Category Archives: Choral

In concert – Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir / Tõnu Kaljuste @ BBC Proms: Arvo Pärt at 90

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Annika Lõhmus, Yena Choi (sopranos), Toomas Tohert (tenor), Geir Luht (bass), Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kadri Toomoja (organ) / Tõnu Kaljuste

Arvo Pärt Da pacem Domine (2004/6); Veni creator (2006); Magnificat (1989); The Deer’s Cry (2007); Für Jan van Eyck (2020) (UK premiere)
Galina Grigorjeva Svyatki – ‘Spring is Coming’ (2004)
Rachmaninov All Night Vigil (Vespers) Op.37 (1915): Slava v vyshnikh Bogu; Bogoroditse Devo
J.S. Bach Motet: Ich lasse dich nicht, BWV Anh.159 (1713)
Arvo Pärt Peace upon you, Jerusalem (2002); De profundis (1980)
Tormis Curse upon Iron (1972, rev. 1991)
Arvo Pärt Vater unser (2005/11); encore: Estonian Lullaby (2002)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 31 July 2025 (late night)

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

The music of Arvo Pärt is ideal for the special atmosphere of a late-night Prom. Yet this was no ordinary concert, being a celebration of the Estonian composer’s forthcoming 90th birthday in September, given by his close friend and collaborator Tõnu Kaljuste, conducting the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.

This combination of performers have been mainstays of the Pärt discography, forming a celebrated partnership with the ECM label that began with the landmark Tabula Rasa album of 1984, a cornerstone for Pärt’s critical and commercial success.

Pärt is often referred to as a ‘holy minimalist’, to which the response should be that his music is not ‘wholly minimal’. The substantial orchestral works attest to that, though here we heard much slighter but equally meaningful pieces for choir, most given unaccompanied by the 25-strong Estonian ensemble. The Proms audience were commendably quiet, leaning in to appreciate both the delicacy and crystal purity of the voices. The program was well-thought, realising the expressive potential of Pärt’s music alongside that of Bach, Rachmaninov and fellow Estonians, Veljo Tormis and Galina Grigorjeva.

The solemn Da pacem Domine and open-air Veni creator made an ideal opening couplet, the choir projecting with striking clarity rather than volume. For silence, too, plays a critical role in Pärt’s music, and Kaljuste ensured the spaces between the notes were every bit as expressive.

The Magnificat revealed its hidden power, while The Deer’s Cry was perfectly phrased, Pärt’s lilting cadences casting a spell. Für Jan Van Eyck, setting the text of the Agnus Dei, found the ideal balance between the reduced choir and Royal Albert Hall organ, where Kadri Toomoja had the ideal registration. Peace Upon You, Jerusalem, for female voices, contrasted silence with brightly voiced choral statements, while the solemn De profundis, for male voices, began from a small cell, maintaining rapt concentration while punctuated by organ and percussion.

Galina Grigorjeva’s Svyatki was a beautiful meditation, led by the heavenly voice of soprano Yena Choi, her voice with a remarkable bell-like clarity. Bach’s motet, previously attributed to his son Johann Christian, was impeccably voiced and phrased, but while the two excerpts from Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil were arguably less successful, they reflected a familiarity with listening to big choirs perform this music, rather than the subtleties of a chamber choir. Purity proved ample compensation for volume here.

This was emphatically not the case in Curse upon Iron, a remarkable setting from Veljo Tormis, of words from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, translated into Estonian. Describing the horrors of war, it sends a chill down the spine right from the primal call to arms of the shaman drum, struck by Kaljuste himself, then from the restrained urgency of the choir, like a coiled spring. While listening it was impossible not to think of the current plight of Ukraine and by extension in fear for the Baltic states, especially as Tormis’ writing was brought to a horrific climax. This was realised through the elemental power of tenor Toomas Tohert, bass Geir Luht and the choir, turning from side to side with watchful dread but then erupting in barely concealed anger. It was a remarkable performance, which will live long in the memory.

