joyous pieces: Byrd’s ‘Laudibus in Sanctis’ and Leighton’s ‘A Hymn to the Trinity’ (1976). The Byrd’s tripping rhythmic polyphony was madrigal-like and emulative of Italian Renaissance instrumental writing. The Leighton was no less jubilant, shifting between brisk syncopation and slower more expressive passages, culminating in a final Amen.
This was a fine recital and a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Reviewer - Brian Bannatyne-Scott
June is bustin’ out all over Edinburgh, not only in horticultural terms but also in a plethora of choral concerts. Hot on the heels of an excellent Beethoven 9 in Greyfriars on the 3rd, from Jubilo and the ESO, featuring yours truly creaking out of retirement to demand we all break out in tuneful Joy, through a splendid Verdi Requiem at the Usher Hall on Friday 9th from the RSNO and Chorus (see my review on EMR), to a couple of concerts this weekend from a visiting choir from the Faroe Islands, we have been lucky enough to hear that the world of the amateur choir is in robust health. The climax of this series came on Sunday 11th June in Stockbridge Church, with a concert by a fine choir from London, helpfully called Londinium.
Founded in 2005 by Andrew Griffiths, this mixed age group has quickly established an enviable reputation as one of the top amateur choirs in the capital, finding a niche in a busy sector by choosing eclectic programmes, often featuring works by unjustly neglected or rarely performed composers. The works of Kenneth Leighton, for many years Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, were the chosen feature of this programme on their short tour to Scotland. Having performed on Saturday 10th in Glasgow, Londinium arrived in Edinburgh for a Sunday afternoon concert in the fine setting of Stockbridge Church, a venue dear to the heart of our editor at EMR, Hugh Kerr, but a new one to me.
Built in 1823, to a design by James Milne, the church is a fine example of New Town Regency architecture and is a perfect space for a choral concert. The acoustic is generous without being over-resonant and allowed Londinium to show their full range from pianissimo to the loudest of fortes. Precisely conducted by the dapper Andrew Griffiths, the audience was treated to an extremely varied programme, lasting just over an hour, covering a wide range of styles from Renaissance polyphony to Kenneth Leighton’s modern but easily approachable idiom.
Londinium began with Leighton’s ‘London Town’ from 1968, to a text by John Masefield, actually extolling the joys of the countryside, as opposed to the big city. A series of choral verses seems to promote the pleasures of the capital, but the positives become negative, and a soprano and tenor soloist advise the listener to enjoy more rural pleasures. Lucy Myers was the pleasantly clear soprano, while Simon Funnell was the tenor. Next we heard Judith Weir’s attractive setting of George Herbert’s ‘Love bade me Welcome’, matched by Robert Pearsall’s lovely Victorian, ‘Lay a Garland’, both works showing off the quality of this 40 member choir. Since so many of the contemporary professional vocal groups are quite small, it was a pleasant change to hear the big sound of a well-trained choir of decent voices, the soprano section, in particular, rising to expressive heights which threatened to raise the roof.
Two splendid works by composers whose deaths 400 years ago were being celebrated, William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes, followed, demonstrating the full dynamic and expressive range of the choir, eloquently conducted by Andrew Griffiths, who also provided helpful introductions to each piece. It was a pleasure to have a clearly printed programme with all the words, so that we were able to follow the texts throughout. EMR readers will know this is one of my bugbears in concerts, often finding either no programme available or auditorium lights so dimmed as to make the words illegible. There was no such problem with Londinium!
The programme contained a variety of gems, with a short section devoted to Scots texts, notably two Burns poems set by Vaughan Williams and James MacMillan. I was delighted to hear Vaughan Williams’ version of ‘Ca’ the Yowes’, one of the Bard’s most beautiful love songs, and one that I sing very often in my concerts. In this setting, a tenor soloist sings the verses while the choir takes the chorus. Ben Byram-Wigfield was the slightly nervous soloist, perhaps aware of his position as an Englishman singing to an audience of Scots, but he had been well-schooled in the vernacular by a Scottish choir member and sang most appealingly. The MacMillan piece was ‘The Gallant Weaver’, and the choir delivered a very fine rendition.
The musical high point of the concert was Byrd’s joyous ‘Laudibus in Sanctis’, a setting of the 150th Psalm, in which the composer cleverly alludes to various instruments, and the voices imitate their sounds. It is a complicated work, handled with aplomb by the singers of Londinium.
The concert ended with a joyful setting, ‘A Hymn to the Trinity’ by Kenneth Leighton, which once more raised the roof.
This excellent concert was well attended, and the audience was most appreciative. The choir has just issued a CD of choral music by Kenneth Leighton, entitled ‘Every Living Creature – Choral Music by Kenneth Leighton’, released on SOMM Records. I would encourage our readers to seek it out.