Spitalfields Music: Songs from Northern Lands
Choir of Royal Holloway, Rupert Gough director
Christ Church Spitalfields. 11 December 2015

Arvo Pärt: Magnificat; Rihards Dubra: A child’s prayer; Vytautas Miškinis: Oi šala, šala; Bo Hansson: Lighten mine eyes; Ēriks Ešenvalds: Long Road, Ola Gjeilo: Northern lights; Einojuhani Rautavaara: Vespers from Vigilia.

Arvo Pärt provided a link between the earlier B’Rock/Julia Doyle concert and the later evening programme of a capella ‘Songs from the Northern Lands’ given by the Choir of Royal Holloway College. They opened with Pärt’s mesmerising Magnificat, the verse sections evolving around a high and long-held soprano note, and contrasting with fuller-textured passages. A similar drone note was at the core of Rihards Dubra’s ‘A child’s prayer’, again with a soprano solo. Vytautas Miškinis’s Oi šala, šala uses the ‘sh’ sound of ‘šala’ to invoke the sense of shivering in the frost. It is performed with three remote female voices (with noisy shoes!) echoing each other, a soprano solo and an almost inaudible little bell that reinforced the end of phrases. Continue reading →