Issue 7625 - 8 May, 2009 Church times

OSJ - Drop Drop Slow Tears 10 April 2009

Roderic Dunnett on sensitive choral programming

FOR more than 40 years, the Orchestra and, latterly, the Choir of St John's (Smith Square) have been in the forefront of British music-making. This is not least thanks to the tenacity and crafting skills of their founder and conductor, John Lubbock, a former chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor.

In demand as a conductor for many years, not just in Britain and Ireland, but across Europe and North and South America, John Lubbock has been handsomely praised by Sir Simon Rattle, no less, as "one of our most musical assets: a thoughtful perfectionist and a musician of total integrity".

Some of these qualities were to the fore in the recent concert given by the choir, capably trained by Jeremy Jackman, with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent (organ) in the pliant acoustic of Dorchester Abbey, one of its regular venues, close to Mr Lubbock's home.

As on other occasions, a well-conceived concert drew attention to Music for Autism, a cause close to the conductor's heart since his young son was diagnosed with the condition some time ago.

Perhaps most impressive about the Choir of St John's is the rich maturity of its sound. Like Howard Williams's Choir of the 21st Century, it draws on a range of singers who bring professionalism mixed with amateur experience to their task, and the result is a warm, full-bodied sound enhanced by much shrewd musicianship and thoughtfulness of phrasing.

Mr Lubbock's generous and ample conducting style encourages good breathing and long phrases that evolve into great arches of sound, of a Bachian and even Brahmsian richness. This proved wholly apt in such gems as Max Reger's beautifully enjambed Marian motet "Unser lieben Frauen Traum" ("Our Lady lay sleeping and dreamed a dream"), where the choir's quality of final consonants (a lucidity lacking in many rivals) was apparent, as it was also in Bruckner, Franck, and Faure.

This was a sensitive concert designed with unusual brilliance and insight. Each of the main items was balanced by another: the start of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with the whole of Scarlatti's, robustly and impressively delivered, despite one brief upper-voice lapse rooted in curtailed rehearsal time; Lotti with Mozart; Tallis's Lamentations with chromatic Gesualdo ("O vos omnes", veritably assured, but begging for a mite more surprise and sense of the unexpected).

Arguably we needed Bairstow (possibly his psalmic The Lamentation) to balance one of the most enchanting items of all, placed near the close, the intimate dialogue of Body and Soul in Henry Vaughan's Bunyanesque The Evening Watch, during which Holst's all too rarely heard setting subtly couples the words "Heav'n is a plain watch, and without figures with tingling" clustering chords that might easily be the work of some Polish Modernist.

The lyric tenor and imploring contralto solo, with which Holst represents the fragile Body, were tenderly and beautifully delivered; although, given the fine intensity of the libretto, here especially the audience needed a more substantial programme note, not merely the words.

The finest detail lay in Mr Lubbock's balancing of three settings of "Drop, drop, slow tears": by Gibbons, Leighton, and the 16-year-old Walton. To present the Gibbons a cappella at the start of the recital by a hefty-sized choir was daring. To carry it off to such wonderful effect was a masterstroke.

The concert's other moments of marked spiritual intensity lay in the offsetting in the two halves of Bach's Chorale Preludes "Erbarme dich" and "O Mensch, bewein", both endowed with a beneficial, healing breadth by Mr Bowers-Broadbent; and the unforeseen reprise, by way of an encore, of the Gibbons. It furnished an electrifying conclusion.