Various: A Capella Christmas Concert (Concert Review - The Times, 1996)
Take a couple of dozen choice 20th-century Christmas carols, group them imaginatively add a dash of plainchant, and you have a winning recipe. This is what Stephen Layton and his choir Polyphony did for a recent recording, and they brought the programme to St John's Smith Square last week.
Few of the pieces included could be counted as predictable chestnuts. Indeed, each was, in its own way, a delightful specimen of the genre. Two Herbert Howells favourites - A Spotless Rose and Here is the Little Door - beguiling in their simplicity, were there, and providing abundant contrast were examples by Richard Rodney Bennett (such as Susanni with its mild metric dislocations) and Peter Warlock's Benedicamus Domino with its ecstatic chordal outbursts.
The highly accomplished singers of Polyphony proved ideal interpreters of both types: well blended, carefully balanced tone produced some exquisite effects in the meditative numbers, while impeccable tuning guaranteed a firm foundation for the jubilant seasonal exclamations of others.
Strands of plainchant were woven seamlessly into the texture. That for O Magnum Mysterium (the programme's title) led straight into Warlock's minor-key, modally inflected setting of Brice Blunt's Bethlehem Down. Nowhere was the ensemble's control of dynamic shading and richly expressive liquid phrasing heard to better advantage.
Peter Wishart and William Walton were each represented by a single example. And five of Kenneth Leighton's carols concluded with sorrow and anger poignantly juxtaposed in Lully, Lulla.
A wittily crafted encore by chorus bass Robert Rice commandeered a familiar "ding-dong bell" refrain by Vaughan Williams as accompaniment for the even more familiar Sleigh Ride, rendered in the melodious baritone of chorus master Stephen Layton.
Barry Millington