Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Schubert Mass in A-flat with the SCO Chorus
Queen’s Hall - 30/11/23
Gregory Batsleer, conductor | Stephanie Gonley, director/violin | Marcus Barcham Stevens, violin | Ruby Hughes, soprano | Idunnu Münch, mezzo-soprano | Thomas Walker, tenor | Callum Thorpe, bass baritone
The last time Gregory Batsleer conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the SCO Chorus was almost four years ago, in December 2019, in Haydn’s ‘Harmonie Messe’, possibly the Chorus’s last concert in the Queen’s Hall before lockdown. Tonight is the first choral concert in the Queen’s Hall since the pandemic, as the need for social distancing resulted in all the Chorus’s concerts with the orchestra in the last 18 months taking place in the Usher Hall. The sound quality (and the comfortable seats!) have made these enjoyable performances, but the audience levels haven’t always justified the expense of the larger hall. I’ve always been puzzled by this reluctance to attend choral performances – the ‘Messiah’ and Beethoven’s 9th will always bring in the crowds - but SCO, RSNO and even EIF choral concerts prove a hard sell. Yet Scotland’s amateur classical choirs are world-class. Any thoughts on this conundrum are welcome!
In his online interview here, Gregory Batsleer speaks of his fondness for “this rather brilliantly bonkers piece”, the Schubert ‘Mass in A-flat’, the main work at the end of the programme. The elaborate staging required for tonight’s musicians also promises treats to come – seating for the chorus and the soloists are on the stage, behind another raised area for the back row of the winds. The rest of the winds and strings are on the floor on the hall, with so much room needed for the harpsichord in the first half the timpani and double basses seem within touching distance of the side door. Despite all this busyness the concert starts quietly with Mendelssohn’s delightful ‘Verleih uns Frieden’ (grant us peace), a warm setting of a Lutheran text, part of the composer’s developing interest in the music of J S Bach. Cellos and double basses open the work, before accompanying the basses in the first setting of the five-line text; then violas, bassoons and clarinets accompany the altos, until the whole orchestra and chorus make the final plea for peace, and the lower strings bring the four minute work to its conclusion. Very simple and entirely effective.
Winds, and some strings depart, Jan Waterfield sits at the harpsichord, Marcus Barcham Stevens and Stephanie Gonley, who’s also directing, stand at the front for J.S Bach’s ‘Concerto in C Minor for two violins.’ Written sometime between 1735 and 1740, probably for oboe and violin, the work was reconstructed in 1920 in the form that we hear tonight in which lean string tones make this an abrasive contrast to the lusher orchestration for the choral works. The three movements are marked simply allegro – adagio – allegro and for much of the work all the musicians, including the soloists, play at the same time. In the first movement, the soloists echo the main themes played on the other strings, and weave a higher ornamentation round them. In the Adagio the soloists play the legato lines over the orchestral accompaniment, passing the melody from one to the other and in the final Allegro the duo lead off the brisk dance tune, finishing with a fast and furious virtuosic work-out for both players. There’s foot-stamping appreciation from the audience and chorus.
Robert Schumann’s 1849 ‘Nachtleid’, a setting of a three stanza poem by Friedrich Hebbel, requires the full orchestra for its atmospheric depiction of the mysteries and terrors of the night. The quiet reflections of the first verse give way to the nightmares of the second when “an immense thing” which has awakened in the dark threatens to “squeeze out” the narrator’s heart. Drumrolls, trumpets and trombones heighten the drama before a calm certainty is reasserted as the women’s repetition of the word “Schlaf” (sleep) is accompanied by woodwinds. Shimmering strings and an oboe solo sustain this mood until the short pizzicato and flute coda. None of the three works in the first half is well-known, but all are marked by committed and imaginative engagement by the conductor, orchestra and chorus.
After the interval, with the harpsichord replaced by the smaller chamber organ, also played by Jan Waterfield, the full orchestra has more room on stage, and a somewhat different sound as the modern horns and trumpets have been replaced by period instruments. These instruments, played softly along with the bassoons and the organ, give distinctive warm tones to the quieter passages. The “hidden gem,” as Batsleer calls the mass, begins with an andante ‘Kyrie’, which moves forward confidently as the choir delivers the plosive “k” sounds clearly against the woodwind accompaniment. The four soloists, Ruby Hughes, soprano, Idunnu Münch, mezzo, Thomas Walker, tenor, and Callum Thorpe, bass baritone are placed in front of the choir, towards the left. All of them are gifted singers, but there are no arias for individual singers in this work. For example in the ‘Christe eleison’ section, we hear Ruby Hughes sing on her own for a few bars, but then the four soloists sing together. The quartet’s music is an unusual feature of Schubert’s Mass, but it provides an effective contrasting second voice to that of the chorus.
With trumpets, trombones and timpani, the stunning ‘Gloria’ erupts. The first section is a pacy piece of choral music with a syncopated beat, followed by the ‘Gratias agimus’ where the elegant contrapuntal sounds of the quartet are interrupted by punchier choral entries. Woodwind-accompanied call and response between soloists and the choir in the ‘Miserere’, are succeeded by a crescendo leading to the extended final section. Schubert rewrote the ending of the ‘Gloria’ because choirs found the original fugal ending too difficult. Batsleer says he decided that the SCO Chorus were well able to cope with the original and we hear it tonight in all its complex wonder.
The ‘Credo’ begins with brief fanfares on trombone and trumpet alternating with a capella declamatory singing of the first lines. In her introduction to the concert, timpanist Louise Lewis Goodwin said she was impressed in rehearsal when Batsleer asked the choir to sing one section “as if they were singing Lieder – and they did”. The next legato section of the ‘Credo’ fits that bill I think. Though the text is a dull theological explanation, it's sung lovingly as if it’s the most charming narrative about a trout or a country maiden. The layout of the hall means that I can’t see the conductor, but the polish of the singing and playing, especially the entries and endings of sections suggests that thorough rehearsals are being backed up by precise direction. The ‘Credo’ ends in triumph with trumpets and trombones, and the soloists join in the final ‘Amen’.
Swooping bassoons and rapid strings underpin the ‘Sanctus’, though gentler pizzicato cellos accompany the soloists in the ‘Benedictus’ before a cheerfully rousing ‘Hosanna’. A mood of secure rejoicing permeates the ‘Agnus Dei’ in which the quartet sing one of the work’s loveliest melodies, which leads into the choir’s final syncopated ‘Dona nobis pacem’ with the beats echoed in the timpani. There’s an admirable robustness in Schubert’s prayer for peace!
It’s been a concert of hidden gems, music delivered with panache and providing a great deal of pleasure to an appreciative audience. But it’s by no means a full house, numbers further depleted by snow on the outskirts of the city. Are the smaller audiences for choral works part of the post-Covid reluctance to attend live performances? Or do fewer listeners enjoy hearing choral works?
