The SCO Chorus
Greyfriars Kirk
The SCO chorus will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. Formed originally to complement the SCO, it has, under director Gregory Batsleer since 2009, increasingly mounted its own concert programme without the orchestra. There are a lot of very good choruses in Scotland, including the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, the SNO Chorus (also directed by Gregory Batsleer), and half a dozen good choirs in Edinburgh. However after tonight's concert I think the SCO Chorus can reasonably claim to be the best choir in Scotland, partly because at 60 strong it is relatively small, compared to say the 200 strong Festival Chorus, and therefore, like the SCO orchestra, it is very tight and together. Much of this is also due to director Gregory Batsleer, who has established himself as the leading chorus director in Scotland and is widely respected internationally. Watching him at work tonight in the close quarters of the front row at Greyfriars was a revelation. He is totally committed to the works, silently singing every word with the chorus, conducting colourfully with his long arms, his body bent into the music. He also has an amusing habit of striking his tuning fork on his knee or his head to get the pitch before launching into the work
Whatever he does in rehearsal, or in the performance with the chorus, it works. Tonight it produces a perfectly pitched concert which totally grips the really big Greyfriars audience, who reward the Chorus with a standing ovation.
The concert begins and ends with works by Thomas Tallis, the great English sixteenth century composer. The highlight and conclusion of the concert is his Spem in Alium, but the concert begins with Tallis’s very short Salvator Mundi, only two lines of religious text, but repeated enough by the chorus it lasts for some minutes and sounds magical. It is followed by a work by James Macmillan, Scotland's leading composer, and like me an Ayrshire boy, born and brought up in Cumnock where he began his music studies. He is now internationally recognised but each year he has created a great homecoming festival, The Cumnock Tryst. Tonight, we hear Four Strathclyde Motets, written during his time at Glasgow University. Macmillan is a devout Catholic and uses his composing skills to worship God, but he also reflects some earlier church polyphonic works, demonstrating the interdependence of the individual voices and the choir, such as Tallis. The choir performs them superbly, with the voices resonating across Greyfriars. My only criticism is that the choir sopranos are so good and so powerful that at times they dominate the choir. I don't know how you deal with it, but I'm sure Gregory Batsleer does! The first half of the concert concluded with French composer Francis Poulenc's Four Motets of Penitence. Like Macmillan, a devout Catholic, his music reflects this and allows the choir to show its full powers and it's subtle shading.
During the interval I spoke to the film makers who had large cameras placed around Greyfriars to record the concert. They plan to broadcast it via social media such as YouTube so that a wider audience may see and hear the chorus. This sounds like a very good idea, although there is a worry that, like the Met Opera transmissions, it might impact on attendances at live music events, and as tonight’s audience would testify there is nothing as exciting as live music. This concert is also part of Greyfriars’ 400 years festival "Celebrate 400". Greyfriars has a special place in Edinburgh not just because of Greyfriars Bobby outside but because it is also a great venue for live music. I recall many great concerts there during the festival, including Yo Yo Ma playing all six Bach cello suites in one afternoon!
After the interval the concert continued with a little two-line work by the great English composer Purcell. With repetition and variation of course two lines becomes two minutes and warms up the choir and the audience for the second half. We then hear three flower songs by American composer Eric Whiteacre, set to poems by Emily Dickinson, Lorca and old English writer Edmund Waller. They are lovely poems and given the music was written whist he was still a student are remarkably melodic and the choir clearly enjoyed singing them. Highlight of the concert were two versions of one of the most iconic works of the choral repertoire, Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium, written in the sixteenth century for 40 voices made up of 8 choirs of five voices. First, we hear it with the chorus together, and watch as the music moved across the chorus. Then we listen as the chorus divided into 8 choirs, placed all around the hall. Of course, the effect of doing it in the round depends on where you are sitting and the acoustics of the hall. The truth is that Greyfriars doesn't have the best acoustics. An architect explained in Sandy Bells later that it was to do with the wooden vaulted roof! That is probably why I always try and sit near the front, so I'm not sure I got the perfect in the round experience, but it was magic hearing the voices all around the church. It will be interesting to see it and listen to it on film when it comes out. The audience responded with a roar of approval. We knew we had experienced a special musical evening in Greyfriars.
