Choir sing confidently during challenging songs

8:00am Sunday 4th May 2008

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Review by Donald Hollins: Amberley Chamber Choir in a concert of sacred music from the Renaissance at Wickwar Parish Church.

IT was a pleasure to see such a large audience for this concert -this seemed to encourage both conductor and choir to produce one of the best performances I have heard from them recently.

The thirteen pieces of sacred music in the programme were all written by composers born in the sixteenth century and the challenges to the choir were many. These works also require the audience to concentrate and listen carefully - which they certainly appeared to do.

With such a long programme I have room only to comment on a few of these wonderful pieces whose composers have waited until comparatively recently for the recognition they deserve.

The Stabat Mater Dolorosa is one of Palestrina's most celebrated and glorious works and the separation of the two choirs at its opening creates a wonderfully mysterious effect. A splendid performance. Long serving conductor Harry Lyall announced this was the first time the choir had sung a work by John Shepherd (or Sheppard): his In Manus Tuas made me want more. Byrd's Haec Dies ended the first half of the programme on an exultant note and was confidently sung.

By now I should have liked audience and choir to have a break, with perhaps a reading or an organ work to vary the programme, but instead we moved on to another lovely piece by Shepherd, In pace, in idipsum dormiam et requiescam. The words are beautiful. There is only room to mention the concluding item: Gibbons' O Clap Your Hands which the choir obviously enjoyed singing with its vivacity and joyfulness. This drew to an end one of this small chamber choir's most successful concerts - fitting, as Harry Lyall believes it was the choir's 120th concert.