May 2010

THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS
FROM CATHEDRALS TO COTTONFIELDS

St. JAMES’S CHURCH,

STONEHAVEN

Sunday, 16th May 2010

ALAN COOPER

Given that the previous concert by the Stonehaven Chorus in December last year was for Homecoming Scotland rather than their traditional Christmas Fare there were no popular carols for the audience to join in singing. Their latest concert in St. James’s Church on Sunday corrected that omission with the opportunity for a near full house audience to join in with some of the best loved hymns with the choir or even just by themselves. With favourites like “When I survey the Wondrous Cross” and even better for a seaside town, “Will your Anchor Hold”, the audience response was wholehearted indeed. The choir’s conductor Dr John Hearne was reminded of the time when he went with another choir to a Welsh Chapel where he said the congregation were better than the choir. A bit of an exaggeration on Sunday though especially when the Chorus set the performance aglow singing Hubert Parry’s magnificent coronation anthem “I was Glad when they said unto Me” with St. James’s organ played by Ben Torrie also sounding in magnificent voice. The first half of the performance concentrated largely on English or British music with the spirit of the cathedral or the parish choir in mind. Two motets by C. V. Stanford stood out as extra special performances along with John Coath’s Stabat Mater which introduced the baritone soloist Peter Webster in particularly fine voice too. “Not a particularly difficult piece”, commented Dr Hearne but it was tremendously effective. More challenging were some of the more contemporary pieces including the beautifully coloured harmonies of Paul Mealor’s Locus Iste or the more surprising harmonies of John Hearne’s Crux Fidelis or Ave verum corpus by the Swedish composer Frederik Sixten whom the Stonehaven Chorus introduced to Scotland just recently. Bringing the first half to a joyful even riotous close was the world premiere of another John Hearne composition Exultate Deo. His setting of the words dealing with harps, timbrels and trumpets was splendid. The second half of the concert took us to the USA and to the Negro Spirituals in them old cottonfields back home. Peter Webster gave stirring spirit-warming renditions of Good News, Deep River, Jacob’s Ladder and more with the chorus echoing his words. It was never going to have quite the crazy soul swing of the genuine coloured choruses but it was pretty inspiring all the same. The concert concluded with Randall Thompson’s The Peaceable Kingdom which was another Stonehaven Chorus introduction to Scotland if not the entire UK. It is something of a tour de force of startlingly high powered choral writing. I am not sure about the title however. There is nothing very peaceable about this often quite violent fire and brimstone music; still, another fine performance from the Stonehaven Chorus.

December 2009

THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS
HOMECOMING CONCERT

STONEHAVEN TOWN HALL

Friday, 04 December 2009

ALAN COOPER

An early Scots song “Nou let us sing” was a thoroughly apt choice of opening number to kick-start the special Homecoming Concert given by the Stonehaven Chorus on Friday. It introduced the various sections of the choir while suggesting which drinks, and in what quantity, would provide the ideal booster for each category of voice, starting with just a little light wine for the trebles. The basses of course were vociferous in claiming that they would be sure to benefit from as much of the hard stuff as was on tap. This rumbustious “ice breaker” introduced a note of merriment and good cheer that was to permeate almost the entire performance. Two special guests of the Chorus, Scotland’s premier fiddle player Paul Anderson and broadcaster Mark Stephen were certainly firmly on message with Paul conjuring up lots of irresistible foot-tapping magic from his solo fiddle and Mark giving us a recitation of Tam o’ Shanter so vivid that afterwards I could have sworn I had just enjoyed a particularly good film of the story. Robert Burns was another of the concert’s principal icons so Paul Anderson charmed the audience with several of the Bard’s personal favourites including Corn Rigs and a beautiful Lament by Neil Gow, a close friend of Burns and founder of the Scots Fiddle tradition. At the end of the concert, Paul who also presented two of his own fine compositions won the most resounding ovation from the audience and no wonder, when he plays Scottish Fiddle Music it packs a knockout punch. He makes the music sound so special. Paul’s fiddle also lent support to Mark Stephen’s singing of a Burns Song in praise of the current season, “Winter: A Dirge”. Mark claimed that his voice can hardly hold a tune, but after what was a rather fine performance, conductor Dr John Hearne is going to be chasing him to join the choir. Somehow John Hearne always manages to unearth some of the most fascinating music as well as the finest arrangements for his Chorus. It’s the same whether he picks settings by first rate Scottish arrangers like John Currie or Ken Johnston or music he has composed himself like This Aul’ Witch, a song that summed up all the creepy fun of Halloween in the cheerily eerie verses of North East author Les Wheeler nicely matched by the spirit of Dr Hearne’s music. And to round up the concert there was something really special: five choral settings of poems by Alexander McCall Smith based on famous paintings with music by Tom Cunningham, McCall Smith’s collaborator on their international opera projects. The Tower of Babel with its chaotic disintegration of both language and music, The Skating Minister based on the famous painting by Raeburn with some shameless borrowing from Emile Waldteufel and then the moving final song, Old Man with his Grandson were marvellous conceits of the imagination. A particular strength that marks Cunningham’s settings is the way in which the music boosts rather than obstructs the understanding of the texts, something that was essential to the success of these pieces; and of course none of that would have been possible without the exceptionally accomplished singing of the Stonehaven Chorus.

