Light............................. John Tavener Music Festival made a midweek excursion from its base in Bantry for a concert in Skibbereen by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, under its conductor, Mark Duley. Their programme, consisted of just two works, a mass by the little- known, 17th-century Portuguese composer,
Filipe de Magalhaes, and John Tavener's Ikon of Light, which was performed in the presence of the composer.
Ikon of Light is a seven-movement work for choir and string trio, built around a central setting of Orthodox mystic St Symeon's Invocation to the Holy Spirit. It was written in 1983 for the Tallis Scholars and seems to demand singing that's both ethereal and firm, and absolutely precise in intervallic resonances. It calls, too, in the composer's own words, for "a building with a large acoustic in order to accommodate the long silences" (which are indicated in the score in durations of seconds).
Sadly, a nearly full Abbeystrewry Church displayed a dry, sound-soaking acoustic and, a few moments of full-voiced flight apart, the choir tended towards raggedness and often sounded ill at ease. A performance of such precarious security in music so revealing of blemish offered little in the way of illumination.
The Magalhaes mass, which didn't strike me as among the most interesting of choral exhumations, was sung with organ interludes played by Andrew Johnston and fared altogether better as regards performance.
