Classical review: Chanticleer

MUSIC

CHANTICLEER

QUEEN’S HALL, EDINBURGH

HHHHH

PUTTING a whole new perspective on the traditional male voice choir, San Francisco’s Chanticleer is a 12-piece ensemble with as many soaring sopranos as deep-voiced basses.

With extreme versatility, their morning Queen’s Hall programme took in everything from Duke Ellington as a quasi-instrumental number to Spanish music of the Renaissance, by way of more modern, easy-listening, American choral settings.

It’s difficult to pick a highlight, but both John Tavener’s Village Wedding and Eric Whitacre’s This Marriage were extraordinarily beautiful and moving. The singers formed an inward-facing circle, which moved ceremoniously to the music’s refrain, and their full range of skills and abilities gleamed in the typically mystical harmonies of Tavener. The simple, radiant beauty of Whitacre’s Persian-inspired anniversary tribute to his wife likewise suited the men’s collectively crystal clear voices.

In Richard Strauss’s Drei Männerchöre, originally written for male voice choir of tenors and basses, the German diction – like the English elsewhere – was clean and crisp, particularly in Traumlicht and its immediate infusion of light and intangible dreams, although a bit more bucolic gutsiness was called for in Fröhlich im Maien.

CAROL MAIN