Choir's memorable concert of music by the Baroque Masters

If you wanted an authentic, brilliantly executed and joyful concert on Saturday, Holy Trinity in Guildford was the place to go. To a packed house the Guildford Chamber Choir and a new Oxford-based ensemble, Instruments of Time and Truth, presented music by Bach and Handel in aid of the Halow Trust, a local organisation that supports young people with learning disabilities. 

A performance of one of the more reflective of Handel’s anthems, written for the coronation of King George II, My heart is inditing, opened the proceedings. The gentler central movements were particularly effective and in the final Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, agile choral singing was partnered by the magnificent trumpet playing. It is such a joy to hear baroque trumpets at all, let alone when they are played as brilliantly as they were by Stephen Cutting, Neil Brough, and Adrian Woodward. They excelled also in Bach’s third orchestral suite, which contains the famous air, beautifully played by the orchestra’s leader Bojan Cicic. 

Bach’s motet Fürchte dich nicht is a complex piece, full of intricate counterpoint: it plays on a descending chromatic theme underneath a soaring soprano chorale. To listen to it is a fascinating experience and the choir’s performance under Stephen Grahl was truly inspired. The composer’s setting of the Magnificat is a mixture of the triumphant (superb trumpets again), the reflective, the imposing, the gentle, and the fearful. Of the soloists, soprano Elizabeth Rauch gave an exultant rendering of Et exultavit. Alto Jeremy Jepson and tenor Jonathan Hanley, both lay clerks at Peterborough Cathedral, blended beautifully in Et misericordia eius and gave incredibly moving performances of Deposuit and Esurientes, the latter accompanied by flute playing of the first order. Bass Robert Haylett gave a workmanlike performance of Quia fecit mihi magna. But for all the virtuosity from the choir, singing their hearts out in the rapid notes of Omnes, omnes and Fecit potentiam, the true kernel was Suscepit Israel where women’s voices are partnered by a solo oboe playing an ancient plainchant. 

Truly a memorable occasion, one of those concerts that you did not wish to end. 
                                                                                             
Shelagh Godwin  
for the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 25 November 2016)


Concert in Abtei Neresheim, Germany - Peterborough Cathedral Choir

‘Aalener Nachrichten’
30th May 2016
Translation by Dr Natalie Watson
nchanting choral singing English boys’ choir in Neresheim Abbey On Sunday a large number of listeners were enchanted by the Cathedral Choir from Peterborough, an English city north of Cambridge. The Cathedral is more than 1,000 years old and is one of the most important medieval church buildings in England. As Prior Administrator Albert Knebel pointed out in his welcome, the contact with Neresheim came through the London Royal Academy. The choir . . . had already led the music in the Sunday morning Mass and in the afternoon sang a beautiful concert in the Abbey church. The young people from England in their red robes presented a well-balanced programme of contemporary and traditional choral works. They did this to a very high standard, with very careful and inspired interpretation. The available volume of sound from Charles Hubert Parry’s first Songs of Farewell to the concluding Nunc Dimittis by Gustav Holst was simply overwhelming. This grand fullness of sound could fill the church’s large nave like an organ. Even in the case of tricky, close harmonies the intonation was sure footed and immaculate. The singing was attentive and with a high level of concentration. Steven Grahl was able to direct unobtrusively and with an economy of gesture, as the choir promptly responded to every one of his signs. This high level of engagement and attention of the young singers resulted in dynamically well textured interpretations of works ranging from Palestrina’s eight-part Magnificat and two hymns of praise by Henry Purcell, Evening Hymn and O God, thou art my God. But also Michael Tippett’s moderately edited arrangements of traditional spirituals did not present a problem to the choir with boy sopranos as clear as a bell above the sonorous tenor and baritone voices of the young men. The choral singing was structured by two sensitively interpreted organ pieces, a Voluntary in A by Maurice Green and Bach’s Kyrie Gott Heiliger Geist.




