Why this requiem doesn't make death sound like a painful experience
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Inverness Choral Society
Spring Concert: With Faure’s Requiem
Inverness Cathedral
The chance to hear French composer Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem at Inverness Cathedral on Saturday proved two things.
Conductor Gordon Tocher’s choice of words in the programme to describe the work as the most “consoling and beautiful” of requiems, were perfectly-chosen.
Secondly, not one minute of the choir’s rehearsals – to reach the level of unity and responsiveness to the range of dynamics their conductor asked of them – seemed to have gone to waste in their assured performance.
It was a thrilling experience to hear Fauré’s Requiem live for the first time, as performed by Inverness Choral Society, having known parts of the choral work well for more than 30 years.
Possibly like many others in the packed cathedral, for me the music had already been a comfort around death – my mother’s. From the requiem, Pie Jesu sung by a treble voice was played at her funeral and often in the months before she died.
Since then, I've also learned to love the final movement In Paradisum which comes across as the quiet peace after a storm, the text opening "Let angels lead you to paradise". And perhaps that quality has led to it being used in film soundtracks as diverse as horror 28 Days Later and Terrence Malick’s depiction of war The Thin Red Line.
The night of sacred choral music began with a range of pieces by Elgar, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Bach, setting the mood for the Fauré to come.
Gordon Tocher introduced first piece The Spirit Of the Lord Is Upon Me from The Apostles by English composer Edward Elgar and the second, German composer Felix Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer.
He reminded the audience that though the composers may seem very different “… they have more in common than their rather fine moustaches!”.
The Elgar chorus from The Apostles gave the chance for Inverness Choral’s audience to tune their ears to the sound of the choir with the organ accompaniment played by Adrian Marple.
Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer from psalm 55 – and including the more familiar lines and melody of Oh for the wings of a dove – allowed the audience to start to appreciate the clear, unforced, sweet voice of returning soprano Colleen Nicoll.
Mendelssohn’s Psalm 43 with its “Hope In God” message led on to the chance to hear bass-baritone Colin Brockie. He began with the composer’s Elijah and the Lord God Of Abraham aria – his voice, resonant and unfussy with a rich tone.
Tcaikovsky’s The Cherubic Hymn saw the choir stretching out, building washes of melody, in the piece inspired by the orthodox Russian service, where Tchaikovsky, a non-believer, created heavenly sounds.
Bach’s solo My Heart Ever Faithful, sung by Colleen Nicoll, was the final piece before the Fauré.
Then the intimate performance of the requiem we had waited for, arrived – living up to the composer’s own description of it as “a lullaby of death”, the organ was less imposing than a full orchestra, and warm and dramatic when needed. And Fauré's Requiem came, without other requiems' sometimes fearsome depictions of judgment day with pounding accompaniment.
As the shimmering quality of the chorus’s voices in In Paradisum brought the 38-odd minutes of the requiem to a close, it seemed more about bliss than death.
Maybe that is because it is what Fauré believed. He once described death as “an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience”.
That is how Inverness Choral Society made it sound – and it would have been lovely to be able to hear it again, but it didn't look, sadly, as if a recording of the night had been made.Luckily, this performance has earned its place in the memory.
The choir’s next performance will be Haydn’s Creation, postponed by Covid, as the original plan had been to perform it in the choral's 100th anniversary year. It will now happen at the Drumossie Hotel, on Sunday, November 19. More info: invernesschoral.org.uk
