A time to feel comforted and reflect

After a two-year Covid enforced hiatus Ruddington & District Choral Society once more took to the concert platform in St Peter’s Church Ruddington last night (Dec 11th, 2021) – and what a return it was! Under the leadership of choir director Paul Hayward, the choir, the superb Ruddington Chamber Ensemble and the splendid young soloists from Nottingham University gave us a wonderful evening of glorious Baroque Christmas Music.

The Choir returned after an eighteen month break to socially distanced rehearsals in September to prepare for this concert and a few minutes before last night’s performance was due to begin Paul led the choir out of the Church and into the cold night air. Covid restrictions meant that they could not carry out their usual “warming up” exercises in the confined space of the Church vestry so it had to be done outside! I sat in the Church foyer handing out programmes to latecomers and listened as the al fresco practice drifted into the Church and out across the streets of Ruddington. So, the big question before last night’s performance was, would it all come off; the difficulties of rehearsing and putting on this performance under ever changing Covid rules were taxing for everyone, it was a step in the dark; but come off it did – magnificently!

Paul Hayward’s planned programme was a joy and a triumph, the chosen works and their performance absolutely right, not only for the Christmas season but equally importantly, perhaps, for the zeitgeist of our Covid times when for two years mankind has been chastened by the events of the pandemic and forced to ask questions about ourselves and our world. Any trepidation that Paul Hayward or his singers and musicians might have felt were dismissed within minutes of the first notes being struck! Paul’s chosen programme was not a brash, triumphalist celebration of the Christmas story but, rather, spoke of a gentler Christmas message and of the humility and reverence of the Christmas stable. And, this choice was portrayed beautifully by the Choir and orchestra: warm, sincere, a thing of beauty and conveying the haunting mystery of the Christmas tale.

A lovely and accomplished rendering by the Ensemble of Charpentier’s Prelude to Te Deum H146 opened the concert and set the scene for what was to follow and then we were taken back almost four centuries to the world of 17th century Paris, to the age of Louis XIV, the Sun King. The haunting voice of the soprano soloist opening Charpentier’s Mess De Minuit pour Noel a “mixture” of ancient French folk carols interwoven into the words of the Mass – the soloists providing the carols while the Choir sang the Mass. This, work has hidden complexities – both musically and logistically, given the current Covid restrictions - but Choir, soloists and Ensemble were flawless giving an interpretation which like the work itself was full of both joy and compassion and creating in the Church an atmosphere of gentle serenity.

As I listened I pondered what it must have been like three hundred plus years ago when those French people of old, or perhaps even the Sun King himself first heard this work – for that is what music allows us to do, it allows us to hear what others, hundreds of years ago, heard and through that to perhaps feel what they felt. And that, for me, is humbling; it asks questions of our very humanity – and last night this work, and the concert as a whole, allowed us to experience and be enriched by that. At the interval, a friend who was attending a Ruddington concert for the first time commented how much she was enjoying the performance – “it’s so professional”, she said. She was absolutely right but it was more than just professional, the works and the performance had an integrity, they were from the heart, they were not simply “entertainment” but spoke to us as human beings.

The second half of the concert opened with Dietrich Buxtehude’s Magnificat, a short but sumptuous work by the great Baroque organ maestro – the piece was beautifully performed, the soloists exquisite and the Choir and Ensemble a delight. It was no surprise at all to hear the applause from the audience after this offering. A thing of great beauty and comfort it was as warm and luxurious as Christmas Pudding and Custard and as I listened, I recalled the famous story of Johann Sebastian Bach and Buxtehude and reflected how our world has changed - yet the wonderful music of Charpentier, Buxtehude, Bach, Vivaldi and other great musicians remains, across the years to inspire and enrich us. Bach, aged 20 and “learning his trade” as a organist/musician in Arnstadt requested permission from his employers for leave to visit Buxtehude who was considered the greatest organist in Europe, perhaps the world. Unwillingly the permission was granted and the young Bach then walked over 300 miles through the German Autumn to Lubeck. He stayed with Buxtehude (it is said that the great man offered Bach his daughter’s hand in marriage!) and then in the early Spring Bach walked the 300 miles back to Arnstadt – where he was severely chastised by his employers for being away so long!

The rest, as they say, is history, Bach became the great gift that he is to all music and last night we had the privilege of listening to a work by Buxtehude, one of his teachers – how marvellous is that? But this is not an idle, lighthearted point. Paul Hayward’s programme took us back not only to the Baroque era but it also took us, like Bach on his walk to and from Lubeck, on a Baroque musical journey across Europe: From Charpentier’s Paris, to Buxtehude’s northern Germany, to Handel and Dublin, and finally to the glories of Vivaldi’s Venice – La Serenissima, the serene Republic. A Christmas feast indeed!

