{TABLE} Missa in Honorem Sancti Josephi ....................... Peeters Four Piano Blues ...................................... Copland Tibi Laus ............................................. Philips Agnus Dei ............................................. Barber Tango ................................................. Stravinsky Prelude No 2 .......................................... Gershwin Reincarnations ........................................ Barber Las Agachadas ......................................... Copland {/TABLE} LAST NIGHT, at the NationaI Gallery, the National Chamber Choir presented a programme of music by composers from America and the Low Countries the former to celebrate the Fourth of July, the latter to mark the gallery's Rembrandt exhibition. The concert was part of a series which aims to "reflect the best choral music of this, millennium". Whether Barber or Copland come into this exalted category is contentious but pieces such as Agnus Dei, arranged by Barber from his famous string quartet movement (best known as the Adagio for Strings), and Copland's Las Agachadas do represent the stronger side of that vast repertoire of unaccompanied, 20th century choral music written to display choral idiom.

Also on the programme was jazz inspired piano music by American composers. Fergal Caulfield played this, and the accompaniment to Flor Peeters's Missa in Honorem Sancti Josephi, fluently. I do think, however, that Stravinsky's Tango and Gershwin's Prelude No. 2 require a more sharply chiselled approach to rhythm and melodic shaping.

This was my first experience of the National Chamber Choir since it recently gained enough financial support to become a full time ensemble. I was struck by the confidence of the choir's singing and by its blended sound qualities which were formerly rather lacking, and which probably owe something to recent changes in personnel.

Colin Mawby's direction seemed to be aimed at a smooth, line driven blend and this produced the most well rounded results in Barber's Agnus Dei and in the Peeters Mass. In Barber's Reincarnations, and even more in Copland's Las Agachadas, I would have welcomed a style in which accent was more defined by text. Yet this was an encouraging start to a new phase in the NCC's career.