Weymouth Choral Society under the baton of musical director, Helen Brind, ushered in spring with a magnificent early Easter concert at St. Mary’s Church in Weymouth. The concert was entitled Hallelujah Is Our Song and featured some of the best-known and best-loved music in praise of the resurrection of Christ – a Mass by Schubert and part of Handel’s Messiah.
The choir was in superb form, supported by two outstanding soloists, soprano Abbi Temple and baritone Michael Dewis, and accompanied throughout by the society’s president, David Bruce-Payne at the organ. His masterful playing movingly matched the many moods of the concert from quiet pathos to jubilant triumph.
The concert opened with three short well-loved pieces which set the tone for a powerful and moving musical evening. The Scottish hymn, Brother James’s Air, introduced the audience to Abbi Temple’s lyrical and soaring soprano voice. César Franck,’s setting of Panis Angelicus, the Bread of Angels, gave us the first taste of Michael Dewis’s powerfully resonant baritone.
Both Temple and Dewis filled St. Mary’s with cathedral-quality sound in their solo performances as well as blending smoothly with a choir in excellent voice.
The choir’ s projection was helped by new portable tiered staging which they were using for the first time. The tiers gave the Chancel the look of an auditorium without in any way diminishing the religious setting, appropriately for this concert beneath Sir James Thornhill’s painting of the Last Supper.
An unexpected and enjoyable moment in the concert came when Brind relinquished her conductor’s baton briefly and joined the soloists to form a trio for a passage in the Schubert mass.
After the interval, the concert was entirely given over to the second part of Handel’s Messiah which chronicles The Passion of Christ. Under Brind’s direction, the choir seems to excel concert by concert and their performance of this ever popular oratorio more than fulfilled expectations.
One outstanding feature was the choir’s diction, with every word coming through clearly and strongly. Their musicality was greatly enhanced by the remarkable individual performances of Temple and Dewis and the whole evening came to a triumphant climax as the audience rose to its feet for the Hallelujah Chorus.
Norman Hartley