I joined CanZona (replacing a singer with a broken leg) for a concert in Holy Trinity Bradford (on Avon) conducted by David Bishop. I’d never sung in this church before; it has a pleasant acoustic though the chancel is narrow so best suited to small ensembles. The Comper high altar, very similar in design to that of Little St Mary’s in Cambridge, made me feel at home.
I was quite glad I’d just done the Poulenc as it was a demanding programme. We began with Moeran’s Songs of Springtime. I think that they may be only choral pieces by him to get much of an outing these days; even his canticle setting in D – which my Cambridge college choir always used to do on the first evensong of the year – has gone from music lists. I enjoyed most the restrained sections which matched the period of the words, rather than the occasional passages where he tried to be Delius. (I am no fan of real Delius, let alone imitators!)
The Poulenc was a very different experience from the other performance. The orchestra was replaced by David Bednall skilfully drawing a variety of colours from the organ, and that I didn’t find myself missing it. We were a much smaller choir so my contribution was proportionately larger.
Our programme was completed by Malcolm Archer’s Requiem, another piece that was more taxing than it looked at first, as it required a lot of sustained high singing. It mainly recalls French settings of the text, though there was a near-quotation from the War Requiem at one point.
We had a small but appreciative audience and it was good to have a chance to chat to David Bednall (who has crossed my path with several different groups) over tea before the concert.