Laudate Pueri Dominum - Colin Mawby

Speak Love - Alfred Fisher

Surge illuminare - Palestrina

Ave verum - Byrd

Tu es Petrus - Palestrina

Estampes (exc) - Debussy

Nine Marian Anthems - Colin Mawby

Colin Mawby's retirement as artistic director and conductor of the National Chamber Choir was marked by a special concert at the Hugh Lane Gallery last Thursday evening. The programme included a performance by the choir's regular accompanist, Fergal Caulfield, of two of Debussy's Estampes. But even that top-flight music seemed overshadowed by everyone's recognition that this was Colin Mawby's night.

This conductor's characteristic way of shaping a piece through line, dynamics and tone rather than straight rhythmic drive, was well-represented in the Palestrina motets Surge illuminare and Tu es Petrus, and especially in Byrd's Ave verum. It was also prominent in a new work by the Canadian composer Alfred Fisher, whose music has been performed by the NCC on several occasions. Speak Love is a setting of Petrarch, in the composer's translation, and was written for this concert.

It was entirely appropriate the evening should begin and end with recent and new examples of Mawby's own music. Laudate Pueri Dominum celebrated the centenary of the choir school at Westminster Cathedral, where the composer had been master of music. Nine Marian Anthems was receiving its premiΘre, and is a cycle of connected pieces.

This is music written by somebody who loves singing, and who knows precisely how to use choral sonority. Mawby's compositional style has been criticised for its conservatism. However, that quality is not born of intellectual laziness. The music is never interested in the cheap shot, in the self-congratulatory cleverness to be found in some more-widely known, conservative English composers. Like Mawby's modest, brief words at the end of the concert, his music speaks for itself and never forces itself on you.