Galway Baroque Singers, RTÉCO/ Proinnsías Ó Duinn

NCH, Dublin

Ravel – Le tombeau de Couperin. Duruflé – Requiem. Puccini – Preludio sinfonico; Messa di Gloria.

The composers – one French, one Italian – of the two big choral works in this concert ended up in very different places on the musical map.

They began, however, from remarkably similar starting- points: both from musical families, both organists from a young age, both with formative training via music in the Roman Catholic Church.

What ultimately separated the two is illustrated in a prophetic comment by Puccini’s early teacher, Carlo Angeloni, about the

Messa di Gloria

, his final student work in his native Lucca before moving to the Milan Conservatory: 13 years before the rapid and successful sequence of

Manon Lescaut

,

La bohème

,

Tosca

and

Madama Butterfly

, Angeloni criticised his pupil for being too theatrical.

It’s a fair point, as the Galway Baroque Singers clearly demonstrated in their strong and faithful performance with conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

Puccini’s expressivity sits best with the more narrative sections of the Mass – the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. Here, music and text work comfortably together to tell a story, with Ó Duinn drawing out an appropriate sense of drama.

The choir also sounded well in the more devotional sections, although a number of these are a harder sell, with Verdian opera not so much influencing as encroaching. There are oom-pah accompaniments, for example, in both the opening of the

Gloria

and in the

Agnus Dei

.

There were balance issues for the choir in the Duruflé Requiem. The altos, some rather lost in positions behind the men, needed more presence, more numbers. And the whole choir was just too small to match the orchestra at big moments.

Elsewhere, however, their attention to detail, their engagement, and their responses to Ó Duinn realised Duruflé’s sincere union of devotional music and devotional text.

Of the soloists, mezzo Sharon Carty, although somewhat stylistically uncertain and a little score-bound, found an ideal partner for her fine voice in the Requiem’s

Pie Jesu.

The men – rising Icelandic tenor Gardar Thór Cortes, and Irish bass-baritone John Molloy, now earning his living in opera in London – were well-matched for warmth and expressive restraint in both works.