IN DULCI JUBILO

The Sarum Consort

St Martin’s Church

A MIX of well-known and unfamiliar, old and modern, secular and sacred, ballad and contemplative pieces displayed to the full The Sarum Consort’s ability to perform a variety of unaccompanied music.

It is never easy to present the familiar in a new way, but the simple delivery to tell a story in The Coventry Carol succeeded.

Similarly the beautiful gem Lutebook Lullaby was just as skilful in creating an intimate atmosphere, as were most of these early carol texts especially when words rather than volume delivered their message, such as Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin and John Joubert’s arrangement of There is no Rose of Such Virtue.

Tallis’s Videte Miraculum had a wonderfully enveloping sound interspersed with rather unexpected – and anything but plain – plainsong. However the blend was not entirely successful: I could identify some individual voices and I wished for a more cohesive group at times.

The same was true in Orlando de Lassus’s Magnificat Septimi Toni, where the contrast was more to do with the interplay between plainsong and choir than dynamic range.

For me the highlight of the concert was Totus Tuus by Henryk Górecki. The blunt, bold start soon settled into the quiet repetitive, soothing, almost caressing Mater mundi salvatoris that brought out the finest in this choir.

The blend, the diction, the coherence and overall sound was everything I suspected was possible and of which I wanted to hear far more. It was sensitive, exciting and powerful but it did not browbeat me into listening.

In contrast Twelfth Night by Samuel Barber needed full force to convey its occasional terror, and this is when individual voices were able to come into their own, each contributing to the overall unsettling and shifting harmonies.

The final Magnificat quinti toni by Hieronymous Praetorius incorporated parts of both In dulci jubilo and Joseph, lieber Joseph mein – the carols that opened each half – in a deft piece of programme planning. It drew together the strands that ran through the concert.

As always, The Sarum Consort gave a superb performance of wonderful music, but they could be even more exciting with more pianissimo singing. I look forward to it.

Alison Archer