Wonderful evening of poetry and music at St Peter's

The Song of Songs, attributed to King Solomon, is a collection of evocative poetry about love. It is a wonderful vehicle for musical settings, several of which were performed by Guildford Chamber Choir at St Peter's Church in Old Woking on Saturday June 18. Conductor Steven Grahl devised the programme in an imaginative way. The love poems were interspersed with movements from two settings of the Latin Mass, beginning with Victoria's incomparable, contrapuntal Missa Vidi speciosam, which found the choir in fine form, even if some voices stuck out a bit in the dry acoustic. This was soon solved by my moving to a seat further back, when the pure blend and excellence of the choir became apparent. 

Two settings of words from the Song of Songs by Palestrina were striking for their emotional fulsomeness, while Anima mea, liquefacta estby Flemish composer Orlande de Lassus was a gloriously descriptive account of the words. The choir's fluency increased as the programme progressed, through Jacob Praetorius's Surge, propera amica mea and more movements of the Victoria Mass, while organist Matthew Pickard introduced two emotionally intense Bach chorale preludes - wonderful on the church's late 19th century organ.

After the interval the choir launched into a Spanish export to Mexico, the lively Missa Ego flos campi by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, in which the more chordal textures than we had heard in the first half were backed up sensitively by the organ. Twentieth-century settings of the Song of Songs followed - Bairstow's 'Victorian' harmonies were contrasted with Walton's harmonically acerbic Set me as a seal, in which two members of the choir gave excellent solos. More acerbic still, but extremely effective, was Sebastian Forbes's My promised bride, which was performed with great skill. More conservative in style was David Bednall's Charity for solo organ, while contributions from Toronto-based Healey Willan and Cambridge-based Patrick Hadley, followed by the final movements of Padilla's Mass, concluded a wonderful evening of music. 

The concert was in support of the Samson Centre for MS sufferers, and was followed by a party to mark Steven Grahl's 10 years as conductor of the choir. 
                                                                                             
Shelagh Godwin  
for the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 1 July 2016)​







The pure joy of Vespers

Rachmaninoff wrote his Vespers, a musical setting of liturgy from four succeeding services, in 1915. Its derivation from Russian Orthodox chant is more apparent than real, as many of the melodies are the composer's own. They are strikingly different, however, from the soaring romantic big tunes of the orchestral works. The way Rachmaninoff uses the melodies in this work for an unaccompanied choir is impressive and makes considerable demands on the singers. 

The crowds flocking to St Nicolas' Church last Saturday (March 5) were in for a treat. The Guildford Chamber Choir performed the entire work with movements interspersed with seven of Rachmaninoff's piano preludes in appropriate keys. This was an original and effective idea. Gavin Roberts performed these difficult pieces with aplomb but was somewhat hampered by the inadequate instrument. 

The All Night Vigil, to give it its more accurate title, contains tremendous textural variety. Sometimes soloists sing against or above the choir, sometimes the sonority of bells is invoked, sometimes there are cries of despair, sometimes there are exultant shouts of pure joy, sometimes there is extreme simplicity and sometimes there are multi-layered textures verging on the orchestral. Although there is nothing, apart from the sheer scale and difficulty of the work, to prevent it from being performed liturgically, this was a concert performance in a very appropriate venue, with the church's iconic crucifix displayed above the singers. That said, there was a supreme spirituality about this performance. 

Well rehearsed and accurate, the choir sang convincingly and the words could be heard even at the back of the church. I am told on good authority that the Russian pronunciation was excellent. There were no really deep-voiced Russian-style basses in the choir, but no lack of good bass notes notwithstanding. Well shaped by conductor Steven Grahl, the performance contained plenty of dynamic variety. Perhaps in places the soloists could have been more prominent above the choral texture, but the overall effect was stunning. 
                                                                                             
Shelagh Godwin  
for the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 11 March 2016)




Guildford Chamber Choir present imaginative contribution to Guildford Festival

In view of the devastating news from Vanuatu, the Guildford Chamber Choir’s contribution to the Guildford International Music Festival had an appropriate title: Cloudburst. It was an imaginative collection of unfamiliar twentieth-century music. It began with William Mathias’s colourful settings of Songs by Shakespeare which invoked the Celtic sensitivities of the composer, as much in the evocative piano accompaniment as in the vocal lines. Particularly attractive was the movement ‘Sigh no more, ladies’, in which the men whistled expertly, helped along by a descant recorder, while the women sang.

