It is not often we in Edinburgh get the chance to hear the scholars of the Royal Conservatoire’s in full voice. I was delighted that Michael Bawtree suggested I should come to their concert the day following Ascension Day. Anglicans are far more accustomed to being in church on that Thursday which falls forty days after Easter than do Presbyterians.
There is some very fine choral music written for Ascension Day. The thirty strong Chamber Choir excelled in their singing and in their choice of works, which ranged all the way from the Renaissance with compositions by Victoria and Gibbons, through J S Bach and Finzi to Scotland’s own Judith Weir.
But to make this concert even better still, the singing was intersperced with organ music written for Ascension Day. Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension was first heard in 1933 as an orchestral work in four meditations. A year or so later he devised an organ version but had to rewrite the third movement for the purpose. And we heard each of the four movements played in great style by Geoffrey Woollatt on what is one of Edinburgh’s largest organs.
Geoffrey Woollatt was first a chorister in Southwell Minster before going to Chetham’s School of Music where he started Chetham’s Chorale. Because they sometimes sung Evensong in Manchester Cathedral it was not long before he was their Junior Organ Scholar. Eighteen months later he became Organ Scholar at Chester Cathedral, and then found his way to being Assistant Organist at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow working with Frikki Walker, and was a student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
In just over an hour the Chorus, Michael Bawtree and Geoffrey Woollatt gave me a wonderous sense of what the Ascension is all about for Christians - and this with no prayers or sermon. Well done!
Event: Friday 18 May 2012 at 6.30pm