Poise and professionalism were aplenty in this concert of late 19th German music by the Birmingham Bach Choir.
At its centre was Josef Rheinberger’s Mass for Double Choir. Rich with antiphonal scoring, imaginative word painting and inventive harmonies, these features were brought to life well by conductor, Paul Spicer, and the work’s chameleonlike shifts in register and dynamic nimbly negotiated by the performers.
Despite no shortage of awkward passages, intonation and balance were consistently excellent in this unaccompanied work and these impressive qualities continued throughout the evening.
The choir’s muscular and blooming sound was well suited to Brahms’s Three motets and Geistliches Lied which opened the concert. More ruthless diction would not have gone amiss in the Oratory’s generous acoustic, but Brahms’s expansive lines were nursed with great care and sensitivity.
An extended Kyrie replaces the Gloria and Credo in Brahms’s unusual Missa Canonica and more intensity here would have helped the section from feeling a tad repetitive.
Martyn Rawles gave the evening a satisfying completeness at the organ with Brahms’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor and Reger’s Toccata and Fugue, the fortissimos of the latter ensuring it will be sometime until the venue need worry about cobwebs.
