Guinness Choir & Orchestra/David Milne

{TABLE} Mass in B minor ........................................ Bach {/TABLE} THERE were many good things about the Guinness Choir and Orchestra's performance of Bach's B minor Mass, last Saturday night at the National Concert Hall. One of them was the way in which the conductor, David Milne, aimed for lightness of tone and texture, rather than the massive sound which this piece so easily encourages. In this he was helped by the staging. The choir, about 150 strong, was packed tightly around three sides of the main platform, and the orchestra was in the middle. The forced intimacy helped produce excellent ensemble, though it tended to muffle the orchestral sound, and this was a pity, for there was much to admire in the playing, especially from an excellent continuo section.

The four soloists Majella Cullagh (soprano), Deirdre Cooling Nolan (alto), Niall Morris (tenor) and Philip O'Reilly (bass) gave solid, though mostly unremarkable accounts of their parts. One solo did stand out however, Deirdre Cooling Nolan's beautifully shaped and defined account of the Qui sedes".

The choir's agile and bright singing tended to be at its best in faster movements, such as the "Gloria", where there was a pleasing sense of drive without that rush or scramble which can so easily overtake such complex music. Slower music was generally less convincing. It is much harder to know how to treat the "Kyrie", for example, unless one goes for the big sound approach. No one seemed quite sure what to do with it, how to make every note count.

From the "Credo" onwards these inconsistencies diminished. Sometimes one wished for more accurate tuning, and sometimes more weight would have been welcome. But when things went right they were memorable, as in the "Et incarnatus" and the Crucifixus". These were slow pieces where every note did count.