BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong
Wednesday 15 March 2017
Attendite, popule
(or blood, lice, frogs, caterpillars, hailstones and
thunderbolts)
we are privileged to hear on a daily basis, at
Pilgrims’ and in the College.
The release of tension when the red light
went out at the conclusion of the organ
voluntary was palpable, along with a feeling
of a job more than well done. A visit to
the outside broadcast van after the service
provided a fascinating experience for the
boys, who learned that the whole operation
ran on two 13A sockets and that the van
had enough battery power to manage even
without that!
The Quiristers, along with the full
Winchester College Chapel Choir, reached
a rather larger congregation than usual for
Choral Evensong on Wednesday 15 March,
which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
The psalm for the fifteenth evening of the
month, Psalm 78, is the longest psalm set
over a single evening: a 73-verse tale of those
who forsook the Lord, His vengeance and
reconciliation. The Choir’s wonderfully clear
and expressive diction, under Director of
Chapel Music Malcolm Archer, supported
by Jamal Sutton’s imaginative word-painting
in the organ accompaniment, brought to
life a vivid and dramatic parable of ‘hard
sentences of old’ such that the various
creatures positively leapt and slithered from
the pages of the Prayer Book.
‘That their posterity might know it’
When the BBC last visited Winchester
College in 2014, the live broadcast did not
make it to air - as the producer explained
to the congregation before the broadcast,
the lines had been booked to the Cathedral
rather than the College. Happily, no such
confusion arose on this occasion, and an
estimated audience of 300,000 was able to
join in an enthralling live service.
When the red light flickered at precisely
3.30pm, the Chapel was expectant and the
choir poised, the opening chord of Oliver
Tarney’s haunting introit, Come Let us Return
to the Lord, having just died away on the
organ. Steady red light, and straight in... As
one of the Qs noted afterwards, ‘you sing
better because you are under pressure’.
Chris Jones, Q Parent (yr 6)
The marathon psalm followed, and then
a powerful performance of Kenneth
Leighton’s setting of the evening canticles
for Magdalen College, Oxford.
The anthem was William Byrd’s Civitas
Sancti Tui, a five-part unaccompanied
Lenten setting of words from Isaiah (Zion
has become a wilderness) which the Choir also
later took with them on tour to Germany
at the end of March. The Choir has rarely
sung better, and all concerned should
take great pride in a wonderful service, a
magnificent advertisement for the musical
standards which our boys attain, and which
Recording for BBC Radio 3
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