Jubilate Singers in fine sound

Press, 11 May 1981, Page 6

Jubilate Singers in fine sound

The Jubilate Singers at the Cathedral "of the Blessed Sacrament. May 9. Reviewed by Philip Norman. The Jubilate Singers are a fine-sounding choir: well-dis-ciplined, well-balanced,and thoroughly grounded in the music of their period. Much, of the credit for this should go to the group’s founder and choirmaster, Martin Setchell, an academic whose theoretical knowledge of the music is obviously matched , by his ability to impart it in rehearsal.

Three religious works comprised the programme on Saturday evening. These were Monteverdi’s setting of Psalm 111 “Beatus Vir,” J. S. Bach’s Cantata No. 4 “Christ Lag In todesbanden,” and Handel’s setting of Psalm 109 “Dixit Dominus.”

The. Monteverdi was scored in concertante style, with six soloists singing contrasting passages with the choir. Dinah Allison's straight and pure soprano sound was particularly suited to this work. The soloists in the Bach and Handel were Jillian Bartram (soprano), Edith Sim

(contralto), Franz Kney (tenor),and James Baines (bass). For all four the evening was someting of a marathon, for on completing each solo they would rejoin the choir. It is to their credit that weariness of tone had only barely crept in by the final number.

Even in the company of such accomplished singers Jillian Bartram shone as an ascendant star, a young mezzo-soprano of great promise whose need now is for more exposure and concert experience as a soloist. For the Handel, conductor Martin Setchell swapped roles with the harpsichordist, David Vine. The resulting difference was quite marked, with David Vine’s more energetic and explicit gestures injecting a robustness ’into the performance that had not been present in the sedate correctness of the preceding two works.

The Handel is not an easy work with its extremes of writing from the dense contrapuntal textures of the fifth section to the exquisite harmonic writing in the seventh. Apart from some

uneven tempi in the vigorous melismatic passages of the eighth section and some uncharacteristically sloppy continue accompaniment in the second section the work was given a creditable performance. The choirs real strength seems to lie in the beautiful, blend of sound that it can' achieve in the homophonic passages at a less-than-forte dynamic. The final chorale of the Bach and the fourth section of the Handel were superb examples of this strength. The Jubilate Singers were accompanied, but on the whole not well served, by members of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. The shower-room acoustics of the Cathedral favoured the lower strings to the detriment of the over all balance, and lack of firm direction led to ragged playing particularly in the hemiola passages of the Bach.