The subsequent applause merged unintentionally with the next item, Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, a clever piece of rhythmic interaction performed by Oliver Cox and Owen Gunnell, who make up the percussion ensemble O Duo. The next piece was even more fascinating: John Cage’s Living Room Music was performed on a combination of enamel and china dishes (the acoustics of one being modified by the presence of a lemon), magazines, and newspapers set in what passed for a ‘living room’. In this O Duo were joined by the choir’s conductor Steven Grahl and pianist Gavin Roberts. O Duo’s skills as a percussion ensemble came to the fore in Searching, based on their own improvisations and played on a combination of tuned percussion instruments.

Eric Whitacre’s Three Flower Songs presented a challenge easily met by the choir, singing unaccompanied throughout and giving much attention to the intense words of Emily Dickinson, Edmund Waller, and Lorca. The choir was joined by O Duo and Gavin Roberts on the piano in William Mathias’s setting of Dylan Thomas’s extremely dark poem Ceremony after a Fire Raid. This chilling piece received a rendering of great depth.

Cloudburst is a setting by Eric Whitacre of a poem by Octavio Paz. The words talk of drought and wilderness, sung unaccompanied by the choir, and then just when you think it is going to finish, the cloudburst comes, a wonderful depiction by percussion, piano, hand bells, and finger-clicking, which had the audience spellbound.

                                                                                         
Shelagh Godwin  









Guildford Chamber Choir/English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble: Monteverdi Vespers
Steven Grahl (Conductor)

When Monteverdi published his Vespro della Beata Vergine in Venice in 1610, having written the pieces probably during his years in Mantua, he may never have envisaged a complete performance. More likely it was a compilation of music from which choirmasters could choose. Nevertheless, from John Eliot Gardiner’s historic 1964 performance in Cambridge onwards, it has been popularly regarded as a single composition. 

It was written at a time when music was essentially fluid, with mediaeval modes giving way to modern tonalities, and counterpoint, where each part is equally important, was giving way to melody and bass. Monteverdi’s ‘Vespers’ contains all these elements, and that is what makes it so exciting to perform and to listen to. Intensely dramatic and abounding in flourishes, it presented a worthy challenge to the Guildford Chamber Choir who performed it in Holy Trinity Church on Saturday.

The flourishes were sung by a range of excellent soloists drawn from the ranks of the choir, including conductor Stephen Grahl who stepped off the rostrum to give a thrilling account of words from the Song of Solomon. The 30-strong choir sang fluently, with a lovely if restrained tone, even if in some places in the wordy psalm settings the singers were not quite together.
 
However, the second half of the concert was a revelation. It began with the sopranos cutting through an instrumental sonata with the words ‘Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis’ (Holy Mary, pray for us), followed by the ancient hymn ‘Ave Maris Stella’ (Hail, star of the sea), and concluded with a wonderful Magnificat based on an old plainsong chant. The choir sang superbly and the accompaniment was masterful with Gavin Roberts providing sterling support on the chamber organ.
 
The concert was in aid of the Guildford-based mental health charity Canterbury Care. 

                                                                                         
Shelagh Godwin  
for the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 24 October 2014)



Guildford Chamber Choir/Guildford Baroque: Handel, Messiah. Steven Grahl (Conductor)

Handel’s greatest work lights up St Nicolas

Messiah, Guildford Chamber Choir, St Nicolas Church Guildford, 8th March 2014

The years of vast performances of Handel’s Messiah may be behind us. Last Saturday’s performance in St Nicolas Church by the Guildford Chamber Choir and Guildford Baroque reproduced the kind of performance that Handel would have been accustomed to. Messiah is a monumental work frequently performed with omissions, as was this performance.

