Waverley Singers

Waverleys in vibrant form

The following review by Gerald Moss appeared, we believe in the Farnham Herald, after the concert. 

The Waverley Singers summer concert was given at St Thomas Church and included in the programme were three solos given by Paul Griffiths on the excellent organ in this church.

The first half of the programme took the form of a pot pourri of musical delights, some 14 separate choral items in all, split into three groups by two contrasting pieces for the organ, one of which was quite a delightful musical joke by Pietro Yon.

Such a long succession of short vocal items is likely to raise its own problems of concentration and stamina, but any such were handled with ease, and certainly the interest of the audience was held throughout.

There were, however, one or two places where this comparatively small church just could not accommodate acoustically the sheer large volume of sound that a large choir such as this is capable of, and as a result a proper balance between voices was not always maintained, but these are small points and the overall effect was always good.

The concert started with the old favourite Zadok the Priest by Handel and the glorious volume of sound raised to the rafters at the climax was very impressive indeed.

The speed taken, however, was unfortunately a little too fast for either the singers or the organist to do proper justice to the intricate nature of this very fine piece of music and some of the more subtle effects were lost.

The best music of the evening was, however, reserved for the second half of the concert. Just three, but more substantial vocal items were given, which, together with a particularly fine contrasting piece of organ music, Grand choeur dialogue by Gigout, made a complete balanced musical feast in its own right.

Most memorable for me was the outstanding sensitive and accurate singing by the choir in the Vaughan Williams setting of the set of three songs from Shakespeare's plays.

These are really quite difficult to do and a lot of hard work behind the scenes must have been done to reach the high standard achieved.

This was beautiful music most beautifully presented, and is indeed a worthy item for the repertoire of this talented choir.

The Parry motet, Blest Pair of Sirens and the Bach, Singet dem Herrn, were more familiar and were also each very well sung- and obviously enjoyed as much by the choir as the audience, which is as it should be.

The Bach was quite the most splendid way to end such a marvellous evening’s music.

The Silver Swan was simply an unnecessary anticlimax!