Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 19 April 2008

Gordon Tocher

TWICE A YEAR, friends and supporters of Inverness Choral Society pack into Eden Court’s Empire Theatre to enjoy the rewards of all the hard work that the members have put in on Monday evenings over the previous few months. Their programmes tend to alternate between major works and mixed performances of shorter works. Last Saturday their audience enjoyed the mixed menu.

Myths galore surround Mozart’s last composition, his Requiem Mass in D minor K626, many of them exacerbated by Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus, which does as much for the story of Mozart as Braveheart did for William Wallace. Look behind the Hollywood legend and we are left with a glorious piece of music that was conceived by Mozart and finished off after his death by his pupil Franz Süssmayr.

And if it seemed odd at first for such a distinctive work to open the concert, leaving three comparative unknowns for the second half, then by the end of the evening there was no doubt that it had made the ideal and impressive overture.

The Requiem is a complex work and it makes many demands on the members of the choir, for they carry the lion’s share of the singing. But Gordon Tocher had rehearsed his forces thoroughly and they had the measure of all the variations that Mozart and Süssmayr threw at them. Delivery was crisp and balanced; the mood was suitably sombre but triumphant; the male voices held their own against the cohorts of sopranos and altos that surrounded them. There are occasions a-plenty, such as in the ‘Dies Irae’, when power and impact are required. Power and impact is exactly what we got.

By tradition the Society’s Honorary Patron, Patricia MacMahon, has been instrumental in helping find the talented young professional singers who fill the solo roles. In recent years Pat has been adding to her workload as the doyenne of singing teachers by taking on the role of leader with Samling, the Hexham-based charity under the patronage of Sir Thomas Allen which aims to inspire musical excellence in young people.

It can be no coincidence that two of Saturday’s soloists, the bass and the soprano, were Samling Scholars. Of the other two, the tenor David Webb had the longest journey to get to Inverness, having come from Truro via the Royal College of Music. This was his Scottish debut, and it will not be long before he is asked to return. The tenor role in the Requiem is not large, but it is enough to convince that David’s easy voice has a definite future.

There was comparatively little travel for the contralto Melissa Lunn, who stood in at short notice for the indisposed Alexandra Cassidy and gave a confident and assured performance. Melissa was a prize winner in a recent Highland Young Singer of the Year Competition. I am sure that, from his seat in the audience, the competition’s organiser, Colin Lewis, was proud of the achievements of his young protégée.

The bass baritone, John Mackenzie, has a most impressive voice, deep and mellow that showed at its best with the lower brass in the ‘Tuba Mirum’. A graduate at RSAMD in Glasgow, John’s career has taken him abroad to Glyndebourne and beyond as well as fulfilling regular engagements with both Scottish Opera and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Of the four soloists, the soprano has the largest role and the one that is the signature of the whole work as she is featured in both the opening ‘Requiem Aeternam’ and the closing ‘Lux Aeterna’. In Claire Surman the Society presented a singer with elegance and presence, with a generous vibrato and a warm pure delivery.

Like her bass baritone colleague, Claire has benefited from her Samling scholarship which has also lead to her working for the past few seasons, as well as this coming summer, at Glyndebourne, that hothouse in the rolling Sussex countryside where young operatic talent is nurtured by famous directors and conductors alongside established names, and where, thirty or so years ago it was possible to come across a young staff repetiteur called Simon Rattle.

Even if the headline act of the concert was in the first half, the interest continued after the interval with three shorter, and contrasting works. First up was the Te Deum in C major by Michael Haydn, a religious piece purely for choir and orchestra. The younger Haydn was regarded as one of the great composers of church music, and as such worked exclusively with people for whom music was a full-time occupation, allowing him to present them with difficulties that could only be met in a church setting. Under Gordon Tocher, Inverness Choral Society and their Sinfonia handled the piece with skill and assurance.

Then it was time to give the members of the orchestra a short rest before the explosive finale. From somewhere, Gordon had found an absolute little gem of a work by Gioachino Rossini called O Salutaris Hostia which the Society sang a capella. It was a total delight and a surprise to see it in the programme.

Rossini was best known for his operas, but he did write some religious music as well. This lovely motet was written well into his retirement, twenty-eight years after his last opera and fifteen years after his glorious Stabat Mater. But he had not lost his touch, and the Society did it full justice.

It is thirty years since I heard a live performance of Beethoven’s magnificent Choral Fantasia, by John Lill with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus under Kurt Sanderling, and it immediately became one of my favourite pieces of Beethoven. Since then I have had to make do with a selection of recordings, so it was maybe with a less than critical ear that I listened to the final contribution to Saturday’s concert.

But at the end I do not need to be generous when I say I was euphoric. The piano soloist was Inverness girl, Fiona Macleod, who for the most part is this city’s loss and Glasgow’s gain, as that is where she is now based. For much of the Fantasia it could just as well be part of a piano concerto, and a difficult one at that with a plethora of runs and trills that seem designed to trip up the soloist.

But Fiona had planned her way across the challenge like a funambulist, ably and sensitively assisted by Gordon Tocher and the Inverness Choral Sinfonia to emerge safely into the company of the four vocal soloists and the members of the choir. A triumphant finale that deserved the cheers and applause it received.

Next up for Inverness Choral Society is that perennial favourite, Handel’s Messiah, which will be performed on Saturday 22 November 2008 in the Empire Theatre.

© James Munro, 2008

Links

• Inverness Choral Society
• Eden Court Theatre