Review of Concert of Carols – Joy and Alleluias by Cardiff Polyphonic Choir | Choral music

HAlifax, Nova Scotia, was where in March 1942 the ship carrying Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears home from America docked before setting off on its perilous crossing across the Atlantic. Chance decreed that Britten should purchase at the Halifax bookshop a copy of Gerald Bullitt’s collection, The English Galaxy of Short Poems, and the mysterious and evocative aura of some of the older texts immediately inspired him – unfazed by the boat’s activity – to set them to harp accompaniment. Perhaps this element of chance in the emergence of A Ceremony of Carols, with its iconic evocation of medieval sentiment and faith, helps define its enduring appeal.

Using a mixed choral arrangement by composer/conductor Julius Harrison, Britten was the centerpiece of the Cardiff Polyphonic Choir’s Christmas celebration, under their conductor Thomas Plant. This was clearly not the bright sheen of the boys’ voices to which we are more accustomed, but the atmosphere and dramatic flow of the 11 movements was there, from the opening understatement of the soprano to the fade-out of the Alleluia in the final stasis. In the central hymn “This Little Child,” the lyrics of 16th-century Catholic martyr Robert Southwell depict the Christ child as an angel come to avenge Satan: Blunt set a tempo that allowed the fast and furious rhythms to achieve a brilliant momentum, then textured vocal imitations then building tension toward an emphatic climax. The energy of this, along with the penultimate Deo Gracias, contrasted well with the radiant, bright beauty of There Is No Rose and Balulalow, Elen Hydref’s harp playing always expressive.

The earlier section of the delightful Polyphonic program had demonstrated different compositional traditions, with threads of connection given by repetition of key texts and hallelujah refrains. Mendelssohn’s eight-part movements for Advent and Christmas were paired with Gottfried Wolters’ setting of the pilgrimage song Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, in which, as the Virgin Mary walks through the forest, thorny trees blossom in her honour. Slovenian Gasper’s contemporary Hodie Christus natus est echoed the meditative feeling of John Rutter’s and Judith Ware’s hymns.

Works by Welsh composers Alun Hoddinott and William Mathias, commissioned by the Polyphonic Ensemble early in its six-decade history, are revisited here, where the danceable delight of Mathias’s A Christmas Walk with Philip Aspdin’s lively organ accompaniment ends appropriately with Noël, Noël, Noël! It is delivered in the form of shouts of joy.