Funeral Ikos - John Tavener
Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing - Howells
Five Negro Spirituals - Tippett
Hymn for St Cecilia - Britten
Lux aeterna - Morten Lauridsen
The National Youth Choir of Scotland concluded its tour of Scotland and Ireland last Saturday night at St Ann's Church, Dawson Street. This is a good choir, of considerable potential, and with discipline in the essentials of choral singing - in ensemble, variety of tone and attack, homogeneity of sound, and clarity of words.
The concert ended with Lux aeterna, by the American composer Morten Lauridsen, performed in its original version for choir and organ. There were some technical problems, including a want of clarity in rapid, quiet singing and some straining when the men's voices were high. An intermittent limitation lay firmly in the court of the conductor, Christopher Bell, who helped found the choir in 1996.
His approach to dynamics was sometimes careless, obviously so in the refrains of Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia, where insufficient variety of volume robbed the end-of-line pianissimos of their magical effect. Elsewhere, the NYCoS achieved an impressive range and subtlety of volume for a choir of around 90. These strengths were aptly applied in the Negro spirituals from Tippett's A Child of Our Time and even more so in John Tavener's Funeral Ikos.