October 2009 - Cologne Tour

When The Stonehaven Chorus departed from Aberdeen on Wednesday 21st October, they could hardly have imagined the programme of exciting events the next four days had in store. The thirty-five singers (two-thirds of the full choir), along with their conductor and a few partners set off on their long-awaited maiden Tour into Europe. The Chorus, having had many successful Tours in the British Isles, was on its way to Cologne in Germany. On their short visit to Germany the Stonehaven Chorus performed some of their favourite pieces from their repertoire, including movements from Rachmaninov's Vespers and anthems and motets by composers mostly from northern Europe. A setting of Crux Fidelis by the choir's Conductor Dr. John Hearne was written specially for the tour and was receiving its first performances. And two pieces by the Swedish composer Fredrik Sixten, whose Requiem the Chorus performed earlier this year, were included in the programmes, together with music by other contemporary and modern composers The first concert, held in Christ-Konig Kirche, Kempen, was an outstanding success, with an audience of several hundred. This beautiful modern church was an inspiration to the group and acoustically excellent. The programme was greatly appreciated by the audience who showed their recognition with a standing ovation.

The following day, having been granted special permission given to only a very small number of choirs, the Chorus participated in the mid-day prayers at “The Dom” cathedral in Cologne. This magnificent building is one of the largest and most important cathedrals in the world. The choir sang during and after the short service and was well received by both visitors and locals taking part. Since returning, the Chorus has received written recognition for the performance from Herr Prof. Metternich, the cathedral musical director and been invited to sing there again. Finally, the third concert was performed jointly with a Germany choir, the Bensberger Kammerchor in the Zeltkirche, Kippekausen, Bensberg. Both choirs gave a very varied and enjoyable programme to a packed church and again received a standing ovation. Then followed a great party hosted by members of the German choir whose generous hospitality and friendship created a bond between members of both choirs. Interspersed with their concerts and rehearsals the choir also managed a cruise on the Rhine, a walking tour of the city, several culinary experiences and some retail therapy.

Tour organiser, Evelyn Watt, was extremely pleased that everything had gone so well and that those taking part had made the most of their visit and enjoyed every moment. “The success of this trip has been mainly due to a small team of very committed helpers both in Cologne and in Stonehaven, especially Klaus Neumann, Kurt Neuheuser, Jennifer Macdonald and Philip Rose. The camaraderie when the chorus is away on tour is fantastic and we all know how to enjoy ourselves. Cologne has been an outstanding success and we are still reeling from the number of highlights capable in a mere 100 hours. It is definitely an experience which will never be forgotten.” THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS 
St James's Church, Stonehaven

Sunday, 24th May 2009
Alan Cooper 
At this year’s Spring Concert, the Stonehaven Chorus offered one of the great time-honoured classics of church music, Bach’s Magnificat in D. This they set alongside the world premiere of the new English version of a Requiem by Fredrik Sixten, one of Sweden’s most celebrated composers of contemporary church music. Dr John Hearne, the Choir’s musical

director is a valued ambassador for Scandinavian music. Like a rare plant hunter, he seeks out little known musical gems to set before new audiences while also scripting fine English translations for contemporary choral works. Dr Hearne already has another major Swedish work, Lars-Erik Larsson’s A God Disguised to his credit and now, with his new translation of Bengt Pohjanen’s Swedish verses, he offers Fredrik Sixten’s Requiem the opportunity of much wider recognition throughout the English speaking world.

The composer himself was in the audience for this momentous event and to further ensure its success, Dr Hearne had persuaded the North-East’s finest orchestra Aberdeen Sinfonietta to take part in the performance.

