Bristol Choral Society’s final concert of the season was a programme performed to a large audience in Bristol Cathedral.
I didn’t know Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs, an early work originally written as solo songs for his future wife, who wrote the words. They include such novelties as a bit of aleatoric writing and a setting of the word ‘centimetres’. They are getting a place in the repertoire, not least because of being programmed as in our concert, alongside Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. I sang these once before with Bath Camerata for their 20th anniversary concert, but that was on little rehearsal and the words in particular had fallen from my mind. On the evidence of these pieces, modern Hebrew comes over as more euphonious than its Biblical counterpart. In between, our Choral Scholars performed Whitacre’s Sainte-Chapelle, which integrates plainchant and mediæval styles with the composer’s own usual one. Later I got hold of a programme and worked out what the words were about (being behind the singers it wasn’t so easy to pick them up).
After the interval was that one-time cult piece, Duruflé’s Requiem. This was accompanied only on the organ (no cello in the Pie Jesu) and I’m told without the aid of the CCTV screen, as a misadjusted light had made it unusable. We will be singing the Requiem again next year, when we take it on tour to Lisbon.
A couple of days earlier I was in York and caught an evensong for St William of York’s day at the Minster, complete with incense and a bit more ceremony than usual. Not a saint I’m familiar with, but he has his own anthem by no less than John Taverner.