REVIEW

We Will Remember Them

Romsey Choral Society, Romsey Abbey

Saturday's audience in Romsey Abbey enjoyed an unusual and moving programme, two sections of which were conducted with commitment and flair by Jamie W Hall.

At the start of the concert, Dorothy Baverstock told the audience about the Romsey War Horse Memorial Project. A magnificent bronze resin sculpture has been commissioned from Amy Goodman. It will be placed in the Romsey Memorial Park in the new year.

The concert opened with the première of the work, “Horses: A Gift To Mankind”, by the Dutch composer, Paul van Gulick. It has been written to commemorate the centenary of the Romsey Remount Depot and its role during WW1. It is dedicated to the Romsey Choral Society and its chairman, Kath Tilling.

It was conducted by the composer, who inspired the choir and soloists, Olivia Robinson and Charles Gibb to give a detailed and stirring performance.

The work outlines and laments the fate of the millions of horses that perished in WW1. The work draws on multiple traditions and texts and musical styles and was highly dramatic.

Blazing brass and drums took us into the sound world of Sir George Dyson and his highly pictorial work, the cantata, “Agincourt”, which uses texts from Shakespeare’s, Henry Vth. The work seems to belong to that long tradition of music that glorifies war, but this view is undermined by its inclusion of the text that describes the common humanity of the men: “Fire answers fire and through their paly flames/Each battle sees the other’s umbered face.”

The Southern Sinfonia orchestra vividly realised the exciting score, although at times the brass slightly overwhelmed the choir.

The choir was augmented by twenty-one Dutch singers and they made a significant contribution to this vocally very demanding work.

The poems of Walt Whitman and quotations from various psalms are chosen by Ralph Vaughan Williams to plead for peace in his cantata: “Dona Nobis Pacem”. The opening plea, beautifully sung by the soprano soloist and choir, moves seamlessly into a nightmarish parody of the music of war. The baritone, Edward Price, sings movingly of this “soiled world” and then the persistent drums invade again. Peace came at the very end of the work, when the spell-bound audience sat in silence, held by the work’s emotional power and the hushed intensity of the final call for an end to all wars.

 Carol Bishop