Review: Kidderminster Choral Society, at Kidderminster Town Hall
Give them their due – Geoffrey Weaver and Kidderminster Choral Society are always ready for a challenge.
Earlier this year they acquitted themselves well in Tippett and Kodaly, and this time they took on the even more daunting prospect of Bernstein, Gershwin and Duke Ellington.
As a foray into jazz it was an interesting looking programme, and provided a generous instrumental platform for the phenomenally talented five-piece Big Buzzard Buzztet (yes, really) and soprano Helena Raeburn, who gave a superbly androgynous rendition of Psalm 23 in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms before transmogrifying into a fully-fledged jazz vocalist for the later items.
And, despite the obvious appeal of Rob Willis’s Gershwin’s Got Rhythm 30-minute medley in the second half, it was Bernstein’s shorter opener – performed here in its chamber version – that offered the greater musical rewards, with Weaver’s precise, encouraging direction resolutely bringing out the best from his well-balanced 100-strong chorus.
Freed from the terrors of Bernstein’s Hebrew text, which often dulled the singers’ attack and kept eyes glued to the score, one was hoping for a display of real pizzazz in Weaver’s selection of pieces from Ellington’s Sacred Concerts. But it was not to be.
Whatever his greatness as a jazz performer and composer (the Buzztets gave a terrific rendition of ‘Cotton Tail’ as a self-indulgent, though entirely superfluous example) Duke Ellington had no idea of how to write choral music.
For the audience it offered a lot of toe-tapping stuff, but for the choir, with feet firmly secured, it was an unrewardingly clunky thing to sing.
At an hour’s duration – the interminable Freedom section should definitely have been filleted – it proved a long-winded listening experience.