After this emotionally shattering encounter, the balm of Vater unser, Pärt’s German setting of The Lord’s Prayer for Pope Benedict, was just what was needed, its simplicity all the more affecting for what went before. As an encore, Kaljuste found just the right complement in the choir and piano version of Estonian Lullaby, its pauses near the end the musical equivalent of drooping eyelids. It was a most effective end to a special concert, Arvo Pärt’s musical essence distilled for a most appreciative audience.

You can listen back to this Prom concert on BBC Sounds until Sunday 12 October.

Click to read more about the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,608 – Sunday 27 July 2025

In concert – The London Chorus and New London Orchestra / Adrian Brown: VE Day 80th Anniversary Concert @ Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square

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Petroc Trelawny (orator), The London Chorus, New London Orchestra / Adrian Brown

Vaughan Williams Six Choral Songs (1940)
Martinů Memorial to Lidice (1943)
Walton Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (1942)
Bliss Morning Heroes (1929-30)
Holst/Rice I Vow to Thee My Country (1921)

Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, London
Thursday 9 May 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The London Chorus and New London Orchestra have put on notable concerts in recent years, few more ambitious than this programme to mark not merely the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day but also the 50th anniversary of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death in appropriate manner.

The first half comprised an unlikely but effective sequence of pieces written at the start of or during the Second World War. Rarely revived as such, Vaughan Williams’s Six Choral Songs to be Sung in Time of War works well as a whole: settings of Shelley that touch on aspects of courage, liberty, healing, victory, then pity, peace and war – before A Song to the New Age characterizes its utopian leanings in subdued and even ambivalent terms which seem typical of its composer. Suffice to add that the London Chorus had the full measure of its aspiration.

Two succinct if otherwise entirely different pieces brought out the best from the New London Orchestra. Rarely so overt in emotion, Martinů was well-nigh explicit when commemorating Nazi atrocities in music of plangent harmonies and chorale-like fervency both evocative and affecting. Derived from his score to the film The First of the Few, Walton had come up with a showpiece whose ceremonial prelude is vividly countered by its incisive fugue – making way for a brief if poignant interlude before matters are brought to a head in the rousing peroration.

Although intimately bound up with the First World War, Morning Heroes is wholly apposite for the present context. Conceived as the exorcism of his wartime experiences, Bliss’s choral symphony elides deftly between a distant past and its present; the first of its five movements featuring an orchestral introduction to set out the underlying mood and salient motifs, before Hector’s Farewell to Adromache had Petroc Trelawny eloquently evoking that scene on the ramparts of Troy without excess rhetoric. Adrian Brown’s understated direction meaningfully pointed up the expressive contrast between this and The City Arming – the setting of Walt Whitman whose interaction of chorus and orchestra was powerfully sustained right through   to the simmering unease at its close, with the onset of hostilities in the American Civil War.

The two parts of the central movement saw each section of the London Chorus come into its own: the women in Vigil, a confiding take on lines by Li-Tai-Po (Li Bai) such as relates the emotions of those left behind; and the men in The Bivouac’s Flame, plangently evoking life at the front with further lines from Whitman’s Drum Taps. Choral forces reunite in Achilles Goes Forth to Battle, a setting from later in The Iliad which brings about the work’s climax via The Heroes – a rollcall commemorating those of Antiquity. After this, the starkness of Wilfred Owen’s Spring Offensive is the greater for its sparse accompaniment – Trelawny’s oration a model of understatement as this segued into the setting of Robert Nichols’s Dawn on the Somme with those ‘morning heroes’ themselves evoked affirmatively if fatalistically.

A concert which ended in fine style with Holst’s stirring anthem had begun in subdued fashion with Dawn on the Somme – Ronald Corp’s elegy, given hours after his death was announced. Someone who had always given his all to this chorus and orchestra, he will be greatly missed.

