Page 363 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

Indeed, a flexibility with rhythm and a sure understanding of dynamic contrast saved
two otherwise fairly staid pieces (Elizabeth Poston’s Jesus Christ the Apple Tree and
Peter Maxwell Davies’ Lullaby for Lucy) from being simply charming musical fillers.
Although the dry acoustic of Kings Hall One suited many of the text-heavy pieces,
sadly, Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin lost out slightly from a lack of reverb; normally,

the semi-chorus responses crystallize out of the echo from the full-choir sections, but
slight silence between them made the piece feel a little robotic. Herbert
Howells’ Take him, earth, for cherishing (whose Latin text was translated by Helen

Waddell) was, however, given a five-star treatment in which the beauty of every
phrase of the moving poetry could be savoured.
The selection of pieces presented few challenges in tonality. Roxanna
Panufnik’s Prayer, with its sharp-cornered soprano lines in an almost jazz idiom was
perhaps the most left-field of all the works on offer. Ruth Byrchmore’s Prayer of St

Teresa of Avila fell into the popular, but now overdone, idiom of largely homophonic
material slightly enlivened by internally clashing note clusters. Her A Birthday,
though, was a more lively affair whose first stanza of ‘twittering over a pedal note’

resolved into a more stately homophony whose final fanfares decayed to an
impressive pianissimo. Margaret Rizza’s two works (O speculum columbe and Ave
generosa) both contained repeating sections whose voicing or harmonic composition
changed, bringing an interesting mix of variety and growing familiarity to the
listening experience.

It being very nearly Advent, the concert also included a smattering of carols. Cecilia
McDowall’s Now may we singen and Of a Rose are both settings of mediæval texts
whose bouncy, syncopated lines were deftly delivered, and brought to mind those

mid-20 -century carols by the likes of Richard Rodney Bennett, from the apogee of
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the Willcocks years at King’s. Christina Rossetti’s well-known poem Christmas
Eve was given a fresh rendering in a setting by Kim Porter, an alto in The Sixteen.
Very much a choral singer’s piece, it’s full of rich harmony (especially the delightfully

self-indulgent internal decorations in the alto part) under an enchanting melodic
line.
The star of the evening, though, was Alissa Firsova’s setting of seven verses of
the Stabat Mater. Although some of the musical material is influenced by an angular

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20 -century idiom (the arcing phrases in ‘Inflammatus et accensus’, for example),
this is interleaved with lines – or sometimes just brief cadences – that come straight
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from 19 -century romanticism.

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