St George’s Cathedral Consort sing Allegri to ABBA at Government House Ballroom

Church met concert hall when St George’s Cathedral Consort sang Allegri to ABBA at Government House for Music on the Terrace on Sunday.

The 20-strong choir opened with traditional praise in William Byrd’s Sing Joyfully, exploding gently in the still air of the ballroom with crisp diction and multilayered musical lines, warm and invigorating on a cool winter’s afternoon.

“Blow the trumpet” in the lyric redoubled the effort, rippling through the ranks with percussive effect; the whole piece a fanfare, radiant in the climax.

The headline number, Allegri’s Miserere, instantly cooled the mood, its Latin intonation richly redolent of timeless devotion.

Tenor Jason Kroll led the call and response, measured and meditative, triggering close harmony in the choir. Soprano Lucinda Nicholls answered with a towering, crystalline descant that opened a cathedral ambience, enhanced by the choristers’ concert blacks reflecting religious habits.

Some sounds effortlessly conjure the divine, and long hours at St George’s under Joseph Nolan’s direction have forged the harmony of this group to a fine edge; balanced through multiple changes in register and dynamics, exquisitely tuned like a grand piano.

Thomas Weelkes’ Alleluia next turned up the dial, filling the neo-classical heights of the room with exuberant peals of praise; blissful but brief.

Eric Whitacre’s contemporary Alleluia dialled back to worship, a constant drone leading in rolling waves of voice, settling to David Woods’ darkly numinous bass solo and summoning billowing choral phrases, each eloquent in hope. A kaleidoscope of vocal colour, constantly renewed, subsided at the last to a whisper.

Nolan praised the group for their versatility in covering a span of 300 years in musical history.

As if to prove it, Bernstein’s There’s a Place for Us (West Side Story) changed genre but not so much style in a chorale version oozing warmth from wordless tenor-bass backing and ingenue charm in a generous soprano-alto leading line; altos jumping out briefly then blending back in a deliciously complex chord to close.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight put alto Anita Saxby front and centre, a lyrical ballad voice, simple yet enticing, supported by the lightest touch in a repetitive rhythmic backing; a lullaby to still the deepest of jungles.

Jazz standard Autumn Leaves presented denser harmonies rising and falling with the mood, cascading tones in the cadence a soundscape of forest and woodland at the dying of the season.

And so to ABBA, and a trilogy of hits accompanied on piano by Music on the Terrace artistic director Mark Coughlan.

Thank You for the Music reintroduced Nicholls, the sublime soprano of the Allegri now a sultry soubrette; Super Trouper reshaped a favourite in cathedral mode, yet with all the vim and vigour of the original; and Mamma Mia on piano could have been any cover band, but choral treatment multiplied its charms to prove again there is no substitute for vocal quality.

Over the Rainbow to close the bill opened with symphonic overtones; a spectacular pause, then the gentlest of renderings of the title line, gathering bit by bit to a warm and vibrant climax, with blue skies shining through.

For an encore, Super Trouper on replay drew even more applause the second time.