Sixten’s Requiem is a fascinating work. It sets sections of the traditional Latin Mass alongside and sometimes against the vernacular. These verses fire up the emotional impact of the work giving it a raw power that strips away the anodyne familiarity of the ritualised Latin. The music drives the emotional thrust of the words still further. The stark harmonies and ferocity of the Libera Me set against the inspired soprano solo in the Pie Jesu or the gentle composure of the ending exemplified an astonishing breadth of emotional expression throughout the work. Often, moments of pain or bleakness in the music would dissolve into sweet harmonies and soothing melodies all delivered by choir, orchestra and soloists in delicious layers of atmospheric musical colour. The highlights of this performance included soprano Wilma MacDougall’s effortless soaring in the Pie Jesu, the unaccompanied chorus in the Agnus Dei or the dark night of the soul expressed so eloquently by the bass soloist Stewart Kempster in the Lux Aeterna.

A lot of time had obviously been spent on this challenging new work and obviously it paid off. The choir did not have quite as strong a hold of their parts in the Bach Magnificat although their contributions to the centre of the work were more satisfying. Actually none of this mattered too much because the orchestra and soloists gave such fabulous performances. Glorious trumpets lit up the opening and closing sections of the work,orchestral solos on flutes and oboe d’amore were absolutely delicious and the four vocal soloists were just heroic. Wilma MacDougall and Stewart Kempster were joined by mezzo Elysia Leech (her Esurientes implevit alone was worth the trip to Stonehaven) while tenor Iain Milne was remarkable for both the strength and joyous clarity of his singing. Actually in the Magnificat there were five soloists, in Suscepit Israel, Wilma and Elysia were joined by soprano Oonagh McAlpine from the chorus. Their nicely blended singing provided a fine sweep across the whole spectrum of soprano voices.

Click here to read Gerard Rochford's review of our May 2009 concert.

THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS
Christmas Recital
Dunnottar Church, STONEHAVEN
Sunday, 14th December 2008
Alan Cooper 

Thanks to the tireless adventurous spirit of their musical director Dr John Hearne, the Stonehaven Chorus can be relied upon year after year to come up with an exciting programme of music from all around the world; something for their Christmas Concert that is sure to astonish as well as to delight. When you get to my age, Christmases seem to get closer and closer together and you begin to dread the sameness of those run of the mill Christmas concerts; but this never happens when you go to hear the Stonehaven Chorus.

On Sunday afternoon, even the audience in Dunnottar Church was joining in with their lustiest singing in a carol from Sweden entitled Now shine a thousand Christmas lights that was surely new to most of them. Admittedly, we all sang this one in English, but the chorus themselves seemed to have no difficulty at all in switching in a trice from Polish into Venezuelan Spanish with music in finely wrought arrangements by Dr Hearne himself. Lulajze Jezuniu from Poland had basically straightforward but warmly rich harmonies while the two Venezuelan Carols, Dulce Niño Dios and Los Pastores Bailan swung with jaunty Latin-American rhythms that the chorus delivered with real uninhibited zest. The concert opened with a composition by John Hearne himself. Alleluya, a new work… rang out with a veritable carillon of Alleluyas and the rich broad texture of the harmonic writing filled the church with joyous vocal colour right from the start. In Thomas Wilson’s lovely carol There is no rose, soft washes of harmony contrasted with outbursts of dramatic fervour. Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium derived its impact from the choir’s control of polyphony while Richard Dering’s episodic carol Quem vidistis, pastores? gloried in splendidly vigorous singing. However, it was with their third set of carols that the Stonehaven chorus really began to hit their finest form. Boris Ord’s Adam lay ybounden, John Joubert’s blazing Torches! and Gustav Holst’s beautiful setting of Lullay, my liking with a clear, fresh soprano solo sung by Oonagh McAlpine really hit the spot. Before the Swedish, Polish and Venezuelan Carols, William Byrd’s Lullaby, my sweet little baby was quite delightful and it was balanced afterwards by the lusty carol Chanticleer once again in a fine John Hearne arrangement. After the traditional audience carol O come, all ye faithful, to set the seal on another fine performance, the Chorus sent the audience home on a real high with their potent rendition of Rejoice, and be glad! by Mendelssohn.

THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS
RACHMANINOV VESPERS
St. JAMES’S CHURCH, STONEHAVEN
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Alan Cooper
Sunday’s performance was dedicated to the memory of the late J. Finlay Squires, a stalwart of the bass section in the Stonehaven Chorus. What better music to remember him by than Rachmaninov’s Vespers. His rich basso profundo voice was, as the programme said, such an asset when the Chorus performed movements from the Vespers at past concerts. On Sunday, however, the Stonehaven Chorus performed the Vespers (properly titled the All Night Vigil) in virtually its glorious entirety.

