Saturday 7th May 2022
St Peter ad Vincula, Coggeshall

An outstanding concert in Coggeshall
Colchester Chamber Choir returned to Coggeshall on May 7th for another typically stimulating and exciting concert before a large audience in St Peter’s. This time their programme consisted of French and English sacred music from the 17th century. It was striking how similar the two national styles were: Protestant English and Catholic French. Each half of the programme began and ended with settings of the Te Deum and Jubilate, French in the first half and English after the interval; the words of both have long been familiar to generations of Anglicans as central to the office of Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, but these were ceremonial settings on a large scale, solo voices contrasting with the chorus and instrumental ensemble, in music of regal splendour as well as intimate reflection

.It is remarkable how performances of this repertoire have changed and developed over the last thirty years or so. Previously, it would have been almost unthinkable for a locally-based choir to present such music using an ensemble of period instruments with such detailed attention to historically-informed performance practice. Here we had a Colchester-based choir using an ensemble of historical performance specialists, bringing the music alive in ways that were rarely possible hitherto.

The concert began with the celebrated Latin Te Deum by Marc Antoine Charpentier, of which the trumpet prelude is well known in sanitised arrangements for organ, complemented in the second half by Henry Purcell’s equally splendid setting of the same words in English. Also featured were settings of the Jubilate by Jean-Joseph Mondonville and Purcell again, interspersed in each half by quieter items for choir, accompanied only by the continuo instruments. Here we were able to relish the subtlety and sensitivity for which this choir is renowned. Particularly outstanding was the section ‘Ego cubui et dormivi’ (‘I laid down and slept’ ) in Purcell’s well known Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei , sung with beautifully hushed tone and sensitive phrasing.
There was strong team of young vocal soloists, functioning much of the time as an ensemble, including Sam Cobb (soprano), Lewis Hammond (alto) and Christopher Huggon (tenor). Florian Störtz (bass) delivered several declamatory solos with authority and conviction. Like the players in the ensemble, the preponderance of young musicians, specialists in the performance of ‘early’ music, augurs well for the future of such music making in this country. There was a sense of sheer enjoyment throughout the concert in the process of bringing this music alive for a present-day audience, from instrumentalists, soloists and choir alike. For this, we must thank the choir’s director, Roderick Earle, whose vision, skill and scholarship are all brought to bear in a concert such as this.

Saturday 15th January 2022
St Peter ad Vincula, Coggeshall

For an hour one Saturday afternoon (January 15th) a near-capacity audience in St Peter’s was transported as if to heaven itself by a programme of sacred music given by the excellent Colchester Chamber Choir, under their distinguished director Roderick Earle. It was their first concert after almost two years of Covid-enforced inactivity, and what a remarkable comeback it was! If they have not yet quite regained the assured virtuosity of their pre-pandemic performances, they are certainly well on the way. It was especially pleasing to note the number of younger singers in the choir, particularly some fine voices in the tenor section; many choirs would be green with envy.
The programme was a demanding one, consisting of music from 16th and 17th _ century France and Italy, much of it in up to eight parts, and performed here entirely without accompaniment. This music is intended to inspire worshippers to deeper devotion and to give a glimpse, a foretaste even, of heaven. The Counter-Reformation was at its zenith, and its sacred music often burns with the zeal and intensity of the Catholic Church’s mission to bring all back into its fold. The dominating figure here was Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) who was represented by excerpts from two of his Masses, from 1610 and 1650 respectively, the former being from the folio he submitted to St Mark’s, Venice, along with his celebrated Vespers, when he applied successfully for the post of Maestro di Capella. These, and his well-known Cantate Domino (O sing unto the Lord), typified the new restless, dramatic style that had begun to pervade early 17th_ century music. By contrast, the opening items by Jean Mouton (1459-1522) and Clemens non Papa (1510-1555) – the latter’s nickname allegedly intended to distinguish him from Pope Clement VII – were examples of an earlier style, rather more placid in character.
The music of Carlo Gesualdo (1566- 1613) exemplifies to an extreme the revolutionary stile moderno of his generation. The two Marian motets sung here are far from straightforward; they require very secure intonation for their sudden eccentric key-changes, a wide range of dynamics and tone-colour and the ability to master their unpredictable, dramatic mood-swings. The choir was really getting into its stride by this point, and the contrast with the less demonstrative style of the two earlier pieces was quite striking.
For this listener, however, the finest performances came in the final group of motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), a Spanish priest who lived and worked in Rome. All three pieces were devotions to Our Lady, their eight-part textures offering the composer wonderful opportunities for dramatic contrasts between separate groups, and a rich tapestry of varied tone-colours. The devotional fervour characteristic of its composer came over vividly, as did the sheer vivacity and energy of the triple-time Alleluias that punctuated and concluded the final Regina caeli laetare (Queen of heaven, rejoice).
Colchester Chamber Choir will return to St Peter’s on 7th May. Their programme has yet to be decided. But whatever they choose to offer, we can be sure that we will be given a stimulating and enjoyable concert, and we are grateful to them for bringing to Coggeshall such devotional and cultural riches.

Michael Frith

St Peter ad Vincula, Coggeshall
18th January 2020
Magnificent Magnificat

The Magnificat, the song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, lies at the heart of most traditions of Christian worship – Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant – and is commonly said or sung at daily evening services. Unsurprisingly, it has been set to music countless times, and on church festivals it has often drawn forth extended, splendidly elaborate settings. Two of the finest, those by Bach and Vivaldi, were the centre-pieces of the concert given by Colchester Chamber Choir in St Peter ad Vincula on January 18th to celebrate the choir’s tenth anniversary.

