The Rowan Singers’ Winter Concert

by Sue Davidson

We are used to the polished performances of the Rowan Singers at any of their concerts. This year’s Christmas performance in the Community Theatre on Sunday 18th December proved to be no exception.

The concert began with two cleverly penned John Rutter carols, ‘Star Carol’ and ‘I Saw Three Ships’. Rutter is a master of arrangement and clever key changes in his original composition but I sometimes wonder if Rutter is over-performed? There were five Rutter creations in this repertoire alone-the BBC has dozens every Christmas.

Stanford’s ‘Magnificat’ and ‘Nunc Dimittis’ in B-flat is a stirring setting of the Evensong Canticles in the Anglican Liturgy and was performed to near perfection by the choir. Following this, we appreciated a short setting in Baroque style of a medieval carol. ‘Jesu Swete Sone Dere’ was composed by choir member Julian Davidson. This was followed by a Rowan singer’s favourite, ‘Christmas Grace’ which always goes down well. This year’s Darke’s setting of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’was beautifully sung with solos by Isobel Thomson and Julian Davidson.

After ‘ Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ with audience participation, we had two more choir performances, Burn’s ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ with solo sung by Lillian Smith and the ‘Border Ballad’ brought the first half to a rousing climax.

The interval over, the choir performed two contrasting settings of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ by John Rutter and ‘The Twelve Days after Christmas’ by Frederick Silver.

Now for a walk down memory lane as the choir gave us a masterly performance of Richard Rodger’s ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Blue Skies’ penned by Irving Berlin. For me being of a certain age, the Lennon and McCartney melodies were pure joy. ‘The Long and Winding Road’ was absolutely wonderful. Another Rutter penning ‘I Wish You Christmas’ well performed by the choir, as was their last entry of the afternoon ‘White Christmas’ by Berlin.

Everyone joined in the rousing finale of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ which brought the concert to an end.

Thanks to guests ‘Ain’t Misbehaving’ and ‘Arran Brass’ whose presence made the concert an overwhelming success. Well done to everyone!