Review

The National Chamber Choir of Ireland

at The Cleveland Museum of Art (October 14)

By Daniel Hathaway

“Everything Paul Hillier touches turns to choral gold”, said the New York Times in its rundown of the best CD's issued in 2005. On Friday evening, that was Irish gold, as Hillier led the National Chamber Choir of Ireland in a splendidly-sung yet somewhat perplexing program in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the Viva! & Gala Performing Arts Series.

The 17 singers, dressed in dark clothing with color splashes from neckties, scarves and jackets, made a powerful impression with their first piece, a lively and transparent performance of Bach's motet, Jauchzet dem Herrn. It's no easy thing to produce vocal lines that are at once percussive and lyrical, but the NCCI singers pulled that off magically.

The singers addressed four of Brahms' folk songs with rich tone and fine diction, then turned to a real curiosity: Siobhán Cleary's Theophilus Thistle & The Myth of Miss Muffet, an enthralling compendium of tongue-twisters in languages ranging from the standard European tongues to such dialects as Frisian, Occitan, Basque, Galecian and Cornish, sung, chanted, spoken on pitches, whispered and shouted. Some samples in translation give the flavor of the material:

Un pezzo di pizza che puzza nel pozo del pazzao di pezza.

A piece of pizza is stinking in the well of the madman of rags. (Italian)

Hengen hiren Haari heet Houltz hannert hierem hei'gen Haus. Hien hei'ert honnert hongrech Holzemer House'sen houschten.

Henry from the Hengen-House is chopping wood behind this high house. He hears a hundred hungry rabbits from Holzem coughing. (Luxembourgish)

Les chausettes de l'archi-duchesses sontelles sèches, arch-sèches?

Are the archduchess' socks dry, very dry? (French)

Considering the many tongues that were being twisted, this piece must have been a phenomenal challenge to learn. The NCCI were dazzling, and though the texts up took almost three pages in the program, they flashed by in short order. And that ended the first half of the concert.

The main event of the evening gave the concert its title: Acallam Na Senórach: An Irish Colloquy, an extended, cantata-like work for unacompanied chorus, solo guitar and two Irish flat drums played by two of the singers. Its composer, Tarik O'Regan, based it on a Middle Irish narrative called “The Colloquy of the Ancients” or “Dialogue of the Elders”, a time-warping meeting between St. Patrick and two of the last survivors of a band of warriors who should have died centuries ago, but are unaccountably still around to chat.

Only a few things happen: Patrick the saint baptizes Caílte; there is an exchange of poetry and song and stories; and eventually, the warriors decide it's time to take their leave and go to Tara.

Long stretches of narrative are sung in modestly dissonant chordal recitative, and there are several guitar interludes, played here by the excellent British guitarist Stewart French. Because of the sameness of the choral texture and the lack of any real action to describe, he whole effect of the piece is meditative and somewhat hypnotizing. You wake up at the end thinking you must have gone somewhere and returned, but you're not quite sure what happened in between.

That being said, once again the singers (now accessorized by Irish gold jewelry) were remarkable. They kept lengthy passages of recitative sharply in tune and met up perfectly with guitar pitches — something which also isn't easy to do— and their diction was perfectly clear.

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Published on ClevelandClassical.com October 18, 2011.

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