The Oratorian Fathers might bring all kinds of casuistry into play to justify their absurd and uncharitable decision, but the fact remains that one of Birmingham’s most splendid venues is moving towards a total ban on public performance.
Saturday’s concert was the last that Birmingham Bach Choir will ever give in the Oratory’s searching acoustic in which they have become so adept, and under Paul Spicer they delivered a programme of baroque and contemporary music which was both ear-opening and depressingly revealing.
Some contemporary composers tackling religious texts seem to feel the need to resort to self-indulgent mannerisms, such as in flavour-of-the month Eric Whitacre’s When David Heard. Certainly there were ear-catching vocal sonorities here (shimmering textures, sepulchral basses), but also so much to irritate, verbal repetitions and false endings.
But James MacMillan brings a genuinely engaged response to his religious settings, two of which here (Lux Aeterna and The Song of the Lamb) found Spicer’s singers sometimes suffering at the extent of MacMillan’s vocal demands but always committed to deliver the power of his communication.
And Kenneth Leighton’s “Let all the World in every Corner Sing” proved a fine example of a functional church anthem.
Perhaps it was insensitive to precede these offerings with a genuine masterpiece of choral religious setting, Bach’s Lobet den Herrn, its lines lively and well-blended here. And Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater evinced well-balanced textures and shapely phrasing, but for all the felicities of its performance, the impression remained that this is an inconsequential work that one would never cross the road to hear again.
Martyn Rawles was the resourceful organist, and contributed two solos (both impressively played), one by Bach, and one, interminable, by Leighton. For all their musical excellence, is this really the kind of fodder an audience at a choral concert is expecting to be fed?
