Choral superstars The Sixteen shook the pillars of Durham Cathedral on Friday evening with a programme of highly dramatic religious music by three Flemish renaissance masters – composers Josquin, Brumel and Lassus.
Two movements from Brumel’s mass Et ecce terraemotus - (The Earthquake Mass) formed the centrepiece of the programme and was performed by The Sixteen with evident enjoyment.
This complex and densely textured music surged effortlessly from the singers in vast waves of sound, engulfing the audience. The earthquake effect was particularly vivid in the Sanctus, as the sound rumbled upwards from an impressively solid bass line
The earthquake theme was set at the very start of the concert with Josquin’s motet Praeter rerum seriem. Set low in the vocal range, and performed by a smaller group, with fewer sopranos, this energetic piece began with a particularly sonorous bass part before opening up into a hypnotic repeated phrase, delivered with a stylish swing, a wonderfully exciting start to the concert.
Apart from the two mass movements, and two settings of the Magnificat, the rest of the works performed were set to unfamiliar but vivid Latin texts. Conductor Harry Christophers and his singers had clearly thought carefully about these texts, and worked hard to put across their meaning.
Timor et Tremor by Lassus describes the fear and trembling of the sinner, and opened with a wonderfully unstable chromatic passage, with shifting harmonies, before settling down as the penitent finds refuge in God.
Yet again, The Sixteen have delighted a full cathedral with an imaginative programme, delivered with conviction and evident enjoyment, and of course, with impeccably beautiful singing. We look forward to whatever the 2013 Choral Pilgrimage brings.
Jane Shuttleworth
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