Review: Cantores Olicanae -Music for the Fallen at St Margaret's, Ilkley, Saturday 19th November 2016

MUSIC inspired by poets of the First World War overlaid this thoughtful programme which opened with a setting of Lawrence Binyon's poem With Proud Thanksgiving, from Edward Elgar's choral work The Spirit of England. Cantores sang the text as if reinvigorated by Rory Johnston, their young new musical director.

Elgar's song Where Corals Lie introduced the evening's soloist Lucy Vallis. This young mezzo soprano is currently in her final undergraduate year at the Royal Northern College of Music. She has an attractive mellowed timbre and a feeling for words, as her carefully shaded illumination of Richard Garnett's lines amply demonstrated.

Cantores tenor and trumpeter Geoff Cloke has been inspired by his grandfather's war grave at Reichswald to compose settings of five well known poems for his choir. These include Wilfred Owen's 1914, Isaac Rosenberg's Marching, Rupert Brook's The Soldier, and John McCrea's In Flanders Fields. Cloke adds a plangent trumpet solo to his setting of Binyon's immortal lines For the Fallen. Cloke admirably succeeds in his stated aim of conveying the changing attitudes to the Great War from the bombast of its early stages. The Choir sang off the words as though emotionally involved; Alan Horsey's piano accompaniment was beautifully articulated.

Mr Horsey took his place at the organ console for Elgar's choral work, The Music Makers. Conductor Rory Johnston coaxed a sharply focused tone, wide-ranging dynamics and excellent projection of Arthur Shaughnessy's text from his choir. Mezzo soloist Lucy Vallis made a profoundly moving impact from her first entry. The rich sonorities of the organ of St Margaret's underpinned a finely balanced performance of Elgar's deeply poignant work.

by Geoffrey Mogridge