Spa Pavilion, Strathpeffer, 4 February 2012

IN LIFE so many things come and go, but in nearly every community people come together to sing, and local choral societies are a fixture across the length and breadth of the land.

INDIVIDUALLY they may wax and wane depending on circumstances and the drive of the conductor, and nearly without exception the ladies outnumber the gentlemen by about three to one. At present Dingwall and District Choral Society are on the crest of a wave with a vibrant and active committee, and the charismatic John Thomson at the helm.

Dingwall Choral and musicians in a previous concert (photo courtesy Lee Bruce & Dingwall Choral)

Despite it being cold and wet outside, there was a good sized audience and plenty of warmth inside Strathpeffer’s Spa Pavilion for this season’s winter concert. The main draw was the performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, but for the first half John Thomson had coached his charges in a collection of eight songs, of which three were arrangements by John Gardner of songs by Rabbie Burns –  ‘Prayer under the pressure of violent anguish’, ‘Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary?’ and ‘O whistle an’ I’ll come to you’.

The main part of the first half was taken up by Ken Johnston’s set of five songs about The Forty-Five that he prepared for the National Youth Choir of Scotland. Under the heading ‘”I Landed With Seven Men”, all five are well known, and four of them brought out the best of the choir with precise ensemble and good diction, especially the new setting of Johnnie Cope. The fifth of the set, ‘Skye Boat Song’, was delivered by the guest soprano, Brianna Robertson, with great sensitivity and feeling. Introductions to each song were read by the guest baritone, Douglas Nairne, who is becoming familiar to the Pavilion audience from past (and future) visits by Fife-based Opera Bohemia.

Carmina Burana is a reworking of about one-tenth of a catalogue of early medieval songs that were discovered at a Bavarian monstery near the Passion Play town of Oberammergau in 1803. Composed by the goliards, itinerant students and lapsed clerics, a sort of early hippie with some skinhead mixed in, they were written in low Latin, old German and medieval French. Most of the texts – variously bawdy, sensuous, comic or mock-tragic, but invariably lewd and libidinous – poke fun at both the government and the church. Carl Orff conceived his work as a staged spectacle or “scenic cantata” to be danced as well as sung and played, calling on huge resources of timpani, brass and percussion as well as strings and two pianos.

Sadly, these days we very seldom get the chance to see what is to all intents and purposes a staged orgy with music, and it would be unfair to expect the forty or so singers of Dingwall Choral and the two pianos of Aileen Fraser and Mairi MacKenzie to present such a display. They all performed with gusto and the pianists bravely tried to cover up the lack of the rest of an orchestra. The singing was tight and controlled, but there was no sense conveyed of the meaning of what was being sung.

Douglas Nairne and Brianna Robertson were in good voice, but never would one have suspected what was meant to be going on in their minds as they sang about the times ahead. In a way, this Carmina Burana was like an un-staged concert version of an opera. The basics were there but the context was lacking. Maybe another day and another place ….

© James Munro, 2012

Links

• Dingwall Choral