Various: Polyphony Christmas Concert (Concert Review - The Times, 1995)
Ten ways to sing 'Hail Mary'
There can be fewer nicer ways to spend Christmas than in the company of Polyphony and Stephen Layton. They take themselves rather less seriously than some choirs I know: can you really imagine a choirmaster such as Peter Phillips or Paul McCreesh turning round to take the solo in White Christmas?
Yet they take their music seriously enough to perform Palestrina every bit as assiduously and stylishly as "there’s never been such a day in Beverly Hills LA". And they are so young, that I can (and will) safely hire them for my funeral.
For this Christmas concert in Smith Square, Polyphony chose to "sing of a mayden that is makeles". Ave Maria, the programme was called and, after processing in to easy yet robust plainsong, the singers performed Palestrina’s Missa Ave Maria with its movements separated by later settings of the prayer.
So after a joyfully brisk Kyrie, Palestrina’s paraphrase of the opening plainchant, and a Gloria of stencil-sharp entries, Bruckner’s motet Ave Maria purred its way out, the male-voice lines wonderfully distanced, as if from another dimension. Then Villa-Lobos, bass-led, as melancholy as a painting by El Greco.
Even in vibrato-less Palestrina, Polyphony is not afraid to make the human voice human - rather than act as an instrumental apology for itself. The choir has a properly resonant bass-line (no choral-scholar braying), sharp-etched by reedy altos.
After Palestrina’s Sanctus came Ave Maria - echoes of Otello in tenderly imagined modulations - and jolly, Eastern orthodoxy of Stravinsky.
After the interval, it was carol time. Percy Grainger, at his most sugar-spun, was represented by his Sussex Mummers Carol and the hummed straight into the buoyant, asymmetrical lilting of Peter Warlock’s As dew in Aprylle. Emma Preston-Dunlop was the eager, child-like soloist above the grey weave of Kenneth Leighton’s Lully, lulla before the entire choir sang Lord of the Dance.
Hilary Finch