Vox Cantab, an a cappella chamber choir drawn mainly from former choral scholars at Cambridge University, presented a concert of music and readings featuring composers, writers and poets with strong connections to Petersfield and the surrounding area on Wednesday 19th March. The concert formed part of the Petersfield Musical Festival at St. Peter’s Church.
By asking for no applause during the first part of the concert, conductor Louisa Denby was able to maintain a well-paced interplay between readings and music. It was good to hear several substantial and rarely heard works by Michael Hurd – a local composer in whose memory the Festival created a Fund for Young Musicians – all of which were well performed and of a high compositional order.
Particularly striking were Hurd’s Praise Ye The Lord’ an imaginative setting of verses from Psalm148, and his witty setting of When Cats Run Home. These Hurd items were separated by Howard Skempton’s ‘Two Pewits’, written in an appealing original idiom and deftly performed.
Gerard Finzi’s My lovely One displayed some fine soft, sustained singing, with its evocative organ accompaniment sensitively played by Anthony Gray. It was a pleasure to hear this piece after George Dyson’s less successful A Poet’s Hymn.
The first part of the concert ended with a better example of Dyson’s compositional skill: O Praise God In His Holiness which was delivered by Vox Cantab with full-bodied and exciting climactic tone.
The readings, between the musical items, were by given by Debbie and Jeremy Whitton Spriggs, both of whom successfully trod the fine line between ‘just reading’ and ‘exaggerated theatricality.’
The shorter second part of this concert opened with John Ireland’s Greater Love Hath No Man which was followed by four of Hubert Parry’s well-known Songs Of Farewell. There was some fine solo singing in both. Finzi’s stirring God Is Gone Up brought this most enjoyable concert to a rousing conclusion.
Ian Schofield
