CHOIR AND CONDUCTOR  FORGE REWARDING PARTNERSHIP

Dyfed Choir’s first performance under the baton of their new conductor, Daniel Cook, bore all the hallmarks of a rewarding partnership that promises much for the future.

That choir and conductor had a bare two months to develop a challenging programme of Passiontide music for a successful concert in St Martin’s Church, Haverfordwest, was a notable achievement in itself.

The programme offered contrasting musical fare. The first half was devoted to more traditional offerings in which Joseph Rheinberger’s Cantus Missae and Bruckner’s Christus factus est stood out. Palestrina’s Sicut cervus tore at the heart strings in a manner familiar to the Italian composer and there was a choral gem from an unexpected source, the cellist Pablo Casals.

The second half was in total contrast and, as Daniel Cook alluded in his introduction, had content that was not for the faint-hearted. The centrepiece was Kenneth Leighton’s Crucifixus pro nobis, a small-scale cantata setting of words by the 17th century poets, Patrick Casey and Phineas Fletcher. It was a highly charged work in which harmonies contrasted with subtle dissonance that some ears might have found jarring, but they combined to create a powerful dynamic.

The performance owed much to a compelling contribution by the soloist Hugh Hetherington, who is the Decani Tenor at Salisbury Cathedral, where Daniel Cook was the Assistant Director of Music before his appointment as Organist and Director of Choristers at St David’s Cathedral.

Leighton, a northern lad who died at the unconscionably early age of 59, was taken under his wing by the established composer Gerald Finzi, whose own Lo, the full, final sacrifice was an apposite supporting work.

The concert concluded in the comforting warmth of the John Ireland standard, Greater love hath no man.

Daniel Cook forsook the podium to contribute contrasting organ solos by Merkel, Parry and Leighton himself, and Simon Pearce gave a polished performance as concert organist.

Calvin Pugsley, Leominster, Herefordshire