The Brixi Singers at the Rochdale Music Society Concert

The Brixi Singers

The Brixi Singers filled the air with a rich assortment of choral sounds to make the second
of Rochdale Music Society’s two autumn special concerts given in Bamford Chapel a very
satisfying experience for their appreciative audience.

From the intricately woven textures of the Baroque composer Antonio Lotti’s 'Crucifixus', with which the concert began, to the loose-knit polyphony of John Rutter’s Blessing, with which it ended, the singers showed how they were at home in many varied genres of part-singing.

There were moments when a little more securely placed and rounded bass sounds would have helped to maintain the balance and sustain the impetus of one or two of the earlier items, particularly the Bogoroditsye Dyevo from Rachmaninov’s Vespers. But on the whole the vocal ensemble was nicely balanced and extremely well disciplined.

Among the works in the first half of the programme were two examples of the kind of sugary church music much in vogue these days: the O magnum mysterium of the Amercian composer, Morton Laurendsen (b. 1944), and the O salutaris hostia of the Latvian, Eriks Esenwalds (b. 1977). There were also, to end the half. the Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell. These, performed with dramatic effect, illustrated how far ahead of his time Purcell was in the use of bold, acid harmonic progression. Intermingled with these were idiosyncratic part-songs by Pearsall and Elgar, choice examples of the kind of music rightly beloved by our Choral Societies.

There was also a very short, but by no means insignificant, setting of the words 'They shall not grow old...' from Laurence Binyon’s 'For the fallen' by Rory Wainright Johnston, the
choir’s Conductor. This is well worth being added to the repertory of any group of singers who are up to tackling its striking tonal shifts, which are of a sort to be encountered increasingly in contemporary choral pieces.

After what had been a sequence of music intended to suit the evening before Remembrance
Sunday, the second half of the concert was largely devoted to music of a more light-hearted
nature, though not without the poignancy of some quite exciting and (and difficult) settings of Negro Spirituals, one of which involved audience participation (well executed).

A somewhat frantic rendition of Shearing and Forster’s 'Lullaby of birdland' was followed by the more expansive 'You raise me up' by Brendan Graham and Rolf Lovland, and Zaret and North’s 'Unchained melody'.

After the spirituals the concert was rounded off with two novelty settings of the nursery rhymes, 'Old Mother Hubbard' and 'Sing a song of sixpence' - both guaranteed to send any musically articulate audience home happy.

Rochdale Music Society concerts: 

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/events/search?searchtype=text&searchvalue=Rochdale+Music+Society