Prague Spring - March 27

On Saturday 27 March, in Kidderminster Town Hall, a near-capacity audience enjoyed a concert of Czech and Hungarian music performed by the Choral Society, a fine quintet of guest soloists, and the Elgar Sinfonia - all under Geoffrey Weaver’s baton.

The evening began with Smetana’s rumbustious Dance of the Clowns, and continued with Dvořák’s gorgeous Song to the Moon, sung with great passion by soprano, Linda Richardson. Then came the intensely emotional Missa Brevis by Kodály. The familiar words of the Mass sounded strange against the often exotic music! Kodály made use of plainchant, but this work is imbued with the influences of Hungarian folk music, with its characteristic rhythms, phrasing and modal nature. Taking into account the fact that Kodály completed this piece in Budapest during the horrors of World War II, while he and his wife were actually in hiding, the final Dona nobis pacem plea of the Agnus Dei becomes all the more compelling.

The evening ended with Dvořák’s youthful Stabat Mater, a work of lush orchestral colours, and the composer’s melodic gifts well to the fore. Much of the work is operatic in style, especially the writing for the four soloists. In Dvořák’s setting, the liturgical sequence is divided into ten parts, with the first (Stabat Mater Dolorosa) and the last (Quando corpus morietur) thematically linked. The final section contains a complex, but wonderfully exhilarating Amen fugue.

 Peter Knott