‘Winter Tales” was the title of this enjoyable concert from the very fine vocal octet Voces8, a programme of Christmas music old and new. The first half was devotional, the second more relaxed. The singers themselves introduced groups of pieces from the platform, and, as is often a feature of their programmes, genres and boundaries between classical and jazz were blurred and crossed.
Founded in 2005 by countertenor and artistic director, Barnaby Smith, and his baritone-composer-educationalist brother, Paul (now CEO), the eight-strong ensemble’s lineup has inevitably changed over the years. But the singing remains classy and impeccable, truly wonderful in its balance and focus.
The centrepiece, exultantly mixing the lofty with the popular, was the Magnificat Quinti Toni by Hieronymus Praetorius, which interweaves the Latin text with the carols Joseph, Lieber Joseph Mein and In Dulci Jubilo, its complex polyphony, for two four-part choruses, wonderfully clear and sustained. This year’s Byrd anniversary was marked with Rorate Caeli. And there was a breathtaking juxtaposition of Michael Praetorius’s Es Ist ein Ros’ Entsprungen with the Bogoroditse Devo (the same text as the Ave Maria) from Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil, in which time briefly stood still in a moment of genuine transcendence.
There was contemporary music too. In Sally Beamish’s beautiful In the Stillness, the nativity, quietly contemplated, becomes touchingly emblematic of the birth of any and every child. Jonathan Dove’s version of Dorothy L Sayers’ The Three Kings gazes in amused wonder at the Magi’s gifts to the Christ child (complete with a gossipy flurry of sound at the sight of all that gold), while The Lamb by Luke Mayernik, winner of Voces8’s 2023 composition competition, redeems Blake’s rather saccharine poem with a sequence of serene vocal solos hovering above slowly shifting harmonies. At the end it was show time, with Silver Bells, a medley of American Christmas songs, gleefully arranged by tenor Blake Morgan, who hails from Detroit, followed by Let It Snow! and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town – great fun, and done with the same finesse, precision and care that characterised the whole evening.
At All Saints Church, Newcastle on 16 December.
