Powerful ‘Sound Tapestry’
from our correspondant, Cornelia Addicks
Rottweil: This year’s cycle of summer concerts came to a close with a very special concert. The vocal ensemble Musica in Maschera sang sacred music from five centuries and Adrian Moore played the organ in the Prediger Kirche.
‘Give ear unto me’ was the demand Benedetto Marcello made as long as 300 years ago and when Kate Gardner and Sue McIntyre Walker sang this song from the organ gallery, the large number of concert-goers listened attentively. The magnificent voices of the two soloists were supported by Adrian Moore, the leader of the ensemble, on the organ.
Moore ,whose friendship with the married organists Beate and Johannes Vohringer goes back to the early 80s, elicited magnificent tones on Georg Bohm’s ‘Prelude and Fugue in A minor’ With Frescobaldi’s Musical Flowers, he paid tribute to the Woman of Bergamo. On one of the more recent works, namely Stanford’s Postlude 6 set 2 opus 105, Moore gave a vigorous and, from time to time, almost harsh rendering of the work of the composer who was born in Dublin 150 years ago.
In calmer waters, the choir continued the concert with the chorale If you follow my commandments and the only contemporary work, John Rutter’s God be in my Head. Moore, who leads the choir, provided the bass voice himself, Roger Harding was a pleasing tenor. Jo Tucker(soprano) and Anne Furze (alto) completed the Leamington Spa group, which came together some eight years ago, and which has devoted itself to the music of the ‘Golden Age’. At Sunday evening’s concert there was a particularly impressive performance of Ave Maria, a work of Palestrina’s student, Tomas Luis de Victoria, and in addition William Byrd’s powerful ‘sound tapestry’, Santus, Bendictus, Agnus Dei was greeted with sustained applause at the end of the concert.
As an encore, Musica in Maschera sang a rythmic gospel song in the Zulu language.