Ronald Corp OBE (1951-2025)

Published post no.2,530 – Sunday 11 May 2025

In concert – The Bach Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra / David Hill: Delius, Blackford & Walton

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Amy Carson (soprano), Harry Jacques (tenor), Christopher Purves (baritone), The Bach Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra / David Hill

Delius The Song Of The High Hills (1911)
Blackford La Sagrada Familia Symphony (2022, world premiere)
Walton Belshazzar’s Feast (1931)

Royal Festival Hall, London
Thursday 8 May 2025

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Chris Christodoulou

This imaginative concert presented three British works telling stories from overseas, their reach extending to Norway, Spain and Babylon respectively.

Although born in Bradford, Frederick Delius spent much of his life abroad, living in America and then France – from where he would visit Norway for many a summer holiday with his wife. One such vacation in 1911 inspired him to write The Song Of The High Hills, a continuous sequence in three sections for wordless choir and orchestra capturing the mountain plateau, or ‘vidda’, that they found on their walks. Images from the plateau were shown on a screen behind the chorus as they performed.

Musically the work draws from Grieg and Debussy (his Nocturnes in especially) but inhabits a world all of its own, Delius achieving an unusual, rapt stillness when describing the high plains. David Hill, a long time exponent of his music, marshalled a strong performance, albeit one that didn’t quite sustain the rarefied atmosphere of the central section. It did cast quite a spell, mind, thanks to a beautiful oboe solo from Timothy Rundle on the approach, and some superbly controlled singing from The Bach Choir, headed by soloists Amy Carson (soprano) and Harry Jacques (tenor). The climax of the middle section was bolstered by three timpani, before the orchestra returned us to base camp. Speeds were on the fast side, but the Philharmonia Orchestra gave consistently luminous textures.

London-born composer Richard Blackford has shown considerable flair when writing for orchestra, and this was immediately evident in the world premiere of his La Sagrada Famila Symphony. Completed in 2022 and already recorded on the Lyrita label, it is a musical response to a 2019 encounter with Gaudí’s vision, concentrating on three great facades of the building – Nativity, Passion and Glory.

Blackford’s symphony was rich in colour but also vividly descriptive, his responses matched by an accompanying film, directed by the composer. Nativity began with awe-inspiring salvos from the brass but grew into a more intimate study, with elements of Hindemith and Berg in the orchestral writing, before a propulsive passage threw off the shackles. Passion was the emotional centrepiece, a vivid study in the brutality of the Good Friday story. Grotesque elements were emphasised by sudden closeups of Josep Maria Subirachs’s sculptures, their drawn expressions reflected in the music. The death of Christ was especially notable, marked by a solo of moving eloquence from cellist Martin Smith, then a sharp cry of dismay from Mark van de Wiel’s clarinet.

Glory was less obviously jubilant than might have been expected, mystical and reverent, but again it was an accurate response to the imagery as the film briefly went inside the massive structure. Blackford’s imagery danced in the listener’s mind on its own merits, with the thrilling surge at the end, bolstered by the organ, reminiscent of Messiaen or Scriabin. David Hill secured a fine performance from the Philharmonia, bringing the splendour of Gaudí’s cathedral to the concert hall. The emphatic finish brought with it a reminder of the building’s likely completion in 2026, a mere 144 years after construction began!

A British choral classic followed in the second half. Belshazzar’s Feast was initially denounced by Sir Thomas Beecham (a Delius fan, coincidentally) but Walton’s cantata has become a popular occasion piece. It is a vivid account of Babylonian decadence, before a human hand appears, writing on the wall of the banqueting hall to prophesy Belshazzar’s downfall. David Hill applied expert pacing to the storytelling, the Bach Choir on top form as the tension grew, spilling over into the exultant Praise Ye section. The paeans to the Babylonian Gods were starkly thrilling, contrasted by the terrifying unison shout of “Slain!” at Belshazzar’s death. The Philharmonia were superb, too, offstage brass bringing widescreen sound from either side of the stage and the percussion giving brilliant descriptions of the elements – iron and wood especially.

