Gloucester Choral Society presented a mixed programme rather than a single work for the Christmas concert this year.
Introducing the four-part arrangement of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols our conductor said it should be compulsory on everyone’s syllabus in school. Well it was on mine – at least the first part up to and including the interlude was a set work of mine for O level Music and I still have a heavily annotated score. It is strange singing a work that was drilled into me as a teenager, but not for performance. The dynamics and other expression markings are familiar, but feel like marks on the page, because that was how I studied them, rather than as something that makes an actual difference in the sound.
The main work was Bob Chilcott’s Christmas Oratorio, premiered at the Three Choirs Festival a few years ago. I missed another chance to sing this piece earlier in the year but it caught up with me in the end. It narrates the Christmas story from Annunciation to Presentation in the Temple, with some appropriate poetry. The hymn tunes are all named after people who played some part in the creation of the work. I (and others) felt that the choir got the best of the music here.
We also sang a selection of seasonal pieces including Byrd’s Rorate Caeli which I’d never sung before, and the preposterous but enjoyable Vox Dicentis by Naylor.