The dramatic choruses were superbly sung by the thirty-strong choir who produced a much greater volume of sound than one might associate with that number. Their agility and accuracy in the Christmas choruses in part I was impressive. But particularly telling was the series of choruses depicting Christ’s Passion: ‘Surely’ with its intense dotted rhythms, ‘And with His stripes’ with its methodical fugal writing, and ‘All we like sheep’ taken at a racing tempo right up to the searing dissonance of the final climactic line. The Hallelujah, complete with vibrant baroque trumpets (earlier heard from the back of the church in ‘Glory to God’) had everyone on his feet. [It was King George II who began that practice.] ‘Since by man came death’, sung unaccompanied, was magnificently phrased by conductor Steven Grahl, and the final Amen sent a thrill through everybody present.

The ten players of Guildford Baroque supported by Gavin Roberts who leapt effortlessly from harpsichord to organ and back again, provided expert accompaniment once they had overcome the slight problem with balance in the overture.

Soprano soloist Robyn Allegra Parton had rather more to sing than in many performances: she performed the roulades in ‘But who may abide the day of His coming’ splendidly, and gave a telling performance of the little aria which turns the mood round from despair to hope: ‘But thou didst not leave His soul in hell’.  Countertenor Tom Hammond-Davies added subtle, effective ornamentation to his moving performance of ‘He was despised’. Tenor Guy Cutting gave a beautiful tone to the opening ‘Comfort ye’ but in the harmonically bold recitative ‘Thy rebuke has broken His heart’, his expressive qualities came to the fore. Bass Patrick Edmond was virtuosic in ‘Why do the nations’ and met the challenge of ‘The trumpet shall sound’, partnered expertly by Neil Brough. This concert was a worthy tribute to the memory of Bryan Yendole, a devoted choir member who died in August.

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser 

Guildford Chamber Choir/Surrey Mozart Players: Mozart, Requiem. Steven Grahl (Chorus Master) 23.11.13

'The choir was alert, responsive and accurate, with excellent attention to dynamic contrasts'


Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser

Guildford Chamber Choir/Guildford Baroque: Haydn, Nelson Mass. Schubert, Mass in G. Steven Grahl (Conductor)

Choir give Haydn their all

The Guildford Chamber Choir presented a wonderful concert in aid of that deserving cause Carers Support which provides support for carers within the Guildford area. The concert opened in an unusual way, the members processing to the front to a striking march for trumpets and drums, written by CPE Bach for the city of Halle in 1763. Installed in their seats, the 30-strong choir launched into Haydn’s anthem Insanae et vanae curae. Originally forming part of an oratorio, this piece is full of drama and surprising modulations and contrasts, and received a remarkable performance from the choir, under Steven Grahl, and Guildford Baroque, performing at slightly below modern concert pitch.

The adoption of this pitch added a relaxed note to the evening, particularly in the following work, Schubert’s Mass in G. This was written when the eighteen-year-old Schubert was embarking on a teaching career, and won the approval of his teacher Salieri. It is full of good moments, in particular an Agnus Dei which foreshadows the Schubert of later years in its wonderful harmonies, and a stirring Credo in which a treading – one might say ‘faith-full’ - bass never stops. The choir’s approach in this was appropriately restrained, right up to the calm of the final notes, and there were some lovely solos too. 

The solo soprano played a key role in the final work, Haydn’s remarkable Nelson Mass, first performed, probably in the admiral’s presence, in 1798, a good seventeen years before Schubert’s Mass was written.  In the soprano role Robyn Allegra Parton was quite brilliant, her voice ringing through the resonant acoustic of St Nicolas Church in a wonderful way. The other soloists, Carris Jones, tenor Mark Chaundy, and bass Oliver Hunt, blended beautifully in the ensemble passages and made some lovely solo contributions too. The choir gave this wonderful work their all, losing all the restraint they had adopted during the Schubert, and matched Guildford Baroque and the skilful organist Gavin Roberts in a memorable performance. 