When the writing on the wall began, an ominous hush descended on the choir, the orchestra spreading a macabre chill through the hall – before the triumph of the closing pages, the Israelites free at last. Baritone Christopher Purves was a fine soloist, narrating the events and capturing the mood throughout. With 220+ in the choir, our ears were ringing long after the concert had finished, a timely reminder of a ruler whose inflated ego had brought about his downfall. Could there be any parallels in today’s world, I wonder?

For details on the their 2024-25 season, head to the Philharmonia Orchestra website

Published post no.2,529 – Saturday 10 May 2025

In concert – Ex Cathedra, CBSO / Robert Ames: Northern Lights

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Ex Cathedra (George Parris, chorus-master), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Robert Ames

Arnalds arr. Geoff Lawson Momentary (2018)
Jóhansson arr. Robert Ames Kanguru (2016)
Guðnadóttir arr. Ames For Petra (2022) [UK Premiere]
Jóhansson arr. Anthony Weeden Arrival – Suite No.1 (2016)
Guðnadóttir arr. Ames Ascent (2009)
Arnalds Og Lengra (2009)
Jónsi & Somers arr. David Handler Boy 1904 (2009)
Björk arr. Ian Anderson Jóga (1997)
Sveinsson Der Klang Der Offenbarung des Göttlichen (2014) [UK Premiere]

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Saturday 5 April 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Saturday’s concerts often ring the changes in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s season and this evening proved no exception – Northern Lights comprising a programme by the younger generation of Icelandic composers that has come to the fore of European music.

Much has been made of the inclusivity and non-conformism of music in Iceland – spurred on, no doubt, by that country’s geographical isolation well into the 20th century with its lack of a classical tradition as regards composing or performance. Yet the main impression left by what was heard tonight was its overall lack of diversity in terms of sound and, as a consequence, its uniformity as regards expression. For a country which is synonymous with spectacular natural phenomena as well as its off-the-wall attitude, this was surprising and not a little disconcerting.

Any such trend was largely bucked by the late Jóhann Jóhansson, whose numerous film scores were represented by two extracts from that to sci-fi drama Arrival – the first enlivened with its quirky vocal syllabics, then the second building up an ominous and ever more menacing aura. They were preceded by a track from Ólafur Arnalds’s album Re:member that set the sombrely evocative scene, and each of them followed with music by Hildur Guðnadóttir – a simmering extract from the ambitious while overwrought film Tár, then a track from her album Without Sinking that ended rather less arrestingly than it began. An excerpt from Arnalds’ ballet score Dyad 1909 has atrophied even before its close, and the Jónsi / Alez Somers collaborative track from their album Riceboy Sleeps was appreciably less than the sum of its intriguing parts. At least the first half closed on a relative high with a track from Björk’s Homogenic – one of her finest achievements here given an arresting twist by Ian Anderson, whose album reworkings with his outfit Wooden Elephant should have garnered more attention in the classical domain.

Little of Björk’s bracing idiosyncrasy – let alone the eruptive physicality of Iceland’s musical ‘father’ Jón Leifs – was evident during Kjartan Sveinsson’s Der Klang Der Offenbarung des Göttlichen occupying the second half. A former member of that (over?) influential post-rock band Sigur Rós, his ‘opera’ inspired by Halldór Laxness’s seminal novel World Light eschews individual characters and specific actions, though its presumed scenario of acceptance within the midst of adversity feels vestigial at best. Admittedly its opening threnody unfolded with a Górecki-like eloquence, but the ensuing dialogue between choir and strings sounded akin to a Germanic liturgical setting by a forgotten composer of the later 19th century – far from those expressionist canvasses by Ragnar Kjartansson that formed a backdrop at its Berlin premiere.

