Torontonians can pick up a recorded keepsake of two Toronto concerts this week in a new album released by the Choir of King’s College in honour of Friday’s Benjamin Britten centenary.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
It’s been fascinating to listen to the King’s College recording both before and after hearing the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir perform the cantata Saint Nicolas at Tuesday’s dress rehearsal. My conclusion: Our Toronto forces, including the wonderful Toronto Children’s Chorus, are every bit as good as the British singers considered to be one of the world’s choral standards.
The CD — actually, there are two of them, one in standard format, the other with enhanced SACD audio that can only be played on a dedicated machine — from Cambridge is excellent, capturing the full dramatic sweep of Britten’s cantata that chronicles the life of the early Christian martyr.
Tenor Andrew Kennedy is excellent, but can’t quite reach the expressive sweep of Torontonian Colin Ainsworth, who has a larger, richer voice. The English choir’s sound, the product of men and boys only, is augmented by mixed voices on the recording.
Despite the largely Christian programme on this album, the material in the sweetly eccentric text of Rejoice in the Lamb and Hymn to St Cecilia, transcends particular faiths and creeds. Even St Nicolas librettist Eric Crozier wrote later how the role of Nicolas was written as a personal expression of “the anguish of the struggle for faith that all good men must experience in a world corrupt with sin, despair and lack of grace.”
Gosh, how appropriate for Toronto in November, 2013.
The impeccably sung and accompanied performances Hymn to St Cecilia and Rejoice in the Lamb — written in the 1940s, as is St Nicolas — are as good as they get. Their live-performance counterparts in Toronto come Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Church of the Holy Trinity (Eaton Centre) from conductor Matthew Larkin and his Larkin Singers.
Where St Nicolas is written for voices, piano, organ and orchestra, Hymn to St Cecilia is for a cappella voices, and Rejoice in the Lamb is for voices and organ. Britten’s musical idiom is similar, but the total effect is substantially different in each piece.
The CD booklet, which includes all the texts, is most interested in recalling the multiple relationships between Britten and notable scholars and musicians at Cambridge University. But there are some relevant anecdotes thrown in, including the story of how a New York customs official seized and destroyed Britten’s still-in-progress manuscript of the Hymn to St Cecilia as the composer was preparing to return to England in 1942 because the black dots on the page could be some sort of secret wartime spy code.
For more information on the King’s College album, click here.
For more information on Wednesday’s Toronto Mendelssohn Choir concert, click here.
For more information on Saturday’s Larkin Singers concert, click here.
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King’s College, Cambridge services available online
Last month, King’s College began recording every choral service in its magnificent chapel, and is making those recordings available for free streaming. Each service has been split up into sections so that, if you’re not interested in the spoken-word sections, it is possible to skip directly to hymns, canticles and anthems.
(It’s a great opportunity to discover that even one of the world’s best chapel choirs has trouble singing perfectly synchronized Anglican chant.)
You’ll find everything here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
