NCC
NCC immediately responsive to Stephen Layton’s command of detail and dramatic design.
The Irish Times
15 November, 2003
Stephen Layton/National Chamber Choir

Stephen Layton is one of those conductors who achieves much by doing little, or so it seemed here. In this demanding programme it was revealing that the choir’s relaxed confidence was not affected by some unwelcome intrusions of sound from without and within the hall. For a 17 voice group to sing James Macmillan’s Mairi, which divides into 16 parts, is no minor task, especially as the music lives on quiet, dissonant clusters that call for pinpoint accuracy with pitch. The atmosphere is of the mystic Celtic kind, and even though there were some tiny wobbles of detail, the performance worked because everyone was secure in individual and collective purpose.

The concert included two utterly different settings of though lamentations of Tallis from 16th century England and Ginastera from 20th century Argentina. The latter is in three movements, the first a reckless depiction of anger, the second a slow lament, and the third a gradual return to confidence. In this compelling music the NCC was immediately responsive to Stephen Layton’s command of detail and dramatic design.

The Tallis was equally gripping, but in an utterly different way. Each line of this intensely polyphonic music was independent, so that gritty dissonances and twists of harmony spoke for themselves, with no need for emphasis. The conductor sometimes moved just a finger; and to make a point about pitch or dynamics he moved a bit more.

Here and in Arvo Part’s Nunc Dimittis the control of diminuendos was astonishing. Yet at all times there was an underlying charge; just enough tension to make just the point throughout a programme which called for cool heads and passionate certainty.

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