Portsmouth Baroque Choir, All Saints' Church, Portsea, Sat, 21 MarchThe programme was not as baroque as the poster I noticed advertising the concert might have led me to think. In fact, it wasn't baroque at all but we needn't let that concern us.
Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901) is the first composer I've heard of from Liechtenstein, 'principally remembered for his organ works', but there's no need to go for his mainstream, populist stuff. The choir here gave his Stabat Mater and Requiem, to great effect. In two balanced halves, they began with some Tallis Lamentations, their warm sound giving loving dignity to the sorrowful texts of the stricken and dispossessed, imploring Jerusalem 'to return to the Lord Thy God'. Tallis is a big hero and these opening pieces were a highlight were it not also for the happy discovery of Rheinberger.
Each half also featured a French piece and an organ piece, also French as it happened, played by Oliver Hancock. Faure's Messe Basse somewhat misleadingly was for the sopranos and altos and was introspective and pleasant without being as memorable as his Requiem, but the tenors and basses perhaps had the worse part of the deal by having Durufle to make sense of. Durufle didn't get beyond opus 11 due to his perfectionism and reluctance to publish but the Messe 'Cum Jubilo', presumably carrying its author\'s intentions, wandered in search of meaning to no great effect. Except, of course, that might be its meaning.
As with the organ pieces, where such C19th and C20th repertoire is a closed book to me. Boellemann and Langlais weren't familiar names to me before and are not likely to become much more so now. As with the organ music of Vierne and the like, it only communicates to me a loss of direction, a desolate search in a barren wilderness compared to the confidence of the religious music of, well, Bach and Handel for a start.
But one can't be an admirer of everything one is served with and I'd be very suspicious, and soon become very tired, of anyone who was.
But these were only interludes between otherwise fine performances by the choir who were best with their full forces combined, the sopranos given the chance to reach some fine moments in the Rheinberger pieces, most notably, I thought, in the lines 'Quando corpus morietur' in which the composer best realized his belief that 'music is basically an outpouring of joy and even in pain knows no pessimism' and I'm glad to now know about his Stabat Mater, flowing lucidly among the other many settings of those words.
The Portsmouth Baroque Choir deserve a bigger audience than they had this evening but the one person I mentioned the concert to, who I thought might be interested, said that The Voice was on on Saturday night, wasn't I watching that. No, I'm not.
So what can you do apart from be grateful that such choirs get enough pleasure out of rehearsing and performing and are prepared to share it with any who want to listen.
