Unitarian Church, Dublin
The Irish Chamber Choir of Paris is based in and supported by the Centre Culturel Irlandais. Directed by Jean-Charles Léon, a specialist in baroque music, they were presenting the first of two concerts in Ireland, with Galway next on their itinerary.
On this occasion the choir consisted of 19 female voices. Their programme was a nicely organised arrangement of alternating movements from two masses written in the first half of the 18th century by the Italian composer Pietro Paolo Bencini, and by Henri Madin, who was French born, but whose parents had moved from Ireland. Between these movements we also heard motets by Bencini and instrumental pieces by Purcell, stylishly played on the harpsichord by Jean-Charles Léon. The encore was Mary Kelly's arrangement of the folk song Táimse im' Chodladh.
The choir’s sound was full-bodied and strongly projected. It was also unblended, which in my book is not a problem provided there are other kinds of unanimity. There were; but their emphases seemed odd. There was a lot of baroque-style ornamentation and a swelling-and-fading line that one hears in specialist baroque instrumental groups more often than in choirs. But there was also a very wide vibrato, and some very inaccurate intonation. Everything was so emphatic that all this seemed calculated. But notes lost out, because the vagrant pitch gave them little opportunity to work with or against one another. One example was the “Miserere nobis” section of the Madin, where character was set not by the composer’s calculated harmonic colours, but by the rather generalised expression created by the choir’s vocal tone.
It was good to hear music by two little-known composers who were well-known in their time. Bencini wins the composition prize, especially for the final piece in the concert, a vigorous motet , Beatus vir,which also received the most persuasive performance of the evening.