Shelagh Godwin  
for the Surrey Advertiser (Friday 5 April 2013)

Derby Cathedral Organ Recitals: Steven Grahl, 1.8.12

It must be so tempting to go into a work like JS Bach's G minor Prelude and Fugue, BWV 542, with all guns blazing. Instead Steven Grahl, Director of Music at St Marylebone Parish Church, London, and Assistant Organist at New College, Oxford, returned to the scene of his early musical training (as Head Boy Chorister, then Organ Scholar) focusing on the work's pace and energy rather than more monumental qualities, and it paid off in an invigorating performance. Franck's Pastorale, Op 19 is not your average rustic idyll; it doesn't sound all that typical of Franck either, if it comes to that, with its often fairly static harmonies. Steven Grahl kept it on the move, making effective use of the strument's French-sounding reeds in the darker middle section. 

But for his early death Jehan Alain could well have rivalled Messiaen as a creator of some of the twentieth century's most original organ music. His Deux Danses à Agni Yavishta were vividly characterised, contrasting a spiky piece of incantation with the more sombre second dance. The better-known Le Jardin Suspendu is Alain at his most inward and ethereal, and Steven Grahl's free-floating performance was spell-binding. In between, the swirling currents of the Scherzo from Bairstow's C minor Sonata were navigated with great dexterity. 
Mendelssohn's Sonata No 4 benefited from a perfectly-scaled reading that traded undue weight for poise and elegance. The finale was both majestic and lively, as Mendelssohn asked for. There were more magically ethereal sounds in the Sicilienne from Duruflé's Suite, Op 5, while in the same work's Toccata the sheer torrent of notes was never allowed to override musical sense.

Mike Wheeler, Derby Telegraph/Music and Vision

Change of direction from chamber choir lights up school's new  centre: Guildford Chamber Choir Concert, February  2012


I was unaware before last weekend of the wonderful new arts centre at St Catherine’s School, Bramley.
This state of the art venue, the Anniversary Halls Auditorium, flanked by practice rooms and a  drama studio which must be the envy of many, was the scene for an exciting venture into the world of jazz by the Guildford Chamber Choir.

When it  comes to jazz there can be few better present-day exponents than Will Todd, whose Mass in
Blue formed the  centrepiece of the programme. This is forceful, direct music, strongly rhythmic, and a very sincere setting of the Latin Mass but with no sense of  sentimentality. It received a stirring performance from the choir under Steven Grahl and what must be an essential ingredient of any performance of this piece, the Will Todd trio with the composer himself at the piano, and complemented by the superb jazz soprano Bethany Halliday.

But this was not the only jazz  in the programme. The popular choral composer Bob Chilcott had his own stab at  the idiom with his Jazz Folk Songs, including Scarborough Fair, a laconic Tell My Ma and admittedly a rather better setting of The House of the Rising Sun than the version immortalised by The Animals in
the 1960s, and concluding with a hilariously syncopated setting of Waltzing Matilda. These were all elegantly  phrased by the choir, and there were some lovely solo interjections from choir  members. In these, again, Will Todd’s trio provided the apt accompaniment.

However, the choir was on its own for the other Chilcott piece, his  development of Purcell’s lovely fragment  Hear my Prayer. Soulful, and with some amorphous harmonies, this piece evoked  some lovely sounds from the choir, who then went on to perform Morten  Lauridsen’s Nocturnes, set to words in  French, Spanish and English. None of the foreign languages presented any  problems for the singers, and to the able accompaniment of Stephen Ridge they  conveyed this mellifluous music beautifully. 

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser

Guildford Chamber Choir Concert, February 2012
There could be few better ways of warming up a winter's evening than to listen  to the concert given by the Guildford Chamber Choir in a none-too-warm St  Nicolas Church last Saturday. Under the welcoming title of Abendlied (Evening Song) and conducted by their regular conductor Steven Grahl, the choir, accompanied by skilled organist Gavin Roberts, presented a programme of music by Mendelssohn, Brahms, and a composer best known for his organ music, Josef Rheinberger. This is romantic music of the highest order, and the Chamber Choir, sometimes divided into eight parts, sang superbly.

