REVIEW
Sansara Choir, St Peter’s Church, Stockbridge

SANSARA greeted the audience for the second concert of this year’s Stockbridge Music series with surround sound.

The 21 young singers split into smaller choirs along both side aisles to perform the complex motet Nasciens Mater by the French composer, Jean Mouton (1459-1522).

A divine sound enveloped the audience. Surely Mouton would have been impressed by such a faultless theatrical performance.

This outstanding singing set the tone for the entire concert, the first half devoted to more works written during the Renaissance. For its welcome return to Stockbridge, Sansara sang the music of Peter Phillips (c1560-1628), Alonso Lobo (1555-1617), Nicholas Gombert (c1495-c1560) and Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672).

All these composers lived comparatively long lives – some of them rocky – and wrote prodigiously. The second half opened in sharp contrast. Rudolf Mauersberger (1889-1971), director of the Dresden Boys Choir, wrote Wie Liegt die Stadt so wüst (how desolate lies the city) only days after the bombing of February 1945. Sansara co-founder, Tom Herring, read out the text before the performance. Sadly many in the church found it difficult to hear him, an argument for including translations in the concert programmes. However the moving harmonies were deeply expressive, clearly reflecting the meaning of the words. Climaxing with the cry of ‘Warum’ (‘Why’), this is literate, figurative music, not a challenging listen, nevertheless provocative. The choir excelled.

The concert ended suitably with Gustav Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, sung with yet more perfection and feeling. At least it should have ended there, but for the choir adding an extra piece unnecessarily. The Holst was a moving and ideal enough finish. But this is nit-picking after an evening’s rewarding reassurance that the finest English choral tradition endures in the hands of a new generation of talented young singers.

James Montgomery