Concert Review
BBC Lunchtime Prom
Fiona Maddocks
Evening Standard
30 July 2007
Polyphony
Stephen Layton
Cadogan Hall
Blending is the secret of great choral singing. Stephen Layton's
fine chamber choir, Polyphony, has mastered this elusive art to
perfection, as was amply demonstrated at a lunchtime Prom at Cadogan Hall,
in a range of Shakespeare, Blake and Auden settings.
Using little or no vibrato, the group conjures a smooth, unblemished timbre like alabaster rendered in sound. Singers are hand-picked to create an aural pyramid, with light, high voices - enriched by, as far as one could tell, three male altos - resting on a sturdy bedrock of basses. Far from compressing the timbre, such careful structuring allows rare lucidity and resonance.
This was effective in the Vaughan William settings, especially The cloud capp'd towers and Come away, death. Three versions of Full fathom five provided a fascinating centrepiece, including one by Jaako Mantyjarvi (b 1963), its low "dingdong-bell" tolling as if from a drowned cathedral. For an encore, Polyphony gave us Sleep by Eric Whitacre (b 1970), an American composer little known beyond choral circles but loved by those who sing.