MUSIC REVIEW: Hoylake Choral Society at Hoylake Chapel

Apr 15 2008 by Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post

IT STARTED off as such a good idea: a recital of largely unfamiliar sacred music by Fauré, Mendelssohn and Bruckner. In the end, it felt like a mish-mash of music which really did not hang together all that well.

If anything, the Fauré Requiem worked the best, and followed on from the choral society’s stunning Verdi Requiem in the autumn, but the first part of the concert felt almost under-rehearsed, and quite definitely uncertain in many of the pieces.

That said, the opening work – Mendelssohn’s Verleih uns Frieden – was confident with a fine unison sound from the male singers. Psalm 43, by the same composer, was sung unaccompanied and improved as it progressed although the upper voices sank badly at the outset. The same was true of the Ave Maria.

Once away from the demands of Mendelssohn, things did improve, although Os justi, by Bruckner, felt a little blurred.

On the whole, the Fauré works redeemed this concert. Tu es Petrus oozed drama, as did Sancta Maria with its complex organ part ably played by Simon Russell. Tenor soloist Stuart Keen added his own drama to the first half.

However, the only truly familiar works in the concert, Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and his Requiem, were adequate, if less than sparkling. If anything, the organ rather overpowered the choir on too many occasions in the Requiem

Bass soloist Edward d’Arcy Hatton was certainly in command, though soprano Lynne Rogers produced a somewhat timid Pie Jesu.