Under the direction of conductor Dr John Hearne, the Chorus has gained renown both far and wide for the adventurousness of its performances, singing music that most other choirs have hardly heard of let alone would dare to perform. Nothing seems too much of a challenge for this gifted choir. The All Night Vigil, as its title suggests, is a vast undertaking, but nothing daunted, the choir sang the entire work in its original Russian Text. Surely no other choir in the country can boast such a list of performances in so many different and difficult languages. Musically, Sunday’s effort was a tremendous achievement. Every part came through with admirably clarity and although a real Russian chorus could probably have fielded more thunderously deep bass voices, the Stonehaven Chorus did remarkably well on that account. There are a couple of voices among both the tenor and soprano sections that have “a bit of an edge” to them. For some music, this might be a problem but for this music, the piquancy that they gave to the overall choral texture was just perfect as anyone who has ever thrilled to the sounds of a real Russian choir will understand. Rachmaninov’s stunning vocal contrasts between male and female voices or sopranos with tenors or again the magnificence of the full chorus exploding in the rich colours of multiple part harmonies were all truly gorgeous. In the final fifteenth section of the work too, the Chorus sounded every bit as fresh as they had at the start of this wonderfully atmospheric musical journey.

Two superb soloists stamped their top quality singing on the Vespers. They were mezzo-soprano Lilly Papaioannou making her third appearance with the Chorus and tenor Iain Milne. Lilly laid her stunningly rich dark vocal tones over Благослои, душе моя (Praise the Lord, O My Soul), quite astonishing and wholly delightful too. Iain Milne had a couple of heroic contributions, even gifting his wonderful tenor voice to the choir itself for the final section of the work. Given that the soloists had only limited contributions to the main work, they also provided us with three solo songs each to punctuate the Vespers. Iain’s three songs by Rachmaninov, beautifully sung, remained perfectly in keeping with the main work. Lilly’s offering of two of the “Sea Pictures” by Elgar and “Silent Noon” by Vaughan Williams were perhaps not entirely in keeping with the main programme, but since these favourite English songs were sung with such stunning artistry by what must be one of the finest mezzo voices in the business today, I for one was not complaining.

THE STONEHAVEN CHORUS

CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHORUS

DUNNOTTAR CHURCH, STONEHAVEN

Sunday, 16 December 2007

Alan Cooper

A capacity audience at this year’s annual Christmas concert in Dunnottar Church on Sunday afternoon raised their voices to the rafters to join with the Stonehaven Chorus in singing some of the best loved hymns and carols that have come to define the traditional Christmas. What gave Sunday’s concert its unique cachet however was the selection of choral gems unearthed by conductor Dr John Hearne with which the Chorus proceeded to surprise and delight the audience. Some, like the two items taken from the Cantata Hodie by Vaughan Williams were revivals from an unjustly neglected work, others like the Polish carols were arrangements by Dr Hearne of pieces popular in their country of origin, but not well known here. Martin Dalby’s Of thy human heart was a first performance and Percy Fletcher’s Ring out, wild bells was a revival of a magical piece that had ceased to be performed because it had come to be sniffed at as “old fashioned”.

Most of the pieces were performed unaccompanied and several used antiphonal effects, that is to say two competing choirs placed at either side of the church. Bruckner’s motet, Virga Jesse floruit brought the richness of the full centrally focused choir into play while Jacob Handl’s Resonet in Laudibus used the two separate choirs in a relatively simple way. O beatum et sacrosanctum diem by Peter Philips, an English renaissance composer who worked in Flanders was far more complex, producing some wonderful chiming choral sounds. Pearsall’s arrangement of the traditional German carol In dulci jubilo also employed the two choir strategy to marvellous effect. There is no rose by John Coath used soft quintessentially English harmonies but in his Christ Child, David Harries employs much more adventurous harmonic language to underline the dark words of a text that looks forward to the ominous future fate of the sleeping Christ Child. John Hearne inserted No sad thought from Hodie by Vaughan Williams at this point to provide a telling contrast in emotions. 

Martin Dalby’s Of thy human heart had more than a little of the Eastern European flavour of music by the likes of Zoltan Kodaly about it and was therefore a fitting companion for the second of two jaunty Polish carols, Three wise men, this one with a gloriously sturdy bass line.

The final two carols profited from the splendid organ playing of guest organist Donald Hawksworth. The first was John Hearne’s own setting of the words of the hymn Brightest and Best. Wonderfully energetic outer verses for both organ and chorus enclosed more pensive central verses with splendidly imaginative and colourful harmonic writing. The second was Percy Fletcher’s New Year Carol. It sets to music the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ring out, wild bells”. Here the excellent singing of the Stonehaven Chorus reached its apex, the full throated vocal sounds chiming in with the organ and a real carillon of bells: a magnificent conclusion to a fine musical celebration.