CityLife

William Byrd Singers: Bach

William Byrd Singers
Royal Northern College of Music
February 28, 2010

Founded nearly 40 years ago, the William Byrd Singers have been the pre-eminent small amateur choir in the north west for probably most of that time. And until last year they had one director, Stephen Wilkinson. 

But Sunday’s concert was a milestone for them – the first under his successor, Keith Orrell. It was also a bold departure. Performing Bach’s B Minor Mass is a huge challenge – especially with a singing strength of 30 and in ‘authentic’ style (baroque pitch, and a specialist orchestra in The Eighteenth Century Sinfonia). It’s the kind of thing usually attempted only by a few professional choral groups.

That it was surmounted with such a high degree of success is a signal both of Orrell’s ability and the ambition of things to come.

The quartet of top-quality soloists had a lot to do with the impact of this performance. Julia Doyle and Clare Wilkinson sang like nightingales in their Christe Eleison duet, and the latter proved the versatility of her range and tone in the very different demands of the Agnus Dei, as well as her earlier numbers.

Nicholas Mulroy made the Benedictus into a good deed in a naughty world, and Matthew Brook’s Et In Spiritum Sanctum, in the Credo, remains in memory as rich and alive.

There were many delights in the instrumental playing and choral singing (not least the pronunciation, avoiding the Italianate ‘choral Latin’ adopted in some English circles).

On some occasions the revealing acoustic of the RNCM concert hall and the nature of the baroque-style instruments gave the singers problems in pitch precision, but more impressive was the way in which they overcame them.

Six-part and eight-part movements are also a severe test with relatively small numbers in such conditions (at times heads earnestly buried in books), but the cumulative power of both the Pleni sunt coeli and Osanna was magnificent.

Orrell’s directoral gift is for fleetness of foot and rhythmic life, which produced bright textures in Et in terra pax, a mobile Qui tollis, delightful articulation in Cum Sancto Spiritu and an energetic and finely shaped Et resurrexit in the creed.

If the mystery of Et incarnatus est was a little lost (and there were a couple of shaky moments in ensemble elsewhere), all was thoroughly redeemed in the suitably grand and powerfully sustained Dona nobis pacem.

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