The Irish Times Review Tue, Oct 06, 2009
Hilliard Ensemble St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dundalk
There’s a conventional wisdom that the repertoire of the mainstream classical concert has become too narrow. And it’s certainly the case that the body of work from Bach to the late romantics is as hugely popular with audiences as it is with leading performers and orchestras.
There are, of course, other ways of approaching programme planning than those commonly espoused by symphony orchestras and virtuosos. Take the all-male vocal quartet, the Hilliard Ensemble, who gave the second of Louth Contemporary Music Society’s Temenos 2009 concerts at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dundalk, last Thursday.
Rather than engage with the widely familiar, the Hilliards concentrated instead on the new and the very old, on work by living composers and on music that’s at the far end of the early music spectrum. Thursday’s programme, titled Arkhangelos , included works by James MacMillan, Jonathan Wild, Ivan Moody, Arvo Pärt and Alexander Raskatov. There were arrangements of Armenian religious chants by Komitas Vardapet, a chant from an 11th-or 12th-century Italian manuscript, a 15th-century lauda, and one of the two surviving pieces by the 16th-century composer John Sheryngham.
The Hilliard’s distinctive sound is governed both by the unusual line-up (countertenor, two tenors and baritone) as well as by a style that favours individuality of tone rather than fineness of blend. The pressured countertenor tone of David James is often the dominant colouring, almost as if he’s the soloist with a compliant backing group.
The programme wasn’t just a juxtaposition of new and old, but also of East and West, with Arkhangelos by the English composer Ivan Moody providing a clear link. Moody, who lives in Portugal, was ordained a priest in the Orthodox Church in 2007, and his teachers included the most famous of Orthodox-influenced English musicians, John Tavener. In the event, the performances didn’t quite live up to the tantalising prospects that were offered by such a richly layered programme.
The considerable technical demands of James MacMillan’s . . . here in hiding . . . and Alexander Raskatov’s Praise , which framed the evening, were not fully met, although the saturated climaxes of the Raskatov were hugely impressive.
It was in fact the simplest music which sounded best, not least because of moments of suspect intonation which marred the more overtly demanding works. Komitas’s sharakans were unfailingly affecting, as were the refrains of Sheryngham’s Ah, gentle Jesu , and the insistently repeated invocations of Pärt’s Most Holy Mother of God . MICHAEL DERVAN
© 2009 The Irish Times
