IN Jersey we are spoilt for creative and cultural activities on a Saturday night, but those who chose to attend the annual Jersey Festival Choir concert at the St Helier Methodist Centre last Saturday 28th April would have been in for a real musical delight and surprise!
Dvorak is well known for his New World Symphony, but those who attended this performance of his Mass in D Major would have been filled with a ‘New World’ of choral and musical enjoyment.
With the Jersey Festival Choir, conducted by the exceptionally dynamic composer and guest conductor Jonathan Willcocks and accompanied by the St Cecilia Orchestra, the evening was varied, invigorating and musically very enjoyable.
With an hors d’oeuvres of Mozart to whet our appetites, we revelled in the ever-familiar, but always delighting, Overture to the Magic Flute. The middle course consisted of arias from two of four exceptionally talented young musicians; one of whom, the soprano Josephine Goddard, had been awarded second prize in the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier competition in London the previous night. She fully justified her early flight across the Channel!
They set the scene for a really uplifting and challenging choral work composed by the conductor, appropriately called In Praise of Singing! This work, commissioned in 2014 for the Really Big Chorus, comprises three settings of poems by Walt Whitman and Longfellow and selected psalms. The harmonies are certainly challenging for the choir and very unfamiliar to the audience, but ranging from gently soothing to ferociously celebratory. Especially delicious were some haunting oboe and cello solos, with the solo singers weaving enticingly in and out of the chorus. The careful preparation by William Millow, the resident conductor of the choir, had enabled its members to come to a growing understanding and enjoyment of a difficult piece. The main course of the evening was the Dvorak, delivered with passion and persuasion under the baton of Jonathan Willcocks. It was probably unknown to many of the audience but its combination of the familiar Latin text of the Mass, and blasts of romantic soul-stirring music at its most satisfying, made it a sure success. The sopranos soared, the contraltos caressed, the tenors touched the height of their range with ease and the basses were a solid supportive presence when needed. What a joy to hear such globally brilliant music in our tiny Island.
