An atmosphere of excited anticipation crackled through St. James as the audience waited for Camerata Voci to open Camerata’s Summer Concert, Sacred & Profane with a performance of Tallis’s Spem in Alium.
Camerata Voci, a choir formed especially for the performance, assembled in the balcony. 8 choirs, 40 parts and 45 singers, split into two groups stood on opposite sides of the balcony. The unaccompanied piece started with a single voice, perfectly in pitch, the sound then moving seamlessly from choir to choir, rising to an awe inspiring volume as the choirs united. The effortlessly assured performance belies the many hours of preparation led by trainer James Henderson that must have gone into mastering the piece.
The sacred theme continued with Debussy’s Danses Sacrées et Profane. These two pieces revolved around a solo harp, played with mesmerising precision by Elizabeth Scorah. Elizabeth was well supported by the orchestra, whose playing was tightly together. The partnership between harp and orchestra was particularly effective when first violinist Nick Miller lead a twisting dance with the harp, as the tone of the piece fell from the rarefied sacred to the more pastoral profane.
Having arrived in the domain of the profane the orchestra turned its attention to Haydn’s Military Symphony. A work of sharp contrasts, there was a continual interplay between light, delicate passages played by the woodwind and the power of the whole orchestra in full flight.
Camerata Voci opened the second half with Faure’s Cantique de Jean Racine. This piece depends on tight ensemble work as the ebb and flow of the voice parts work to create a sense of yearning. One voice breaking ranks would destroy the illusion of a whole. A small group of lower strings joined the harp to accompany Camerata Voci, adding a further dimension to a performance which achieved a blissful sense of depth. The orchestra completed the concert with two very different pieces.
The Birds by Ottorino Respighi is a fascinating work. Each movement depicts a bird and is based on the style of Renaissance or Baroque composers. A proud and firm Preludio gave way to nervous, energetic strings, interjected with bird calls from the wood wind; as if the audience had walked from a fine Italian palace into the surrounding forest. An extremely evocative work, The Birds included many memorable passages, such as Tom Livermore’s oboe as the melancholic dove and the sharp staccato strings conveying the bustling energy of the hen.
Dmitry Kabalevsky’s Suite: The Comedians formed a raucous end to the concert. Written in 1938 for a children’s puppet play this set of 10 movements is wonderfully colourful and shot through with the essence of Russia’s frozen steppes. The Pantomime movement, with its wonderful, lumbering strength in the lower strings gave the sense of Soviet Ivan powering forward.
Sacred & Profane deserves to pass into local lore. From the perfectly refined high-wire act of Spem in Alium to the cracking Galop encore this was a concert where both orchestra and choir became much more than the sum of their parts. The conductor, Ron Corp, was central to maintaining the tight coherence of the musicians. His enthusiastic introductions to each piece and clear emotional involvement as he conducted drew the audience further into music that was often deeply moving, whether sacred or profane.