It should be added that the members of Ex Cathedra gave their collective all for what was an all too rare appearance with the CBSO. As, moreover, did the orchestra itself when conducted with such expertise by Robert Ames who, as a violist with whom to reckon and founding co-director of the enterprising London Contemporary Orchestra, is nothing if not well-versed in this music. What a pity that the outcome as experienced tonight was music often uninvolving, sometimes dull and conformist in a way that contemporary Icelandic culture should never be.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about conductor Robert Ames and the choir Ex Cathedra

Published post no.2,498 – Tuesday 8 April 2025

In concert – Alexander Roslavets, Gidon Kremer, LPO / Andrey Boreyko @ Royal Festival Hall: A Dark Century

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Alexander Roslavets (narrator / bass), Gidon Kremer (violin), London Philharmonic Choir (men’s voices), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrey Boreyko

Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw Op.46 (1947)
Weinberg Violin Concerto in G minor Op.67 (1959)
Shostakovich Symphony no.13 in B flat minor Op.113 ‘Babi Yar’ (1962)

Royal Festival Hall, London
Wednesday 27 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Richard de Stoutz (Andrey Boreyko), Angie Kremer (Gidon Kremer)

Anyone who heard one or other of these works for the first time at this concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra could be forgiven for thinking that the twentieth century, if not a ‘dark century’ per se, was at the very least a troubled one for all that the quality of its music was undeniable.

With its elements of melodrama and cantata, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw is one of his most original conceptions and necessarily so, given the unnerving immediacy of its text in which a speaker has to take on the roles of survivor and officer in just six minutes. Alexander Roslavets rose to this challenge, bringing out emotional contrasts as surely as he instilled his words with that ominous dread whose culmination in the prayer Shema Yisrael was intoned by the London Philharmonic Choir with the right balance between desperation and defiance.

One composer who witnessed something of such atrocities was Mieczysław Weinberg, and if his Violin Concerto demonstrably continues the ‘Romantic’ tradition, this is still an inherently personal statement. Gidon Kremer has championed the composer extensively in recent years and, while technical issues seemingly inhibited the respectively incisive and impetuous outer movements, the restless searching of its intermezzo-like Allegretto then confiding eloquence of its Adagio were abundantly in evidence. For all its outward virtuosity, the music’s essential inwardness is what prevails as the soloist remains musing when the orchestra fell silent at the close of the finale. Kremer was in his element here, as in a touching rendition of Silvestrov’s Serenade which made for an apposite encore and was dedicated to all the people of Ukraine.

Best known for giving the posthumous premiere of Gorecki’s Fourth Symphony with the LPO 10 years back, Andrey Boreyko is well established as an exponent of Shostakovich so that his take on the Thirteenth Symphony did not disappoint. At a distance of over six decades, it can be hard to recapture the provocation of that most eminent Soviet composer using verse by the most populist younger poet, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko then was, but this setting of Babi Yar retains all its expressive force through the immediacy and resourcefulness in which it relates official indifference to the Jewish massacre as that ravine outside Kyiv was transformed into landfill. Broodingly restrained, Roslavets emerged into his own with Humour – its scabrous send-up of bone-headed officialdom inspiring one of Shostakovich’s most scurrilous scherzos.

Fashioning the last three movements into a cohesive if cumulative unity, Boreyko underlined the potency of Shostakovich’s creative vision as he takes the Soviet establishment to task for various failings economic as In the Store, political as in Fears and cultural as in A Career. Implacable then volatile, these first two are rounded off by Yevtushenko’s considering of the relationship between society and the individual; framed by an undulating melody, for flutes then strings, which is one of its composer’s most evocative as well as affecting inspirations.

It duly brought this work, and this performance, to its subdued yet spellbinding close. As the relationship between East and West becomes ever more confrontational, Shostakovich’s 13th remains a testament to rationality and compassion whose denigration is to everybody’s cost.

For details on the 2024-25 season, head to the London Philharmonic Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloists Alexander Roslavets and Gidon Kremer

Published post no.2,373 – Monday 25 November 2024