United Kingdom A Ceremony of Carols: Esther Beyer (harp), Alex Macqueen (narrator), Girls’ Choir and Chapel Choir of Pembroke College / Anna Lapwood (conductor). Kings Place, London, 9.12.2022 (CC)
Patricia Van Ness – The Nine Orders of the Archangels: Archangelus, Gabriel, Pareædicator
Adrian Peacock – Venite, Gaudete!
Errolyn Wallen – Peace on Earth
James MacMillan – O Radiant Dawn
Elizabeth Poston – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
Trad. / John Rutter – Personent Hodie
Ben Ponniah – Seeing the Star
Melissa Dunphy – O Oriens
Benjamin Britten – A Ceremony of Carols
John Rutter / Owain Park – The very best time of year
This was in many ways the perfect Christmas concert: spectacularly well programmed, with an apt sequence of readings perfectly delivered by actor Alex Macqueen, culminating in Britten’s beautiful Ceremony of Carols and performed in one seamless arc (without interval). Much of this programme may be familiar to those who purchased Signum Records’ A Pembroke Christmas, reviewed by my colleague John Quinn on MusicWeb International (review here). An addition at Kings Place though was spoken tracts from work by Joyce Carr Stedelbauer, Rowan Williams, Malcolm Guite, T. S. Eliot, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Margaret Deland. The actor Alex Macqueen delivered the texts perfectly, perhaps most memorably in T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi (although in fairness that may well be personal bias – it is one of my favourite poems).
While the Signum recording boasts the more reverberant acoustic of Pembroke College, the focus of Kings Place gave more bite to the restless lines of Adrian Peacock’s Venite, Gaudete!, which finds two strata, the almost breathless, initial ‘Venite’ and the slow-moving lower lines, beautifully shaped here, interchanging places during the course of the work. Its simple premise is mightily effective, not least for the rhythmic precision required. It was preceded by Patricia Van Ness’s Archangelus, Gabriel Preædicator, a single line influenced by the plainchant of Hildegard of Bingen.
After a reading of Rowan Williams’s Advent Calendar, Errolyn Wallen’s Peace on Earth cast a quasi-mystical spell, with the choirs joined by the harp. As conductor Anna Lapwood points out in her notes, it is a highly intimate piece, and as such operates as the perfect complement to James Macmillan’s O Radiant Dawn, While it is, as Lapwood, says, decidedly text-led, it sits on the knife-edge between modernity and timelessness that only a true master can achieve. This was hypnotically beautiful, the slight silences pregnant with meaning. The words ‘And the shadow of death’ seemed to take on particular meaning prior to the repetitions of ‘Amen’. Macmillan’s piece is surely up there with Britten’s as a work of genius,
Nice to have a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, too: Poston’s Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is the piece that opens Pembroke’s carol service every year, which probably accounts for the sense of familiarity and affection in this performance, its internal warmth complemented by the jubilation of John Rutter’s arrangement of Personent Hodie. Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi sat perfectly between this and Ben Ponniah’s lovely Seeing the Star, a piece that pits complexity against single lines to masterly effect.
The second setting of O Oriens (the first was the MacMillan) is by Melissa Dunphy, whose setting uses plainchant as a basis for a call to the light. Lapwood’s performance was perfectly paced, with just enough movement to suggest a spiritual background here.
The main event was Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, Op.28. Space meant the inward processing was from the sides of the concert hall, but this was a beautifully together ‘Hodie Christus natus est’. Harpist Esther Beyer, currently in the final year of her Masters degree at London’s Royal Academy of Music, was a sparkling presence in ‘Wolcum Yole!’; her solo ‘Interlude’ was riveting; there was a magic to her chords in ‘There is no rose’, too. Solos from the choir were beautifully taken, and the excitement of ‘This Little Babe’ was palpable, while the penultimate ‘Deo gracias’ had real gravitas.
A terrific, life-enhancing performance; as a first farewell, we were accorded Owain Park’s arrangement of John Rutter’s The very best time of year, as warming as brandy butter on a hot mince pie. One encore – what else but Have yourself a merry little Christmas … perfect.
Colin Clarke