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Article from Henley
Standard, November 2004
MEMORABLE EVENING
There’s a good feel
about taking a pew along with a throng of fellow villagers in your local
church on a crisp, starlit autumn evening to have your heartstrings tugged
by fine music.
In a pleasantly cosy St Thomas’s Church, Goring Chamber Choir under
Frances Brewitt-Taylor, together with trumpeter Andy Smets, pianist Janet
Pound and organist Michael Howell, treated us to a musical celebration of
the Feast of All Saints.
Starting off with Victoria’s mass O quam gloriosum, the choir set an
appropriately uplifting tone for the evening. The selection of pieces that
followed was interesting: celebration of the saints, yes, but also more
than a nod towards the themes of remembrance and the disquiet of the
modern world.
The flowing lines of Maurice Greene’s exquisite setting of the sombre text
Lord, let me know mine end were well shaped by the choir, and the sopranos
Suzanne Smith and Susan Terry were a real delight in the duet section. In
Aaron Copland’s Quiet City, Janet Pound’s piano and Andy Smets’ trumpet
were unnervingly evocative of post-9/11 angst.
Three Canadian composers, Imant Raminsh, Rupert Lang and Eleanor Daley,
contributed more on the theme of remembrance, and here the choir produced
some magical pianissimo singing. Frances and her singers are both brave
and justified in tackling this difficult repertoire, which, on this
hearing, I think is more worthwhile than some of the contemporary choral
music from the US I have heard.
The singers showed off their big sound in the rich and majestic harmonies
of Mendelssohn’s psalm setting Richte mich, Gott, and were finally allowed
to let rip — supported by the nimble fingers and feet of organist Michael
Howell — in Basil Harwood’s boisterous O how glorious is the kingdom.
We are fortunate in Goring to have such splendid musicians.
Allan Rostron
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