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser

Guildford Chamber Choir Concert, May 2011
The sun shone through the stained-glass windows depicting the life of Jacob, and created a wonderful atmosphere as the choir under Steven Grahl launched into Byrd’s Sing joyfully, followed by more sacred music dating from the time of the translation. Absolutely outstanding were settings by Tomkins and Weelkes of When David heard that Absolon was slain, and between them Alice Phillips’s reading of the gruesome tale as recounted in the King James Bible.   

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser

Full marks for choir's concert performance: Guildford Chamber Choir Concert, February 2011
Music from our nearest neighbours, France and Belgium, was the focus of the Guildford Chamber Choir's 
concert in St Nicolas last Saturday. It began with Maurice Duruflé's Messe Cum Jubilo written towards the 
end of the composer's life but still carrying echoes of his better-known Requiem. The Mass is set for male chorus and organ: the virtuoso writing complements the flexible simplicity of the unison vocal line, based as it is on plainsong, resulting in a very satisfying whole. The stunning organ part was superbly played by Gavin Roberts and the chorus part was beautifully shaped by conductor Steven Grahl. 
The women excelled themselves in Francis Poulenc's Litanies à la Vierge Noire, which marked the composer's return to religious fervour, inspired as it was by a visit to Rocamadour just two days after the tragic death of a close friend. The intense mysticism of the piece came over well in this performance, partnered brilliantly by the organ: you could almost smell the incense! This performance was framed by two Poulenc motets for the 
full choir: Salve Regina and Exultate Deo. Both received excellent performances. 
The main work was Joseph Jongen's Mass. The music carries all the hallmarks of French music of this period
(although Jongen was in fact Belgian): shimmering harmonies, flowing lines, dramatic interjections, and subtle word painting. The two solo quartets, drawn from the choir, sang with mellifluous beauty in the Benedictus and long-lined melodies of the Agnus Dei were a joy to listen to. The movement has a lovely serene ending, which would have made an excellent conclusion to the concert, but it had been decided (perhaps in defference to the Book of Common Prayer since the composer spent some time in England) to end with the lively and triumphant Gloria. 

Full marks for producing a programme of such original and interesting, and unfamiliar, music.

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser

Guildford Chamber Choir Concert, November 2010
'The performance was nothing short of inspired: conductor Steven Grahl paced it beautifully, and it was a wonderful spectacle.'

Shelagh Godwin, Surrey Advertiser, 2010. From review of Philip Moore's Ode to St Cecilia (world première), The Guildford Chamber Choir.

'The seamless program was interspersed with organ solos including the dramatic and engrossing 'Allegro' from Elgar's Sonata in G, Op. 28. Organist Steven Grahl was again soloist in two pieces by Louis Vierne, the quirky Feux follets and the hauntingly beautiful Claire de lune.'

KCMetropolis 2010. From review of New College Choir Concert in Kansas City.

'Scattered among the works were the individual move­ments of Bach's Trio Sonata in E flat (BWV 525) and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (BWV 582), in thoughtful readings by Steven Grahl, the choir's assistant organist.'

New York Times, 2010. From review of New College Choir Concert in St Thomas' Church, Fifth Avenue, New York.

'Today’s recital was a perfect illustration of why Steven was an award winning graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford and gained the coveted Limpus and Dixon prizes in his FRCO examination.  His performance was not only faultless throughout but he conveyed a wonderful sense of musicianship through his playing.'

4part music blog, 2009. From review of solo recital at Bath Abbey.

'The Guildford Chamber Choir, under its conductor Steven Grahl, continues to go from strength to strength.'

Surrey Advertiser, 2007. From review of 'In the beginning' concert, The Guildford Chamber Choir.

'Steven Grahl captured truly authentic French Baroque sounds in the attractive noels which act as interludes in Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit. As accompanist in Poulenc’s Gloria he displayed extraordinary virtuosity, producing genuine French cathedral sonorities.'

Roger Evernden, 2003. From review of concert with Cantate Chamber Choir.