RSNO Chorus sings Bruckner
Greyfriars Kirk - 23/02/24
RSNO Chorus | RSNO Brass and Woodwind | Stephen Doughty, conductor
Instead of the usual RSNO concert at the Usher Hall, we were treated to a concert at Greyfriars Kirk featuring the RSNO Chorus, with members of the orchestra’s woodwind, brass and percussion, conducted by the Chorus Master, Stephen Doughty. This has been an unusual season, as the orchestra has been away a lot on foreign tours and there have been few concerts needing a chorus, so it was a very pleasant change to attend a concert largely devoted to choral music. Although I have been a professional singer for 45 years, I have rarely sung in a choir, but I do love the combination of voices that choirs produce, and the pleasure people get from singing in one as well as listening to one.
The RSNO Chorus, and its various historic ancestors, have been singing together since 1843, when a choir was formed to sing the first full performance of Handel’s Messiah in Scotland. It is quite a large group, well over a hundred strong, and since 2022/23, Stephen Doughty has been chorus master, and he was master of ceremonies and conductor this evening.
The concert started with Brahms’s early work, ‘Begräbnisgesang’ (Burial Song), written at the age of 26, possibly as a mini requiem for Robert Schumann, who had died in 1856 at the age of 46, after a period of mental disturbance. Brahms had been close to Schumann and was also close to his widow, Clara, and had evidently been much affected by the older man’s illness and death. Setting an early Lutheran text by Michael Weiße, Brahms scored the piece for SATB chorus and 12 wind instruments and timpani. There are clear hints of what he would write nine years later in his magnificent Ein Deutsches Requiem after the death of his mother, but this modest work is a little jewel in itself.
I had never heard it before and was bowled over by its beauty and melancholy atmosphere, here given a superb performance by the chorus and the fantastically responsive members of the brass and woodwind sections of the RSNO. It was a delight to see these players up close for a change, and to share in their obvious enjoyment of a sort of moonlighting gig (there were two more over the weekend in Glasgow and Airdrie). The programme notes suggested that the sopranos were kept back by Brahms until the end, but there seemed a lot of well sung high notes reasonably early on! No matter, it was all very beautiful, reminding me again of what an excellent composer Brahms was.
Next came a short a capella motet by Anton Bruckner, Os Justi, (the Mouth of the Righteous), composed in 1879 for the choirmaster of the Abbey of St Florian near Linz in Austria. St Florian was Bruckner’s spiritual home, and its resonant acoustic can be heard hidden in all his symphonies and choral works. I have visited St Florian a few times in my life, and never ceased to be moved by its association with Bruckner, although its baroque gilded splendour was something of an eye-opener to the young student who visited first in 1974. As the son of a Church of Scotland elder, its majestic size, ornate carvings and full Counter Reformation ostentation were a bit of a shock!
Os Justi was written in the old Lydian Mode, as a favour to the choirmaster, Ignaz Traumihler, a devotee of the Cecilian Movement, a short lived movement in German church music history which tried to reconnect with the older Renaissance styles. At times Bruckner has eight voices combining in a majestic polyphony, and the RSNO Chorus sang it superbly. For such a large choir, they make a very homogenous sound and are clearly well trained. As so much of modern choral singing is performed by small professional ensembles, it was wonderful to hear the big noise that a full amateur chorus can make.
The choir had a break from singing after the Bruckner, as the wind ensemble, with added trumpets and flutes, entertained us with a delightful suite for woodwind, brass and percussion by Arnold Mendelssohn, whose father was a cousin of the famous Felix, and who lived from 1855 to 1933. I must confess to knowing nothing about Arnold, whose music was banned by the Nazis simply because he was Jewish. He was organist and choirmaster at various prestigious churches in Germany, including Bielefeld, where I sang Ochs, La Roche and Falstaff, so I have a soft spot for Mr Mendelssohn! His music is beginning to reappear now, and this was a super piece, showing the RSNO Principals and Associate Principals at their best, in multiple solo sections. There was even a hint of a Scotch Snap in the 4thmovement, and the concluding march sent us into the interval with a spring in our step. The suite was published in 1916 in the middle of the First World War, but the style harked back to the 19th century, and the performance was greeted warmly by the large audience in Greyfriars.
After the interval we heard one of Bruckner’s great masses, No 2 in E Minor, written in 1869 for the dedication of the Votive Chapel of the new cathedral in Linz, just down the road from St Florian. This is one of the greatest settings of the Mass in the repertoire, a mature work by a master composer at the peak of his powers. It is set for eight part mixed choir and 15 wind instruments (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets and 3 trombones), and the sonorities created are awesome. The sound of full chorus and fortissimo wind band threatened to take the roof off Greyfriars, while the gentle murmurings of the Agnus Dei at the end hinted at an ethereal existence beyond our ken. The first performance in 1869 was played in the square in front of Linz Cathedral, and this explains in many ways the reason for the unusual combination of wind band and choir.
As always with Bruckner, he revised the Mass several times, and the final revision of 1882 was first heard, also in Linz, but in the Alter Dom (Old Cathedral), in 1885. It was this revised version that we heard in Greyfriars. As I understand it, his revision of the Mass was not nearly as radical as his symphonic revisions, and for that we must be grateful!
Bruckner used the wind band very cleverly and it was fascinating to hear the beautiful interaction between, in particular, Timothy Orpen’s clarinet and Peter Dykes’ oboe. The four horns formed an excellent base for the general sound, since trumpets and trombones were used more sparingly. The RSNO Chorus, superbly trained by Stephen Doughty, rose magnificently to the challenges posed by this big work, and I felt he shaped each movement fastidiously, from the a capella opening Kyrie through the big moments of the Gloria, with its spirited fugal Amen, and the Creed with its hushed ‘et incarnatus’ answered by the glory of ‘et resurrexit’. The long and winding Sanctus, based on a figure from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis, leads on to a lovely Benedictus, featuring rippling woodwind. Bruckner’s devout faith allowed him to create a masterful Agnus Dei, which looks for forgiveness and peace, traits as much needed at the moment as they were in the late 19th century.
This is the wonderful thing about great music; even non-believers can be led on to a spiritual plane through the power of the composer’s vision. A superb concert.
