Last updated 13:37, Thursday, 08 May 2008

The Wordsworth Singers, St Mary’s Church, WigtonThe choir, under the direction of conductor Edward Caswell, are to be congratulated upon their deft singing of a very difficult and demanding programme of music from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

They certainly jumped in at the deep end with Josquin’s motet Benedicta es Caelorum and quickly settled down to give heart-warming and convincing performances of this and his very beautiful Missa Pange Lingua – performances which glowed with an inner light, rhythmic complexities seeming to present no difficulties. The ‘forte’ singing of the Et Incarnatus in the Credo was novel and yet thought-provoking, as was the somewhat strange and remote placing at the end of the concert, the hymn melody Pange Lingua from which the mass grew.

Their account of Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn was gloriously confident. Articulation in the convoluted and quasi-instrumental lines was crisp.

Stravinsky’s Three Sacred Choruses were a restrained contrast, and must have taxed considerably the voices of all.

Charles Harrison’s organ playing was an astonishing demonstration of sheer virtuosity and superb musicianship, his Bach playing was authoritative and masterful and he seemed to make Louis Vierne’s Aubade and Naiades from the Suite Op. 55 bubble out of the instrument.

This is a group of considerable cultural stature.

DAVID UPTON