Tag Archives: Julia Doyle

SCO / Manze

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Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Faure’s Requiem is a popular choice for amateur choirs: not too long and requiring limited contributions from just two soloists, it is very often heard with organ or piano accompaniment. Predictably, the honed precision of the SCO Chorus, as prepared by director Gregory Batsleer, was in another league altogether, but it was the partnership with the orchestra itself that made this a revelatory performance.

Faure’s spare orchestration, completed a decade after the work’s composition, is substantially in the hands of the low strings, so SCO Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze had the orchestra re-positioned with principal viola Jessica Beeston in the orchestra leader’s seat opposite first cello Su-a Lee, and the violins centre stage but further back.

The effect was crucial aurally as well as visually, the front stage musicians’ combination with horns and organ in the Introit emphasising the movement’s affinity with early music, and the entry of the harp and violins in the Sanctus answered by the lovely counterpoint line given to the violas. For the Pie Jesu that followed, soprano Julia Doyle sang from high in the organ gallery, and the pizzicato cellos and basses in the Libera Me seemed absolutely essential to the anguish of the baritone’s plea for deliverance.

That soloist was Roderick Williams, and the conductor had also put his participation in an excellent broader context. If Gabriel Faure brought something of an outsider’s eye to the rituals of the Catholic church, that perspective could also be detected in everything else in the concert.

Berlioz’s devotion to Shakespeare – albeit in the person of one actress in particular – still seems odd for a man with limited command of the English language, but his Overture, Beatrice and Benedict, is unmistakably a work of the theatre. The combinations of wind instruments were a sparkling part of his dramatic narrative.

Then it was the turn of the SCO strings to shine in music from a century later, and an Essex woman’s impressions of the Lake District. The SCO is in the vanguard of championing the neglected Ruth Gipps and her Cringlemire Garden both harks back to the architectural era of the country house of its title and shows the influence of her teacher, Vaughan Williams, whose own composition of exactly that time – the beginning of the 20th century – followed.

His Five Mystical Songs set the Christian lyrics of early 17th century metaphysical poet and priest George Herbert, and Williams and the SCO Chorus found the sort of respectful distance to the words that the composer surely intended. The best-known of the five is the choral closer, entitled Antiphon, but familiar from its couplet “Let the world in every corner sing, My God and King!” That hymn and the opener, Easter, bracket more personal statements of faith, the central “Love bade me welcome” perhaps the loveliest.

The way Vaughan Williams combines soloist and choir is full of interest and invention, with wordless underscores as well as the fuller choral writing, and Williams is a superb interpreter of this music.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Roderick Williams by Theo Williams

SCO / Luks

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City Halls, Glasgow

If there are different formats in which Handel’s Messiah works for concert-goers, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is much less adaptable, which may explain why there are fewer opportunities to hear it.

With Czech Baroque specialist Vaclav Luks in charge, this was a performance not to miss. The key ingredient was the SCO Chorus, again proving itself in another league from the choirs associated with most orchestras. Chorus director Gregory Batsleer had prepared a perfectly balanced unit with as many men as women, equal numbers of singers in each section, and enough young recruits to guarantee a freshness in the sound alongside the wisdom of the voices of experience.

Luks had clearly thought carefully about how to present this priceless asset, arraying them close behind the instrumentalists, and arranging the players in a way that was as singularly effective. Immediately in front of him were the harpsichord and chamber organ, the latter a notably sweet-toned instrument played by Michael Bawtree. With most of the strings on the conductor’s left, only the cellos and basses were on the right hand half of the stage, with all the winds and brass in front of them.

Of the vocal soloists, only tenor Robin Tritschler, in the narrative role of the Evangelist, remained at the centre of the platform, with the other three seated in the wings between their contributions. All of this helped the narrative of the music, while asking the instrumental soloists to stand in their places when partnering the singers was also an important contribution to the story.

After the introductory chorus, with the pure-toned sopranos making an immediate impression, Tritschler led the drama. His delivery was matched by the animation of bass-baritone Florian Stortz, making his SCO debut, and soprano soloist Julia Doyle. Mezzo Helen Charlston, singing the role of the Virgin Mary, was a more sedate presence as suited her arias of lullaby and contemplation.

This concert presented the first three cantatas of the six in the full oratorio (shepherds and angels, but no magi), and was full of memorable moments: the chorus sopranos joining Stortz, the continuo and reeds in Cantata 1, Tritschler duetting with first flute Andre Cebrian in Cantata 2, and Cantata 3’s duet of Doyle and Stortz and a trio of winds among them.

Luks made every detail crystal clear, while the SCO Chorus continued its magnificent form. Cantata 2’s brief unaccompanied Chorale, Schaut hin, dort liegt im finstern Stall, was quite exquisite, their German diction was immaculate throughout, and there was always a clear tonal distinction between the brisk Choruses and more measured Chorales.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Julia Doyle by Louise O’Dwyer

Dunedin Consort: Leipzig 300

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Perth Concert Hall

During his pre-concert remarks, Dunedin Consort director John Butt implied that this early 2024 recreation of what Johann Sebastian Bach was composing exactly 300 years ago in Leipzig may be the beginning of a longer exploration of his cycles of weekly-composed cantatas. If so, the first one was perhaps undersold as an excellent start to the project, bringing together the University of Glasgow professor’s universally-admired scholarship, a quartet of fine singers and an expanding ensemble of versatile instrumentalists.

As is well known, Bach was third choice for the Leipzig composer and choirmaster job, and Butt presented three of his cantatas performed at the start of 1724 alongside works by the other two, Christoph Graupner’s eight-movement Ouverture in E flat major preceding Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G, with Telemann’s setting of a German paraphrase of Psalm 100 between two of the Bachs in the second half.

Of the singers, bass Matthew Brook had the best of the night, with the Telemann cantata, a “voice of God” aria accompanied by oboes d’amore in Bach’s Jeus schlaft, was soll ich hoffen (BWV 81), the opening Recitative in Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee von Himmel fallt (BWV 18), and the opening Aria of Leightgesinnte Flattergeister (BWV 181), which he attacked with articulate verve. (If there was some numerological significance to the coincident recurrence of the digits in the catalogue numbers, Professor Butt was silent on that point.)

The other voices – soprano Julia Doyle, mezzo Helen Charlston, and tenor Nicholas Mulroy – each had their own solo high spots, including Doyle’s aria Mein Seelenschatz ist Gottes Wort, Charlston’s Wohl mir, mein Jesus spricht ein Wort and Mulroy’s Der schadlichen Dornen unendliche Zahl, where his duet partner was leader Huw Daniel’s expressive violin.

The four also combined expertly in the chorales, led by Doyle, and the tempi Butt found for those were always revealing – rarely do the chorus hymns sound so much part of the shape of the cantatas as they did here.

That rhythmic assurance was just as impressive among the instrumentalists, from the opening Graupner suite with its pizzicato passage and finale full of changes of pace, through violist John Crockatt’s solo turn on the Telemann concerto, to the superb continuo playing in the closing Bach, cellist Jonathan Manson on crisp, precise form as usual.

As well as playing the oboes, Oonagh Lee and Frances Norbury provided the recorders Bach added to the score of BWV18 for its Leipzig outing, where second violins Anna Curzon and Emilia Benjamin switched to violas, the only cantata Bach wrote requiring four of them, and no fiddles.

With the natural trumpet of Paul Sharp joining the ensemble later, the sonic palette was constantly finding new colours in a programme that showed exactly how music was developing three centuries ago. As is the practice of this ensemble, that lesson was always as entertaining as it was educational.

Keith Bruce

Picture: Julia Doyle by Louise O’Dwyer