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Remarkable Assurance
MIKE WHEELER savours an Anglo-American programme from the Sitwell Singers
The Sitwell Singers and conductor Dexter Drown put together their Anglo-American programme some months ago, but some items turned out to be particularly apt following the recent death of one of the choir's founder-members, to whose memory the concert was dedicated - Broadway Baptist Church, Derby, UK, 29 June 2024.
To begin with Purcell's Funeral Sentences was particularly poignant in the circumstances. Members of Rolls-Royce Derby Band were on hand to play the March and Canzona written for Queen Mary's funeral. During the March, choir and band processed from the back of the church, except for one of the two drummers, who stayed at the back, for an antiphonal dialogue with his colleague in the reprise of the March at the end. In the choral numbers, Purcell's characteristically searching harmonic progressions made a telling effect, savoured without being over-emphasised.
Dexter Drown and the Sitwell Singers rehearsing for their 29 June 2024 concert with, far right, members of Rolls-Royce (Derby) Band
The programme mixed sacred and secular, with John Wilbye's madrigal Weep, weep, mine eyes contrasting a sombre start with a later lightening of mood, though the intensity of the challenge to 'Cruel Fortune' was somewhat glossed over.
Poster for the Sitwell Singers'
'A Special Relationship' concert,
dedicated to the memory of choir
founder-member Sheila Heathcote
Caroline Shaw's and the swallow has become something of a contemporary classic, and its mix of serene confidence and apprehension was well captured. Parry's setting of Shelley's well-known lyric Music When Soft Voices Die was handled gently, as was Amy Beach's Peace I Leave With You. I'd not come across any of her choral music before, and though not strikingly individual, Peace I Leave With You is certainly well-crafted, and left me wanting to hear more of her work in this field.
In fact, there was an opportunity to do just that in the second half, following pieces by American composer Williametta Spencer (born 1932, and a name new to me) and Owain Park. Spencer's John Donne setting At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners leaped off the page with its opening choral fanfare, vigorously delivered, before a nicely-shaded transition to the gentler second part. Park's Beati Quorum Via makes particularly effective use of a second soprano part suspended over the other voices, an effect well brought off here.
The second Amy Beach piece was her Nunc Dimittis - Latin title but setting the English text - thoughtfully sung, like her earlier piece. George Dyson (1883-1964) was a distinguished figure, now rarely performed. The Moon sets a sonnet by early seventeenth-century poet Charles Best, treating the interaction of the moon and the tides as an allegory of his own love. Elgar's There is Sweet Music, to words by Tennyson, is an astounding exploration, dating from 1907-8, of what later came to be known as bi-tonality, with the male and female voices singing a semitone apart. Elgar pulls off the feat with remarkable assurance, matched by the Sitwell Singers' commitment.
Dexter Drown and the Sitwell Singers acknowledging applause at their 'Special Relationship' concert
No less astonishing, in its way, is Charles Ives' Psalm 90, ending the programme, with the singers joined by organist Tom Corfield, and a glockenspiel-player from the Rolls-Royce Band. Ives is not afraid of forceful gestures, note-clusters and stark contrasts, and the singers were not afraid of whatever he threw at them. Argumentative for much of the time, it eventually wins through to a kind of serenity - again, a transition well judged.
Copyright © 4 July 2024
Mike Wheeler,
Derby UK
