Sinfonia Viva, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, 23 March 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Ruff

“A concert memorable for tender restraint and thoughtful intimacy.”

Fauré’s Requiem holds a special place in the hearts of audiences and choral societies alike. It is not only full of glorious melodies but it evokes exactly the atmosphere its composer intended: ‘intimate, peaceful, loving’. In fact, Fauré told a musician friend: ‘It is as GENTLE as I am myself’.

It's purity and intimacy aren’t easy for a big choir – like the Nottingham Harmonic – to bring off, especially for ears more used to hearing it in small-scale chamber performances. However, the Harmonic rose to the challenge, clearly expertly drilled by their music director Richard Laing and sensitively conducted in Saturday’s performance by Natalie Murray Beale. Their success was down to disciplined singing throughout. The lovely tunes have to be understated if they are to achieve their effect, so it was good to hear that the choir concentrated on rhythmic precision, accurate tuning, care with dynamics and - especially – crisp enunciation of the Latin words. You could see consonants being formed in their mouths before you heard them – and it was good to see them singing with their eyes as well as their vocal cords.

They were joined by April Fredrick, who sang the famous Pie Jesu with touching tenderness, and by Simon Wallfisch, well able to produce deep emotion by exercising restraint and producing an eloquent purity of tone. Just one disappointment: Fauré’s original idea was to use just one solo violin in the whole piece, creating a magical effect in the Sanctus. Adding all Sinfonia Viva’s violins sadly produced less of an impact on this occasion.

Nevertheless, the orchestra was on fine form. It was good to hear them in the very rarely performed Overture No. 2 by the 19th century French composer Louise Farrenc, a beneficiary of the recent resurgence of interest in forgotten women composers. The overture starts with an epic slow introduction but when it really gets going the mood is bright, bouncy and energetic. It’s the sort of piece which makes a strong first impression, especially in Sinfonia Viva’s crisp, smiling, buoyant performance under Natalie Murray Beale.

And just before the interval came Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, a piece which radiates the love between its composer and his wife Clara, for whom the work was written. It’s not a flashy work: rather one that is dominated by a word at the start of the score: ‘affettuoso’ (‘affectionate’). There is none of the usual competition between soloist and orchestra; instead there’s a dialogue of equals, in which each responds thoughtfully and sensitively to the other’s ideas. The soloist Jean-Selim Abdelmoula, Sinfonia Viva and their conductor were clearly of one mind in their approach: in the predominantly meditative opening movement; in the delicate, tiptoeing Intermezzo and in the joyful exuberance of the Finale.

Sinfonia Viva

Natalie Murray Beale (conductor)

Jean-Selim Abdemoula (piano)

April Fredrick (soprano)

Simon Wallfisch (baritone)

Nottingham Harmonic Choir (Richard Laing, Music Director).