After Buxtehude the Ensemble rewarded us with a splendid playing of the Pastoral Symphony from Handel’s Messiah first heard in Dublin 280 years ago this year. This well known part of the mighty Messiah forms a gentle and peaceful interlude in that great oratorio and the Ensemble’s interpretation captured the tranquillity and reverence of that moment in the Messiah exactly. And following the Symphony we were rewarded with three unaccompanied and beautifully executed traditional Christmas works from the Choir: the “great and mighty” harmonies by Baroque 17th century German composer Michael Praetorius of the carol A Great and Mighty Wonder, the arrangement by JS Bach of the German carol O Little Sweet One and to end with the arrangement by George Ratcliffe Woodward of the 16th century Piae Cantiones the carol Up, Good Christian Folk – an ancient mediaeval work with its roots in Scandinavia – this latter short work one of the many high spots of the evening, its light, joyous harmonies raising spirits and smiles throughout St Peters!

And so to the final offering: Antonio Vivaldi’s magnificent Magnificat! Vivaldi, a composer whose vast output and brilliance are often marginalised by the overplaying of his Four Seasons Concertos, contrasted beautifully with the gentler, more reflective, reverential and mysterious Charpentier and Buxtehude. Vivaldi’s soaring opening to the work, dazzling and jubilant, showed the Ensemble’s strings to perfection and the soloists and Choir wove a wonderful musical tapestry which took us, as Vivaldi so often does and in celebration mode to 17th century Venice and to its misty and mysterious canals, to its fashionable palazzi filled with bewigged Venetian gentlemen and and masked and gowned ladies, to the world of Casanova, and to the gold leafed magnificence of the Doge’s Palace and St Mark’s. This was Vivaldi and Baroque music at their most sumptuous with the Choir, the soloists and the Ensemble weaving a sublime, warm but crisp, mellow but multi-layered sparkling, celebratory sound. A magnificent Magnificat indeed!

It was absolutely no surprise that as Paul Hayward’s baton fell for the last time the socially distanced audience, as one, showed their appreciation for not only what had gone before and which they had so much enjoyed but as a mark of appreciation to all concerned for providing, against all the difficulties, such a rewarding and joyous occasion in these strange and worrying times.

Under Paul Hayward’s splendid stewardship and the excellent supportive musical brilliance of Michael Overbury the Choir continues to develop – despite everything that Covid has thrown at them. Great leaders in any walk of life may have different qualities which enable them to inspire their followers: technical skills, knowledge, charisma, presence, enthusiasm, rigour, discipline….the list is endless. In Paul Hayward and Michael Overbury there is no shortage of technical skills, musical knowledge or profound musicality – and certainly, enthusiasm, sparkle, industry and a host of other praiseworthy qualities are in ready supply. But, there is something else that Paul and Michael bring to the Choir and which  was shown to full effect in last night’s concert and which we have seen so often before. It is something to which the choir members (and audience) can relate - namely, a simple but powerful empathy. Let’s call it humanity, a deep understanding of the works being sung and equally importantly of the people singing and playing them. 

To watch and listen to the great Herbert von Karajan was to see a man at the peak of technical brilliance and musicology leading unarguably the greatest musicians in the world – the Berlin Phil. But Paul Hayward and Michael Overbury perhaps offer a different musical reality and leadership – they are in tune not only with the music but with the people and the occasion and last night’s performance displayed those qualities to perfection. At a time when humanity might feel crushed by and in fear of the plague which continues to beset us, at a time when our newspapers and social media are so often filled with bitterness and dismay, and at a time when the world and our day to day life seems threatened on so many fronts – global warming, austerity, inequality, violence on our streets and all the rest – it was not, last night, technical brilliance that we sought (although we got it in bucketfuls!). Nor was it soaring sweeping, explosive musical grandness or the life changing musical experiences of mighty works or great musical celebration. It was - for me, and I suspect for many others in last night’s audience – a beautifully chosen programme which allowed us the time to reflect, to feel comforted, to enjoy the quiet mystery and contemplative beauty of the music and the gentle awe and wonder of the Christmas story that we sought. And the Choir, the Ensemble and the soloists gave us all that in abundance. 

The choice of programme, the manner of its performance and the sincerity of the whole occasion ensured that everyone, it seemed to me, smiled, restored a little perhaps as, at 9.30, they passed by me in the Church doorway and quietly stepped outside into the cold Ruddington air. A time to reflect, to feel comforted, and to enjoy the quiet mystery and wonder of the Christmas story, a time to wrap ourselves in the gentle sublime beauty of the music and a time to hear and ponder what other humans over the centuries have heard and pondered at this time of year are perhaps  qualities that might not figure high in the music purist’s list but they are, and for last night’s Covid dictated concert, were vital – for they reminded us of our humanity and our small place in the great scheme of things and they recharged everyone’s batteries both musically and emotionally. These were the gifts that Paul Hayward and Michael Overbury and all the performers brought and were in such plentiful supply in St Peter’s Church on Saturday night. And there were many on Saturday night, like me, who thanked all those concerned for it.