November was a potentially a busy month and my next outing a week later was a concert with Bristol Choral Society of (mostly) German Romantic music in Bristol Cathedral. Actually looking at the origins of the composers, they include two Austrians, a Hungarian, a Czech and someone from Liechtenstein, but it seems the most apt overall description.
Most of the programme was rather slow and gentle, so we began with something zippier: Bach’s motet Lobet den Herrn, familiar to me but less so to many others in the choir.
Mendelssohn’s Verleih uns Frieden was a piece I’d somehow missed. A straightforward soprano line but with some lovely moments for the other voices. It was followed by an Ave Regina by Rheinberger (whom everyone seems to be performing at the moment) and the more familiar Geistliches Lied by Brahms.
The Bruckner anniversary reappeared, this time with his last motet Vexilla Regis, which for me is the greatest of them all, with its shifting harmonies and the ambivalent mood of its ending. If I were a Cathedral director of music I’d make it a regular feature of music lists in Passiontide. This was followed by Liszt’s Ave maris stella, which is rather more straightforward than other church music by him that I’ve done, apart from a chromatic middle section. We ended with Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer, which we will take on tour next year.
The programme was broken up by some organ and solo soprano pieces. The whole concert had a very pleasant atmosphere, and I particularly liked the low lighting over the audience, so we saw rows of faces receding into darkness far back in the nave.
