Culture: Chorus Left Searching ; Birmingham Conservatoire Chorus & Orchestra St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham

Summary

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With the appointment of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as his successor as Master of the Queen's Music only recently announced, it was timely to revisit the music of Malcolm Williamson last night, with Birmingham Conservatoire members presenting his Canticle of Fire. Perhaps the exhumation was not tactful, this setting of biblical and thirteenth-century texts a symptomatically bitty example of the composer's frequently maladroit structures.

Too often the chorus stands idle during long Messiaen-like organ interludes (heroically delivered by David Saint), returning only for several banal hymnic refrains.

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Culture: Chorus Left Searching ; Birmingham Conservatoire Chorus & Orchestra St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham

More rewarding for the highly musical Birmi...

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