Reviews

Brahms: A German Requiem

St Mary’s Church, Amersham

3rd Dec 2011

BRAHMS (pre-beard) IN AMERSHAM

We have death to thank for one of the most popular works in the choral repertoire. The young Johannes Brahms was still far from the bearded and venerable figure shown in those familiar later photos when his great mentor, Robert Schumann, died in an asylum in 1856. Brahms (then aged 23) was still feeling his way in composition, and had part-written a symphony. Then in 1865 his own mother died, and the idea of a work as it were ‘in memoriam’ gelled: the slow movement of the by now abandoned early symphony assumed a new guise with five other sections in what was to become Brahms’s ‘Requiem in German’. With the addition of a seventh movement incorporating a soprano solo, this torso was completed to form ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’, as performed earlier in December in St Mary’s Church, Old Amersham, by Amersham & Chesham Bois Choral Society, Charles Rice (bass-baritone), Ruth Jenkins (soprano) and the Saint Cecilia Orchestra under the baton of conductor Ian Hooker.

Beethoven – along with Palestrina and Schubert – was Brahms’s god, so it was appropriate that the concert began with Beethoven’s ‘Egmont’ overture, which received a clear-cut and expressive performance from the young orchestra under Ian Hooker’s guidance. The horns were quite thrilling in their grim staccato chords, and the change to the faster tempo for the optimistic coda was finely judged and executed.

The Requiem itself began at a no-nonsense brisk pace, rather than the “quite slow” indicated by the composer, but with expressive strings and choir well-balanced and full-toned. There is much for an amateur choir to master in the second and sixth sections particularly: not only are there many words – and the Choral Society was very laudably singing in the intended German – but there are lengthy and quite taxing fugues, with several changes of style and tempo to accommodate. These were mostly successfully negotiated, if not always with total clarity or equal weight in each part. Any such shortcomings are hardly the fault of the singers, however; rather they are due to the inevitable resonance within a small church venue favouring a necessarily large orchestra, to over-enthusiastic contributions from still young brass players, and to the Choral Society’s evident need for fresh recruits to tenor and – most noticeably – soprano ranks.

Ian Hooker’s intentions as to musical expression were very evident, and drew immediate response from all performers; if the orchestra did better in this regard than the choir, this is only to be expected from would-be professionals earning their daily bread by music. The choir were best equipped to respond fully in the louder passages, though passages for sopranos and altos in close harmony (in the last two movements) came through to wonderfully spine-tingling effect, due, one suspects, to Brahms’s skill in such writing having developed early whilst he was musical director of the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir he founded. (The ladies idolised him and several made the journey to sing in the first near-complete performance of the work in Bremen in 1868.)

Soloists are involved in three of the Requiem’s sections. Our bass-baritone on this occasion was Charles Rice, currently studying at the National Opera Studio. He gave magnificent voice to Mankind’s dread at coming face to face with our own mortality, and transmitted this emotional impact to both choir and audience. The voice is also evenly-produced across all registers. Some may consider his approach a mite too ‘operatic’ for this particular work, but with so fine an instrument at his command we feel we shall certainly hear more of this young man and look forward to doing so.

Our soprano. Ruth Jenkins, is also making her mark on the operatic stage. In the Requiem the soprano must sit through four movements before uttering a sound – trial enough! Perhaps Ruth overcompensated on this occasion, but the gentleness and, indeed, ‘motherliness’ implied by her text escaped her. She is apparently making something of a speciality of the Queen of the Night’s role (Magic Flute): her whole presence makes this extremely credible. She has however to assume a ‘motherly’ role again with the Choral Society next May, when she joins them for Tippett’s Child of Our Time.

Between movements the choir were allowed to sit briefly but, unusually, not for the duration of the soprano’s solo where they have only a quiet accompanying role. Perhaps the style of the solo singing coupled with this lent the chorus too high a profile for this tender piece. Whilst Brahms’s vocal lines are mostly a great joy to sing, and in all parts, they do require stamina. The valiant few tenors did well in contrapuntal passages if the accompaniment was modest; there is ‘light and shade’ in the fugues, and we heard the tenors well in the sixth section. Similarly, in the final movement they managed better than their soprano colleagues in the repeat of the long opening phrase The basses largely had no such troubles and made a fine rumble – but there were more than twice as many of them as tenors! In loud passages nevertheless the trombones won every time.

The Choral Society undoubtedly needs an influx of sopranos. The present members are not sufficiently numerous to overcome those moments when some relax too much and their pitch drops – with fewer singers it means more effort all the time from everybody, which is hard. There are many more singing alto – could some volunteer to cross over when the part does not lie too high? Again, it was in the louder passages with the higher notes where sopranos were conscious of the effort that had to be made that they were most successful. With one unfortunate lapse (indecision muddling the start of the ‘Herr Du bist würdig’ fugue – and Brahms sets it up for his singers so perfectly, too!) the altos made the most of their wonderfully ‘grateful’ part, with more consistent sense of pitch and tone than their sisters.

Full-scale choral music accompanied by full orchestra is not heard in our locality nowadays as often as it used to be. We should all therefore be grateful to Ian Hooker and the stalwarts of Amersham & Chesham Bois Choral Society who refuse to ‘downsize’ and continue to give us this pleasure, which – no matter what the inadequacies and problems associated with such an enterprise may be – nevertheless sends us away inspired, as much by the determination and dedication of the performers as by the felicities of the music.

ANN FLOOD
DECEMBER 2011
 

 

 

Amersham and Chesham Bois Choral Society