VoxCarnyx

Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh

Over a few hours on the Saturday at the start of Easter week, it was possible to bask in the calibre of choral singing of which Scotland can boast.

In the afternoon, at St Michael’s Church by Linlithgow Palace, the NYCOS National Boys Choir revealed the fruits of their residential course at Gartmore. The hiatus of the pandemic has produced an odd imbalance where the older Changing Voices cohort currently outnumbers the trebles and altos of the NBC itself, but the varied programme still boasted a confident, if unseasonal, This Little Babe from Britten’s Ceremony of Carols alongside some Schubert and fine arrangements of sea shanties and spirituals.

In time, some of these older lads may find themselves on the Young Singers programme that refreshes the superbly-balanced Scottish Chamber Orchestra chorus where two of those currently keep the tenor section at a strength most amateur choirs can only dream of.

It does seem unfair on both sides to pitch the SCO Chorus into such a competition, however, as their concert that evening demonstrated. Director Gregory Batsleer’s ensemble are simply in a different league, as their opening motets by Renaissance composer William Byrd immediately proved. This is repertoire we usually hear in concert from small professional chamber choirs, and to hear the overlapping text in the closing  “Jerusalem desolata est” sung by nearly 50 voices in the glorious acoustic of Greyfriars was a joy.

A cannily-chosen Scottish premiere of Daniel Kidane’s Be Still – inspired by the experience of the Covid pandemic – provided a string interlude to set the stage for the combination of SCO strings and singers in James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross.

If the work is quintessential MacMillan, it now seems astonishing that he composed it so early in his career, and disappointing that such a masterwork is not heard more often.

Sharing some material with his equally bold clarinet work, Tuireadh, that is partly because it requires great skill in the voices, and indeed in the technical precision of the string playing. One of the things that distinguished this immaculate performance was the interplay between the two. That is to the fore in the dialogue between stratospheric sopranos and the low strings in the third part, Verily, I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise, with its parallel solo from the orchestra leader, but it is a continuous process in the work.

The writing for the choir inevitably remains foremost in the memory – beautifully resonant bottom notes as well as those high frequencies, immaculate ensemble singing from the altos and those remarkable tenors. But the instrumental playing is only a hairs-breadth behind, and after the representation of the nails being driven into the cross, it is the violins who have the moving last bars of Christ’s dying breath.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Christopher Bowen