The Royal Dunedin Male Choir, conducted by John Buchanan, and invited guests entertained a good-sized audience in St Paul’s Cathedral on Monday evening. The variety programme of favourites and seasonal music was accompanied by Linda Folland.
A strong rendition with the appropriate title of Let All Men Sing set a good standard of balance and well-intoned part-singing, followed by Cole Porter’s Wunderbar and A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square with impressive tenor sectional handling of this well-known theme.
Guest artist Callum Fotheringham (oboe) with accompanist Sharon McLennan presented a fluent and well-shaped delivery of Romanze 1 and 3 by Robert Schumann and the popular Gabriel’s Oboe. The choir then performed a lightly syncopated Kirby Shaw arrangement of Man from La Mancha, a rather unusual arrangement by Thomas Juneau of the popular Irish Danny Boy and Mambo Italiano.
After the interval John Dennison, from the choir’s bass section, was presented with a "Golden Lyre" — the choir’s highest order of merit, then a bracket of three songs began with Tell My Father, a softer emotional number by Frank Wildhorn (arr. Andrea Ramsey).
Assistant conductor Chris Featonby achieved impressive resonating harmony for Unchained Melody then There is Faint Music, by Dan Forrest, followed, before guest choir the Dunedin Star Singers (conductor Rosemary Tarbotton, accompanist Michal Coull) performed. An emotive O Love with cello obligato from Lucy Porter, a close harmony version of Silent Night which I found to be set in a key rather too low to appreciate the harmonic beauty, Karl Jenkins’ arrangement of Lullaby and an unaccompanied Go Tell it on the Mountain.
A medley by Mark Weston Christmas in About 3 Minutes had audience attention counting snippets of Christmas tunes — 21 in total!
A highlight was the combined choir’s final bracket, achieving excellent harmony for a soft emotional Shalom (Forrest), and One Voice (Rutter) which ended an enjoyable concert on a big final chord.
Review by Elizabeth Bouman
