Tyndale Choral Society gave a large audience in St James’ Church, Dursley, a most rewarding and thought-provoking commemoration of the fallen in war on Saturday 11th November. Their unusual programme Lest We Forget featured two lesser-known but powerful works by the great composers Handel and Elgar, and a new solution to the completion of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem.

Handel’s Funeral Anthem The Ways of Zion do Mourn is relatively neglected compared with his Coronation and Chandos Anthems. Perhaps this is due to its sombre mood: perfectly suited to Remembrance Day. It would be difficult to imagine a more compelling performance than that produced by Tyndale Choral Society and the Tyndale Sinfonia under conductor Ian Harrold last Saturday night. The opening was powerful and dark, with good balance between chorus and orchestra and precise orchestral rhythms providing vitality. The repeated lament ‘How are the mighty fallen!’ was interspersed with lighter, more radiant movements celebrating the lives of the fallen. The chorus skilfully negotiated all these variations in mood. There was a hushed start to the final movement, which finally led to a major key hymn-like remembrance of the dead reminiscent of ‘As in Adam all Die’ in Messiah.

Ian Harrold had the idea of retaining the dark instrumentation of Mozart’s Requiem for the other pieces in this concert. While it was strange to hear clarinets in Handel, this certainly worked for Elgar’s For the Fallen. The brass playing was particularly fine. Sir Edward Elgar was clearly greatly moved by the Great War, and his music contains disturbing elements which seem at odds with Laurence Binyon’s text. From the outset, Elgar strikes a mood of intense sorrow, but then at the words “They went with songs to the battle”, he undermines the text with a burlesque march worthy of Mahler. This reflects the horror of conflict in the Great War much more realistically than the words. There is a noble setting of the famous words “at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them”. Elgar then builds a superbly emotional final climax, but again the heartfelt sorrow and uncertainty seem ill-matched with the crystalline reassurance of the text. The chorus were clearly totally committed to this music and more than capable of presenting its varied moods; the playing of the orchestra led by their authoritative leader Justine Tomlinson was a revelation in this complex score.

Mozart’s Requiem is one of the prime works in the choral repertoire, popular with performers and audiences alike. Yet it has major structural problems, as Mozart died before he could finish it, and it had to be completed by the competent but uninspired Süssmayr. Last night, Tyndale Choral Society performed the work in a recent version by Robert Levin which attempts to address Süssmayr’s deficiencies. The chorus generated great excitement in the dramatic opening movements, although the volume was unrelentingly loud. The Tuba Mirum was particularly fine with expressive trombone and rich bass solos - in the Recordare, the ensemble of the solo quartet was most moving. The chorus was on great form, and sang with admirable vigour and accuracy in Domine Jesu Christe, and sensitivity at Hostias. Perhaps Lachrymosa could have done with warmer soprano tone, and the Quam Olim Abrahae fugue with more rhythmic vitality. Levin’s extensions of the Lachrymosa Amen and the Hosanna fugues certainly give the work more weight, but as there is only one Mozart, perhaps Süssmayr was wise in keeping his interpolations as short as possible. Nevertheless the vigour of Ian Harrold’s direction and the Tyndale forces did much to cover up the work’s problems.

This was a most imaginative programme, admirably suited to the occasion, and both chorus and orchestra were on top form. The audience could not fail to be impressed and moved by the quality of the music and the performances, and were warmly appreciative. Altogether an occasion for remembrance and to remember!

David Moss
12 November 2006

Note: this ‘internet edition’ is abridged from the original criticism written by David Moss; less than half of it survived in the ‘newspaper edition’ published by the Gloucestershire Gazette on 30th November.