Newcastle Bach Choir, King’s Hall, Newcastle

Nov 25 2008 by Thomas Hall, The Journal

THE Bach Choir’s programme booklet quotes Ralph Vaughan Williams who wrote of conducting the choir at St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle, as a great experience.

That was in the 1920s, only a few years after the choir was formed to sing the then barely known cantatas of JS Bach. And the Bach Choir continues to thrive, filling the King’s Hall with an audience no doubt keen to hear the still barely known choral music of Pressburg-born (now Bratislava) composer Jan Nepomuk Hummel.

Like RVW, Hummel, too, visited the North East, giving a concert at Durham. Friend to Haydn and Beethoven, Hummel’s fame as a pianist and composer spread.

Haydn later recommended him as his successor to the prestigious position of Konzertmeister at the Esterházy palace, Eisenstadt, where Hummel wrote the Mass in E flat major, Op. 80. A work none the worse for its debt to its composer’s mentor, it leaves me keen to explore Hummel’s operas – the tenor solo in the Et incarnatus coming in a heartfelt reading by Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks.

Mezzo-soprano Beth Mackay and bass Christopher Foster matched him in vocal prowess, but it was soprano Olivia Robinson who had most to do and negotiated the soaring vocal lines and intricate decorations with fluency and seeming ease.

Unlike that of Haydn, Hummel’s music has never had a modern revival, but the Bach Choir’s performance argued strongly for his place in the classical canon.

Again the singers proved as well matched in ensemble as they were as soloists, the choir, alive to every direction from conductor Eric Cross, singing with precision and subtlety while the orchestra did full justice to both composers.