It was a fitting celebration of a decade of achievement, for the music of Bach constitutes one of the peaks of European music and offers rewards and challenges in equal measure. Bach often writes for voices as if they were instruments, and this requires considerable technique and vocal agility with clear, bright tone-colours and articulation. Above all, it needs the guiding hand of a Director who has a vision beyond the purely technical, to penetrate to the spiritual heart of the music and so inspire the singers. Roderick Earle, the choir’s conductor, is a singer and vocal coach at the highest levels of the profession and brings this experience to bear on his work with the choir. As a result, one would have to go to the professional choirs in London, Oxford or Cambridge to hear significantly better performances than this.

There were other factors that lifted this concert out of the ordinary. While it is not unusual for a choir to use some of its members as soloists, it is certainly uncommon for them all to be of such high quality and to work so well together in ensembles. This was, almost certainly, Bach’s own practice in Leipzig, and indeed his chorus may sometimes have consisted of no more than the soloists singing together. Another practice that lent authenticity to this concert was the inclusion of additional texts within those of the liturgy which were applicable to the season. Hence Bach’s Magnificat was adorned with interpolations of Vom Himmel Hoch (a German Christmas carol), an additional Gloria in excelsis Deo and other rarely heard short pieces, thus aligning it more closely to the Christmas season. Additionally, the concert started with a free-standing setting of the Gloria that Bach was to incorporate a few years later in his Mass in B minor. Nested within this feast of Bach was the Magnificat setting by Vivaldi, which formed a stimulating contrast. The music of this fiery, red-headed priest from Venice is simpler in conception than Bach’s and bolder in its drama; here again the choir projected the music’s character with verve and precision.

All the works in the programme required instrumental accompaniment. This was provided by an ensemble of seventeen players using eighteenth-century style instruments, played with appropriate period techniques. All were young, some of them postgraduate students, specialists in so-called early music. They brought extra vitality to the performance, and showed, incidentally, that early music is still a vigorous growth area in contemporary culture.

It is this sort of enterprising approach, as well as sheer technical and interpretative acumen, that makes the Colchester Chamber Choir one of the outstanding musical institutions in the East of England. No wonder tickets for their concerts are in such demand and that some 400 people filled St Peter’s that evening. We have an ideal venue, both visually and aurally, and an efficient, hard-working concert team who offer a warm welcome and every assistance to those who perform here. Even before you read this, Colchester Chamber Choir will have already returned here for another, quite different concert.

Michael Frith, Organist, St Peter ad Vincula

St Peter ad Vincula, Coggeshall
12th January 2019
‘I thank thee, Lord’: Russia comes to Coggeshall

The church is in darkness apart from the subdued light from strategically placed candles; there is the residual scent of incense in the air; the deep tolling of a great bell booms out, joined by the tintinnabulation of smaller bells; a capacity audience waits expectantly. The setting was thus prepared for a remarkable performance in St Peter’s on the evening of January 12th: Colchester Chamber Choir was to present the Russian Orthodox Night Vigil in Rachmaninov’s remarkable music.

Performances of this work are not common, for it makes great demands on even the very best choirs. On the evidence, this Colchester-based choir is one of the very best. Indeed, to hear a better performance one would have to go to one of the top London professional choirs, or to one of the finest college choirs in Oxford or Cambridge. The work requires singers who, unaccompanied, can maintain the pitch through an hour’s music; it demands the utmost unanimity in ensemble, balance and tuning, through a wide range of volume and vocal colours; and, above all, enormous concentration from every singer. On every count the choir was superb, a tribute to their distinguished director, Roderick Earle, whose musical and spiritual insights made this interpretation much more than a mere exhibition of choral technique.

For it was a truly spiritual experience. Although Rachmaninov, who was not in any conventional sense a churchman, took advice when composing it (in 1915) from a leading authority on the musical requirements of the Russian liturgy, he overstepped the very rigid boundaries of what was considered appropriate in the way of emotional expression, thus severely limiting the possibilities for genuine liturgical performance. This may seem surprising to a western audience to whom this music may seem the very essence of Holy Russia, its soul deep in the soil of the Motherland. The composer left Russia soon after the Revolution for the United States, never to return. But toward the end of his very last work, the Symphonic Dances for orchestra written in 1940, he quoted at length an Alleluia theme from the Vigil setting which alternates in a sort of life-and-death struggle with the Dies Irae funeral chant. On the final page he wrote ‘I thank thee, Lord’, as if he had finally come to believe in the triumph of life over death and the victory of the Resurrection. Was this only the nostalgia of an exile for his native land, or does it perhaps suggest something of a religious conversion?

We should beware of thinking of a serious musical concert as little more than a superior form of entertainment, for it can afford a religious experience every bit as valid and even life-changing as a church service. There can have been few agnostics or atheists present in St Peter’s that night who did not experience something of the eternal and transcendent through Rachmaninov’s music, whether or not they perceived it as anything to do with their conception of what the Church customarily offers. We are thankful that in our church building we have a venue where such things are possible; and we should be profoundly grateful to the Colchester Chamber Choir for giving us this opportunity to discover a fresh vision of the Eternal.

Michael Frith, Organist, St Peter ad Vincula