Reviews

Autumn Contrasts – Colouful Music and Contrasting Moods (Taunton School Chapel, 10 October 2010)

Bravo to The Phoenix Singers for offering an interesting and varied programme.

The first half comprised widely admired pieces from the sacred classical repertoire: Mozart’s Laudate Dominum and his motets Ave Verum Corpus and Exsultate jubilate, with Haydn’s Missa Brevis Sancti Johannes de Deo. Josie Carpenter was the glorious soprano soloist in these works and most ably accompanied by David Bridges (organ) and Dominic Brown (piano). Overall The Phoenix Singers produced a good sense of ensemble, a well-blended sound and whose singers were attentive to direction.

After the interval a real contrast of musical style and mood starting with three songs by Benjamin Britten. The Succession of the Four Sweet Months, gave us confident singing and clarity of text. The melancholy The Evening Primrose held some successful dynamic contrast and discords were mainly well tuned. The Ballad of Green Broom was chiefly concerned with rhythmic play underpinning a tricky melody. This song finished with a real flourish, and had the accompaniment been sung a little more quasi pizzicato would have been a real ‘wow’.

Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves set the emotional theme of nostalgia for the remainder of the programme. The choir relaxed into this song both visibly and audibly, with shoulders swaying into the sweeping phrases.

Josie Walledge, a singer with an increasing regional reputation, returned with a group of songs that illustrated how her purity of sound and flawless intonation is well suited to the songs of English composers. Frances Webb was her very able and sympathetic accompanist.

In the final item, Morten Lauridsen’s, Sure on this Shining Night, a song that the choir clearly enjoyed, we heard modesty, humility, certainty and eventually witnessed an overt emotional charge which held the choir and director well beyond the final cadence. Powerful stuff. Bravo? Bravissimo!

Review contributed by Victoria Osborne