REVIEW: Frome Festival Summer School
at Wells Cathedral

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Review Released: 2 June 2008
Author: Alan Burgess
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The Frome Festival Summer School pushed the boundaries a little further this year with its first local performance out of town and its greatest musical challenge thus far.

Bach's B Minor Mass is one of the most substantive and technically demanding works in the choral repertoire and its spiritual quality was enhanced greatly by the ambience of Wells Cathedral.

Orff's Carmina Burana, performed several years back in the first Summer School was well suited to being performed in down-town Frome, but increasingly, for me, the setting of the Cheese and Grain, despite its decent acoustic, has been a problematic venue for Festival performances of such major religious works as Elgar's Gerontius. The Cheese and Grain is a multi-faceted building yet it is also, in truth, a spiritual desert. To perform this religious musical icon anywhere other than a church or cathedral would have been incongruous and the decision to move the Frome Festival Summer School to Wells on this occasion is to be applauded. It was also good to be able to see and hear the tenors and basses of the chorus far better as, in the past, they have been left lurking in the gloom.

The Amadeus Orchestra showed intuitive understanding of Bach's music with intelligent and stylish playing throughout. On several occasions we heard beautiful obbligato playing from wind players and from the orchestral leader, Francesca Barritt. There was pure string sound, trumpets and drums added exuberant colour and the continuo playing of Matthew Bale and Sarah Wortly was exemplary. There is something very exciting about hearing young professionals on the threshold of their careers and collectively they provided a wonderfully secure bedrock for the singers. There were times, such as in the opening choral entry by the tenors, when it was clear that singers were listening and responding to the instrumental lead, striving to match the clear articulation.

Each of the four soloists and was completely at home in this genre: Gavin Carr's warm baritone was best heard in Et in spiritum sanctum and Robert Anthony Gardiner's fruity tenor in the Benedictus, near the end. However, the duets of Elenor Bowers-Jolly and Jeanette Ager, particularly in the Christe eleison, were exemplary models of musical performance at the highest level. Sublime is not too strong a word to describe the way in which their independent melodies wove across and through the instrumental texture. All four soloists sang with poise and sensitive assurance: melodies were rhythmically supple and so often sung with relaxed conviction.

On the other hand, I doubt any of the choral singers would look back on the performance as a relaxing experience. Their commitment to the task was without question and they scaled the mountain which towered above them at the start but, I would suggest, without being able to fully appreciate the view along the way. The achievement was all the more remarkable in that so many had not previously sung the work. Conquering such a summit in an intensive weekend was asking a great deal and there were times when they were stretched to the limit. Gavin Carr, the Chorus Master, is to be commended for the way in which he enabled them to believe that they could do it!

There was much strong disciplined choral singing in the two Kyries and, as the performance progressed, the choir became better at picking up some of the brisker tempi. Some of the greatest challenges lay in sections of the Credo but the Et incarnatus conveyed a real sense of awe and in the Crucifixus the basses were particularly responsive, the whole section ending with an appropriately eerie quality.

Throughout the performance the choir had considerable success in negotiating the chromatic lines and the basses and first sopranos often gave strong leads which helped the rest of the chorus. In the monumental Sanctus there were some rolling waves of glorious alto sound which would have been welcomed elsewhere in other parts of the work and the two Hosanna sections were sprightly and full of excitement. The singing of the final Dona nobis pacem brought the performance to a strong and noble conclusion.

Jason Thornton, as usual, directed the whole performance with aplomb, often conducting out of his skin to drive the choristers along through this remarkable work.

Alan Burgess