Mike Jones

I think we can all do with some Christmas joy in these uncertain times.

Marjorie Pettit and her team of musicians and singers certainly gave us an abundance of it on Friday night with a thoughtfully chosen, subtly linked and beautifully executed series of Christmas music performances. And what is more, we all got to be part of it as a congregation, singing traditional carols while the Bermuda Chamber and the Bermuda School of Music Youth choirs wove gorgeous descants around the unison.

Kerri-Lynn Dietz sang three solos, including an authoritative Behold, a virgin shall conceive from Handel’s Messiah and, with the youth choir, one of the best interpretations of Adam’s O Holy Night I have ever heard. Her mezzo-soprano has great emotive power. Joanna Sherratt-Wyer’s soprano took flight and soared through Handel’s Rejoice Greatly, surely one of the most demanding of all his solos. Peter Nash gave us an excellent rendition of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols, with its echoes of the early church and plainchant.

Handel’s Messiah formed the musical anchor for the concert, played with a freshness and precision which enabled us to see into the deeper structures of the work and showed how, in the interaction between voice and orchestra, the finale of the Hallelujah Chorus is anticipated.

The imagery in the music included a focus on the shepherd in the Christmas story, ranging from the drone bagpipe sounds of Gaudete, echoed in the opening notes of Berlioz’s The Shepherd’s Farewell and through the powerful images in Michael Head’s The Little Road to Bethlehem.

The concert ended with a bang: William Mathias’ Sir Christèmas, part of his Ave Rex (Hail to the King) Op 45, which has a driving organ behind a Carl Orff-like, syncopated vocal fortissimo sung by these very joyous and justly triumphant choirs.