Music for Holy Week - Cambridge Voices
Ian de Massini and Cambridge Voices unfailingly surprise, sometimes startle and always satisfy with their musical offerings. Nothing is ever quite the same again - as those who attended the Good Friday concert discovered.
It began with yet another magical rendering of Allegri's Miserere mei, Deus; before the main item in the first half - Sir John Stainer's Crucifixion. The programme notes regretted that "Cambridge Voices had somehow managed to overlook this Victorian masterpiece!" (my emphasis). Hold on Ian, I thought, this isn't your usual cup of tea. I subsequently learned that Stainer had once confessed to that great musicologist E.H.Fellowes that he thought his own works were "rubbish" and after the performance who could disagree with the composer. Ian had helped the work. He had abridged it; also because Stainer had avoided the female solo voice, Ian, with such lovely lady singers, needed to offer a number of parts to them. It was a wonderful performance by the Choir, but the work was not very good. The accompaniments especially left one wondering - was it Victorian music hail, silent film music, a bit of light operetta with a touch of Gilbert and Sullivan? Whatever it was I am sure it left a lot of people bemused and thinking - which is no bad thing.
The second half in St. Cyriac's was traditional Cambridge Voices and included in the same programme works by Sir John Tavener (b. 1944) and John Taverner (c. 1490-1545). Some like me have often mixed them up, but during the concert all became clear and the Tavener piece influenced by the Orthodox liturgy was especially moving. After works by the two Tave(r)ners and by Josquin des Pres the concert concluded with Ian's new edition of Scarlatti's amazing Stabat Mater. Of this we must hear more.