Saturday 20 June - Parish Church - 18:30
Fulham & Hammersmith Choral Society
Rossini 'Petite Messe Solennelle'
The third concert in the Wadhurst Summer Music Festival offered a welcome opportunity to hear Rossini’s last major composition, the Petite Messe Solennelle excitingly performed by four distinguished soloists and the Fulham and Hammersmith Choral Society conducted by Christopher Bracewell.
The Petite Messe Solennelle, completed in 1864, marked Rossini’s surprise return to large scale composition at the age of 71. After writing thirty nine operas, he had retired in 1829 at the age of 37 and had composed little of consequence for over thirty years. The mass represented a remarkable feat of creative renewal and is a work of considerable originality in which the influences of Palestrina, Bach and Haydn jostle in a fascinating way with his own former operatic style. It was first performed in a small private chapel in Paris and was originally scored for four soloists, a chorus of twelve singers, two pianos and harmonium. Despite the small forces employed the work is far from ‘petite’ since it includes a full setting of the catholic High Mass, a setting of the Corpus Christi text O Salutaris Hostia and an instrumental Preludio Religioso. Later Rossini prepared a large scale version scored for full orchestra.
Last Saturday’s performance used the original version but with a chorus of around sixty and the church organ substituting for the harmonium. The chorus (well refreshed – so we were informed – from its visit to The Greyhound beforehand!) rose splendidly to the many challenges put before it and earned a spontaneous round of applause for its spirited rendition of the Cum sancto spiritu chorus in the Gloria – surely one of the most ebullient fugues ever written. Rossini makes enormous demands on the four soloists and we were fortunate in that, in Jullia Gooding, Caroline Denley , Martin Hindmarsh and Wadhurst’s own Charles Rice, we had four singers fully capable of meeting them. Rossini had a particular love of the contralto voice and wrote an outstandingly beautiful part for it in the Agnus Dei that so movingly concludes the work. Christine Denley sang this most affectingly. The performance was underpinned by the untiring contributions of the two pianists, Andrew Wells and William Ferguson, and the organist Mark Lowther. By skilful registration, the organ was made to sound uncannily like a harmonium and dutifully provided a discrete support to the two pianos. However, during the Bach-inspired Preludio Religioso it was briefly allowed to throw off its disguise and take centre stage.
To hear such a fine performance of this comparatively little known masterpiece in the beautiful setting of our parish church was a privilege and one that was greatly appreciated by those who attended. One hopes that the Fulham and Hammersmith Choral Society can be prevailed upon to have another of its “awaydays” in Wadhurst before too long. AJD
