Dunedin Consort’s 25th Birthday
Greyfriars Kirk - 18/03/22
When is a Review not a Review?
When it’s a Blog!
Fran and I were invited a few weeks ago to the 25th Birthday Concert of the Dunedin Consort, in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh. It took place on Friday 18th March, with a second concert in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum the following day.
I planned to write a review for the EMR, since it marked a very important aspect of Scottish Music, a celebration of the 25 year success story of the Consort, which gave its first concert in the Queen’s Hall in 1996. Now, those of you of a mathematical bent will notice that 1996 to 2022 is 26 years, but the dreaded Mr Covid has intervened to confuse the numbers, and anyway, nothing was going to stop a good party!
Having just returned home from the concert, I have decided, rather than a review, to write an appreciation of the Consort instead. This is in no way to suggest it wasn’t a good concert. It was excellent, featuring the music of Purcell, Handel and Corelli, and with particularly fine contributions by Julia Doyle (Soprano), James Hall (Countertenor) and Paul Sharp (natural Trumpet). However, my own association with the Dunedin Consort goes back almost to the beginning, with memorable highlights including “Messiah” in the Queen’s Hall, “Saul” in Glasgow University, a Schubert concert in Aberdeen University and the award-winning recording of Bach’s “Matthew Passion”. For this reason, I feel it is not possible for me to write an objective review of a concert by the group. I have been careful in the time that I have been writing for the Edinburgh Music Review not to review concerts or operas that feature friends and colleagues with whom I have worked closely, and I hope you will understand my caution in this instance.
Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the contribution made by the Dunedin Consort to Scottish music over the last 25 years, and so I offer here a few thoughts and memories over that period and also a look ahead to the future.
It was the brainchild of the singer/conductor Ben Parry and the soprano Susan Hamilton in 1996 to set up a fully professional vocal consort in Scotland, using Scottish or Scottish-based singers, to cover a repertoire which was not generally tackled much here, music from the pre-Classical era, particularly the Baroque period, and also contemporary vocal music, including Ronald Stevenson, a composer dear to my heart.
I had met Susan in Belgium around the same time, when we were both singing in concerts given in Belgium and France by Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent, coincidentally also music by Purcell, and his contemporary, Pelham Humfrey. It was delightful to discover another Scot working in Europe, and she mentioned that she was planning to set up a new group in Scotland. At that time, I was living in London and had no plans to return to Scotland, but when we did come back, in 1997, I found that Susan had indeed set up her group, named after the anglicisation of the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, Dùn Èideann, the Dunedin Consort. As an operatic bass, I didn’t fit into her remit for consort singers, but I was aware that her, and Ben’s, project was taking off and wished it well. There had been early music groups previously in Scotland, and indeed I had appeared many times in the 1980s with Warwick Edward’s excellent Scottish Early Music Consort, but the Dunedin project was more ambitious, and began to be a part of Scottish musical life.
The arrival of the musicologist and harpsichord and organ player, John Butt, at Glasgow University, in 2003, meant that we now had in Scotland one of the foremost baroque specialists in the world, and soon it was announced that John would be the Musical Director of the Dunedin Consort. His influence expanded the scope of the Consort, and it became more of a baroque orchestra with a speciality in vocal music rather than just a vocal consort. By this time, Ben Parry had moved south and was no longer involved, but Susan continued to sing and played a full part in the consort’s administration. This was the period of my main collaborations with the Dunedins, as I was keen to sing a bit in Scotland after a long spell of almost exclusively foreign work. I had established something of a reputation as a baroque singer, through notable recordings and concerts with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre and René Jacobs and his Concerto Vocale, but was beginning to move into a heavier repertoire, singing Wagner, Strauss, Britten and Verdi, so this period with the Dunedin Consort marked my baroque swansong. Unlike the Silver Swan of Gibbons’ madrigal, I didn’t sing once and then no more, but my voice was maturing into a bigger, more resonant instrument, and I was grateful to the Dunedins and John Butt for letting me sing this repertoire for the last time. Our Messiah in the Queen’s Hall was a memorable performance for me, and the one-to-a-part Matthew Passion recording was a great success with the public and the reviewers. It was quite an undertaking nonetheless, as I had to learn all the chorus lines as well as the solos. Ben and Susan had been very keen on the idea that much music in this period was sung with extremely small vocal resources, with soloists stepping out of a small choir, but singing everything else as well. John Butt continued this practice. Bach’s St Matthew Passion was written for double choir, and double orchestra, but basically with one voice or one instrument to a part. Consequently, on that recording, I sang all the notes ascribed to Bass 2, both solo and chorus, but entirely on my own. If I missed a note, it wasn’t there. No pressure then! The trouble was that I had never sung the chorus before. I had sung innumerable Passions as Christus or bass soloist, and had heard the choruses sung around me on many occasions, but I had never actually sat down and learned those chorus lines. Dear reader, I did then! It’s fascinating now to listen to that recording and hear myself and Matthew Brook thundering out those choral bass lines with some gusto!
The Dunedin Consort has gone from strength to strength since that recording, with new recordings of many of the core works of the baroque period. There have been international tours, regular concerts in Scotland, and many of the new recordings have won major awards. Singers introduced by the Consort have gone on to fine careers. The baritone, Matthew Brook, is much sought after, and Nicholas Mulroy, who sang an excellent Evangelist on that Matthew Passion, has reached great heights, and I see that he has recently been appointed as Assistant Director of the Consort. My only caveat, and this applies to Scottish Opera too (although there seems to be some sign of change there), is that Ben and Susan’s vision of a Scottish and Scottish based Consort has been largely abandoned in the understandable quest for international success. It was noticeable that in the concert this week, celebrating 25 years of the group, none of the five soloists with biographies in the programme were Scots. This seems a shame to me, as the original purpose of the Consort was to provide work and a platform for Scottish artists. I believe that more of the instrumentalists are based here, but I would like to see more Scottish singers. Susan Hamilton doesn’t sing with the Consort any more, despite being one of the top baroque sopranos around, something I find sad. Given that I am semi-retired now myself, I can write objectively about this anomaly without inviting the accusation of self serving criticism.
I was, however, really pleased with the prominence given to Ben and Susan’s importance in the founding of the Dunedin Consort, both in the programme and in speeches on the night, and I am delighted to announce that an exclusive interview with both Ben and Susan will appear on the Edinburgh Music Review next month.
I can also reveal an exclusive interview on the EMR with Marjorie Stevenson, the widow of the famous Scottish composer, Ronald Stevenson, who died in 2015, and whose music was championed by Susan Hamilton in the early years, and who featured heavily in my own recent CD, “Songs of Stevenson”. This interview will also appear shortly.
Cover photo: Jen Owens (2019)
