Waverley Singers

Waverley Singers thrive at St Mary's

The following review by Peter Sanger appeared in the Farnham Herald on 23 May 1986.

The Waverley Singers chose a new venue, the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Frensham, for their concert last Sunday, a programme which comprised three psalm settings by Schütz, a mass by William Byrd, interspersed with organ pieces by Buxtehude, J.S. Bach, and Nicolas de Grigny. It almost goes without saying that the church was filled to capacity, and rightly so, for the Waverley Singers are a most accomplished choir.

Heinrich Schütz, was, perhaps, the greatest of J.S. Bach's German predecessors, though his work is still too little known in this country. His four years in Venice, from 1609 to 1613, where he studied with Giovanni Gabrieli, had an enormous influence on his music, everywhere evident in his 26 German text settings of the Psalms of David, published in 1619. These, employing vocal forces on a most lavish scale, are laid out in eight or more parts. Many of the pieces are intended for solo singers (cori favoriti), with choruses of less skilled singers or instruments (the cappella) being introduced "for the sake of sonority and splendour".

Psalm-settings

We heard three psalm-settings sung by the full choir, and although no small parish church can have anything like the reverberant acoustics of St Mark's in Venice (and I have been fortunate enough to hear Gabrieli and Monteverdi in St Mark's, a marvellous, unique experience), the spatial effects created by the various choral groupings around the church were undeniably impressive. The first and last settings contrasted groups of high and low voices, while the middle piece used identical four-voice choirs antiphonally. Schütz wrote with great concern for the meaning of the text - this is Protestant music, intended to impart doctrine in a clear-cut, unequivocal manner - and this, too, was well realised by the choir; only occasionally was I conscious that the German had an English accent, and generally the very distinct German vowel sounds were well managed.

In between the choral pieces, Murray Stewart played a prelude and fugue and a chorale prelude by the Danish-born Diderik (in German, Dietrich) Buxtehude. (Not Swedish - he was born at Oldesloe, now Bad Oldesloe, in Holstein, only 20 miles from Hamburg.) I enjoyed these. The organ sounded much clearer and more sharply focused than the average Paris church instrument, doubtless due in part to a clever choice of registration. Buxtehude, too, is an interesting composer in his own right, not just as a precursor of J.S. Bach. For myself, I would have preferred it if the choir had not been playing a king-size version of musical chairs during these pieces. Bach was given the privilege of silence for his G major prelude and fugue, again sensitively played. 

A sharp contrast in the second half gave us unaccompanied English music, albeit to the Latin text, in Byrd's Mass for four voices. I was pre-empted from saying that it would have been sung by a smaller choir, probably just 12 singers. In fact, the surprisingly un-reverberant acoustic, whilst not doing much for the actual warmth of sound, certainly assisted clarity. The very familiar words could be heard without any problem, (just as well, as the translations were veering in the direction of microfiche, not health by a dud M) and Byrd doesn't hang around in his setting of the text. Occasionally there was the odd raggedness, but generally I thought this is a strong performance, conveying much of the superb quality of the music. The short organ interludes were a good idea. Concert performances of masses often give a false impression; the sections would be separated by ritual in liturgical use, and this was a way of indicating some of the breaks.

Tonal combinations

A short, sharp shock as the organ burst in rather abruptly, after the silence of the Agnus Dei, with full organ in the movement by Nicolas de Grigny. If it is difficult enough to persuade the average English organ to sound like its Baroque German counterpart, the problem is even greater when considering French instruments, with their strong and distinctive tonal combinations. So here, with the best will in the world, we were getting a rather remote translation of the original.

I enjoyed this concert a great deal. Once again, the Waverley Singers, thanks to the excellent training and direction of Malcolm Hicks, showed themselves to be a very fine choir indeed. Over a series of concerts, I have been impressed, too, by the way in which they have responded to music of many different styles and periods. The next concert, at St Thomas on the Bourne, will take place on October 18th, and will comprise Dvorak’s Mass in D, and Rachmaninov's Vespers, sung in Russian.