O quam amabilis es - Pierre Villette
The Prayer - Iris Szeghy
Dark Forest - Alfred Fisher
Jubilate Deo - John Kinsella
Aimhreidh - David Fennessy
The National Chamber Choir's concert last week in the Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern series featured five works by living composers. They epitomised the widespread tendency to adapt traditional choral techniques into a modern idiom without doing anything truly radical.
Even in short doses, as in O quam amabilis es, the squishy, post-Poulenc harmonies of Pierre Villette (b. 1929) are terribly cloying. The rugged counterpoint of Jubilate Deo, by Ireland's John Kinsella (b. 1932) proved far more interesting. The Prayer, by the Slovakian Iris Szeghy (b. 1956), uses characteristically east-European, dissonant counterpoint. This slow-motion piece, which was premiered by the NCC last March, is not remarkable; but it is disciplined and obviously good to sing. In Dark Forest, the Canadian composer Alfred Fisher (b. 1942) "was determined to create a musical framework that not only reflected the magic and metaphoric but also galvanised the narrative dimension of the text". Unfortunately, the music's calculated stylistic variety and the independence of the piano part, were too obvious for such high-flying intentions.
Better judgement was shown in Aimhreidh, by Ireland's David Fennessy (b. 1977). He knows how to marry detailed evocation of a narrative text to sustained musical design. Conductor David Brophy saw some success in making tone and expression suit each piece, especially in the Irish works and the Szeghy.
