Page 94 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

Here are a pair of choral Requiems, both coming at the traditional mass for the dead from
unusual angles, proclaimed in their titles. Cecilia McDowall’s Da Vinci Requiem was premiered in
2019 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death – and was another of the long
catalogue of projects whose emergence was delayed by Covid. Russell Pascoe’s Secular
Requiem (2012) was born of conversations between Christopher Gray, Director of Music at Truro
Cathedral, and a Christian adherent, and the composer, immersed since childhood in the church
music tradition, but not a believer himself. The McDowall combines the tradition Latin text with
snippets of Leonardo’s writing, while the Pascoe uses an entirely bespoke text, assembled by
Anthony Pinching, which brings together poets as varied as John Donne and Rabindranath
Tagore in a structure which mirrors the stages of grief.

Both albums are performed by the commissioning choirs, and hats off to both for championing
these pieces. The McDowall in particular leaps out as a perfect vehicle for Wimbledon Choral to
show what it can do; it’s musically engaging but also, I reckon, a lot of fun to sing. It hits the
ground running with a tense, almost expressionist-lite “Introit and Kyrie”, with Roderick Williams
on typically assertive form. The other soloist, soprano Kate Royal, is focused and driven in the
second movement, “The Virgin of the Rocks”. The choir holds centre stage in the dancing, poised
“Sanctus” while the emotional heart of the piece is in Williams’s moving “O you who are asleep?”
The whole thing is beautifully paced by Neil Ferris, leading the choir, soloists and City of London
Sinfonia, finding in McDowall’s music a Britten-like combination of singability, approachability, but
also sudden swerves into darker territory.