United Kingdom Christmas music from Schütz, Praetorius, MacMillan and different composers: Kana Kawashima (violin), Scottish Chamber Orchestra Refrain / Gregory Batsleer (conductor). Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, 18.12.2024. (SRT)
Trad (arr. Vaughan Williams) – The Fact from Above
Schütz – Deutsches Magnificat
Matteis Jnr – Fantasia in A minor (violin solo)
H. Praetorius – Joseph lieber, Joseph mein; Magnificat on the Fifth Tone; In dulci jubilo
Bach – Largo from Sonata No.3 in C; Andante from Sonata No.2 in A minor (violin solos)
Joubert – There is no such thing as a Rose
Judith Weir – Drop down, ye heavens
Howells – A Spotless Rose*
Matteis Snr – Preludio – passagio rotto (from Ayres for the Violin
ccard – When to the Temple Mary went
Gruber (arr Lucy Walker) – Silent Night time**
James Macmillan – Ave Maris Stella
Tavener – Hymn to the Mom of God
M. Praetorius (arr. Jan Sandström) – Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Whereas the Princes Avenue Christmas markets ply their noisy (and more and more costly) commerce just a few minutes’ stroll away, one other indispensable a part of Edinburgh’s Christmas celebrations performs out its altogether quieter, extra introverted path at Greyfriars Kirk on the sting of Edinburgh’s Previous City. Below the directorship of Gregory Batsleer, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Refrain has had their very own live performance each Christmas for greater than a decade now. It’s the solely live performance within the SCO’s season that’s assured to promote out yearly (I usually surprise what the orchestral musicians consider that!) and demand has been so excessive that they’ve needed to placed on two concert events for the previous few years. It’s a stunning oasis of musical spirituality on the most frenetic time of yr, they usually have come across a sample that works as a result of it offers them house to refresh it.
It’s virtually all unaccompanied singing, for one factor, and whereas this may trigger terrors for different newbie choirs, their pitching and focus is mostly ok to carry it all through. Their opening procession up the aisle to Vaughan Williams’s Fact from Above, was fantastically centered in that regard, they usually maintained spectacular focus by way of all of the longer objects within the programme, notably Hieronymus Praetorius’s Magnificat. Solely in direction of the top of the programme did a few of the tuning slide, resembling in Lucy Walker’s association of Silent Night time, and it was notably unlucky of their closing quantity, Jan Sandström’s densely clustered model of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, which was sung with the choir unfold all through the nave of the church (the place the remaining had all been sung from a stage on the entrance). Usually Sandström’s association sounds so visionary as a result of the choir that sings it’s so centered: by this time within the live performance, nonetheless, the choir had misplaced a few of their tightness, and being unfold out so extensively meant that a number of of the entries and harmonies had begun to droop.
That, nonetheless, was the one grievance in a programme that was in any other case effectively sung and effectively organised. Two works of the pre-Bach German Lutheran custom anchored the primary half, with Schütz’s German Magnificat bouncing together with a buoyant sense of enjoyment, and Praetorius’s Magnificat melding three hymn settings collectively in a means that may have been crude it if wasn’t so enchanting, the beautiful ring of the women’ voices underpinned by assured bass sound, and helped by a flawlessly centered tenor solo for the plainchant moments. The 2 most fashionable issues within the second half had been very efficient, too. The luminous textures of James MacMillan’s Ave Maris Stella had been spellbinding, the unchanging soprano line performing as an anchor under which the opposite voices gently moved in beautiful step, and Lucy Walker’s new association of Silent Night time used warmly predictable harmonies earlier than a slightly beautiful key change for the ultimate verse.
The opposite fixed within the refrain’s Christmas live performance is an ‘different’, a visitor who isn’t singing; and this yr it was Kana Kawashima, one of many SCO’s first violins. She performed 4 solo items, none of which had been notably Christmassy, however all of which benefited from beautiful readability of tone and vibrato-less transparency that meant you can hear the whole lot as if it had been freshly cleaned. Her items by Matteis Junior and Senior had been performed with beguiling simplicity and purity that carried a compelling communicative directness, and the 2 Bach actions appeared to shimmer in midair as they gently rocked the listener nearer to religious bliss. You aren’t going to get that on Princes Avenue.
Simon Thompson
