Review: Ebor Singers, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 16

IT was brave of the Ebor Singers to appear at the NCEM immediately in the wake of its Christmas festival.

Punters who stayed the extra night will have been delighted they did, however. A Ceremony of Carols, Britten’s by now essential accompaniment to Christmas, preceded a rich variety of modern carols draped around Bob Chilcott’s settings of the seven Advent ‘O’ Antiphons.

The Britten, given authentically with ladies voices only, was wholehearted and direct, conjuring a mediaeval innocence to suit the early texts. Solo work was skilfully handled. This Little Babe was especially zingy and In Freezing Winter Night rose to a grand climax before falling away. The cross-rhythms of Deo Gratias were deftly crisp too. I would just have preferred a more complete fade-in and fade-out of the framing plainsong.

The ‘O’ Antiphons are essentially prayers. Some of Chilcott’s are forceful, pleading, even desperate, as in O Radix Jesse, but all are slow-moving and need balancing with livelier material. Parry’s Welcome Yule! was just the ticket, really sprightly. But most of the rest fell into lullaby territory, where we needed a little more overt joy.

Howells’s lovely A Spotless Rose needed to be a touch lighter on its feet and giving more prominence to the smooth baritone soloist, Paul Tyack. But his Here Is the Little Door was lovely, nuanced. Philip Moore’s Virgin Born and Kerry Andrew’s Adam And The Mother were easily the best of the rest. Martin Dreyer