It needs an English school choir to show how superb choral singing standards can be realised. The Sennocke Consort’s recital at Bagni di Lucca’s Teatro Accademico, as part of their Tour of Italy Summer 2017, was abundant proof of this incontrovertible fact.

Beginning with the father of English church music, Thomas Tallis, the evening’s concert progressed through to the twentieth century, including pieces by Clarke, Nares and Sullivan.

Here is the programme:

An added bonus was Allegri’s ‘Miserere’ whose performance achieved sublimity, especially in those moments when the descant soars up to transcendental heights.

Particularly enjoyable was the arrangement of Gospel songs by the consort’s conductor Christopher Dyer.

The soloist in that truly immortal aria from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ will surely be on the way to becoming another Emma Kirkby.

Also very effective was the continually changing combination of singers for the evening’s programme and the already excellent conducting skills shown by the pupils themselves.

In the hackneyed phrase of school reports it was only the audience who ‘could do better’. There were fourteen on the theatre’s stage and there were the same number in the audience.

Publicity cannot be blamed. The event was clearly indicated on the comune’s web sites and also, of course, on my blog page at

https://longoio3.com/2017/07/05/sevenoaks-school-comes-to-bagni-di-lucca/

Perhaps more posters could have been placed on the town’s already overloaded bar doors but, frankly, the attendance for the concert was that word often used by certain inhabitants of Tunbridge Wells ‘disgusting’.

Christopher shrugged it off as saying that the concert at Bagni di Lucca could be regarded as a dress rehearsal for the following evening’s concert at Lucca.

Until more people attend these special chances to hear how a school choir can and should sing, choral standards in Italy will continue to remain well below Anglo-Saxon distinction.

Just to show you how good an English school choir can sound like here are a few excerpts from the concert:

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=W-iAJHO67n0

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=UIBSklZyKgU

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=dchoIHGo2gw

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=hpy1oRaOHtY

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=MtDUBswGiHc

 

 

I do hope that at Lucca, at least, the number of the audience exceeded the performers on stage…