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‘Harmony ensures success
excelsin Of choirs’ cathedral project
omety
magical
Messiah
THERE was one ingredient sadly missing from a
performance of Handel’s
Messiah
in
Guildford
Cathedral on Saturday — a
top label’s professional
recording equipment.
For of all the Messiahs
I have heard in recent
years, this performance by
Guildford Choral Society,
with the period instruments
of the Hanover Band and
an outstanding line-up of
soloists, was the one I
would like to have on CD,
to listen to again and
again.
It stood out because it
was satisfying all-round —
soloists, chorus, orchestra,’
ELEGANT tiers of burnished steel and pale wood
rose in an airy tower in the
chancel
of
Guildford
Cathedral on Saturday.
When
Guildford
Choral
Society singers filed in and up, to
take their position for the
evening
performance
of
the
Messiah, they were celebrating
the culmination of a 15-month,
£45,000 project involving the
close co-operation of four Surrey:
choirs, the Foundation for Sport
and the Arts and the cathedral
administration.
;
The
new
choir
staging,
designed by Stage Systems of
Loughborough to specifications
suggested by engineer Stephen
Jepson
of
the
Guxldford
Philharmonic
Choir, was
instant success on Saturday.
an
Light, easily erected, safe and
aesthetically pleasing, the staging
importantly allows the choir to
see and sing out clearly. Visibility
and acoustics are enormously
enhanced in comparison with the
systems used in the past, and the
new system has the added advantage of flexibility. The choirs are
delighted.
Choral groups that regularly
use the cathedral for their concerts had been under increasing
pressure from the administration
to sort out acceptable staging
because the older systems are
heavy and could cause potential
damage'to the fabric of the building.
7C?radually, individual choirs
began lookmg around for a
replacement, but the cost was
prohibitive. Mr Jepson started
designing his own ideas, and
Carole Leighton from Guildford
Choral Society was impressed.
On the strength of this, she
asked the cathedral to invite all
the choirs in the area to a meeting to discuss a joint venture. Six
choirs turned up, and four stayed with it: The GCS, the Guildford
Philharmonic, Surrey Festival
Choir and the Epworth Choir, all
completely different organisations.
They formed themselves into
the Association of Surrey Choirs,
pledged £2,500 each and the
cathedral agreed to store and
administer the new staging.
“That was the most wonderful
offer,” said Mrs Leighton.
tone, diction, dynamics, it
was absolutely all there,
beautifully done under the
direction of justifiably
demanding
conductor
Hilary Davan Wetton.
The choir was on top
form, especially perky as it
was using for the first time
the new system of hightech staging bought for the
cathedral with funding
from the Foundation for
Sport and the Arts.
Diction was excellent.
From the West End gallery
every word was clear. And
the entries were so good,
sure and even toned.
The singers coped with
tricky fugues and exhibited
impeccable
discipline,
enabling them to produce a
wide dynamic range.
The choice of soloist
was brilliant in that all four
voices were of a Kind;
warm, expressive and sensitive to the enormous
drama in Handel’s writing.
Most exciting to hear
was
counter
tenor
Michael
Chance,
who
completed the line-up of
Lynne Dawson (soprano),
Jamie MacDougall (tenor)
and
Michael
George
(bass-baritone).
The Hanover Band was
dainty and clean toned,
with a nicely refined trumpet tone. The period instruments sounded good in the
cathedral, and led by
Graham Cracknell the
band played crisply and
accompanied with sensntlv-
ity.
The performance may
have disappeared into the
ether, but it gave a powerful injection of proper
Christmas spirit to a very
large number of people.
Jane Garrett
_)u‘ RREY
THE ADVERTISER, DECEMBER 13, 1996
But the cost of the staging was
so steep that even spread across
four choirs, the project was totally dependent on funding from the
Foundation for Sport and the
Arts. This was emphasised when
a trial run with a cheaper system
was a failure and the choirs
decided to opt for a top of the
range model.
It wasn’t until September 1996
that
the
foundation
finally
announced the money was ready,
and after that, things moved
swiftly. The system was up and
running for its trial concert on
Saturday ‘and after being thoroughly tested by the four contributing choirs, will be available
to other choral societies to hire.
Jane Garrett