Tenebrae – 10 July 2026

After several days of hot weather the evening temperature was showing no signs of easing and St Peter’s Church, Stockbridge was no longer a cool refuge. Tenebrae, one of the world’s leading chamber choirs (eight women and seven men), had already given a lunchtime concert in the church and were now preparing to take us on a musical journey spanning several centuries. Emergency supplies of water for the audience were at the ready, the choir had their own supplies on stage and their musical director was wearing sandals – one suspects that he might have worn shorts if he had thought it appropriate!

A solo voice opened the concert and soon the sound of the choir filled the church with the harmonies of Orlando Lassus, proclaiming that ‘music is a gift from God’. As the evening sun poured through the west window the choir made full use of the physical space by having solos and groups of singers spreading out around the nave. Philip Moore’s superb setting of a prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer began with a solo soprano at the west end, while Caroline Shaw’s piece ‘and the swallow’ had the choir divided on both sides of the nave, making the antiphonal exchanges very clear. All credit to the two or three sopranos who had to sing this with the sun blinding their view of the conductor.

Saxophonist Christian Forshaw’s arrangement of Orlando Gibbons was re-invented here, with the solo saxophone part being wordlessly sung off-stage while the choir sang ‘Drop, drop slow tears’. Such purity of sound in this soaring solo. Allegri’s famous ‘Miserere’ was staged with the plainsong chant at the west end, the five-part choir on the stage and the four-part choir up near the east window. Fabulous singing, the top C being perfectly placed each time it occurred. For John Tavener’s ‘Funeral Ikos’ the male chanters were positioned at the west end, giving an appropriate sense of space and ritual, which increased as the choir came back together towards the end.

Rachmaninov and Chesnokov provided sonorous Russian harmonies with some powerful deep bass sounds and then James MacMillan’s large-scale ‘Miserere’ provided a nice counterpart to the Allegri setting in the concert’s first half. Grand and dramatic, MacMillan’s challenges were superbly met by the fifteen singers. The soft opening of Holst’s ‘Nunc dimittis’ ended the concert, building to a rich and full sonority. After long applause the choir offered us Tavener’s ‘Mother of God’. An evening of incredible singing, such pure intonation and a marvellous mix of vocal power and subtle tone quality.

Reviewer: Duncan Eves