Celebrating their centenary this year – all the more noteworthy since they nearly only made it to 99 – the BBC Singers’ Bristol Prom with conductor Sofi Jeannin featured a series of 10 works commissioned and premiered by them over the decades. From Britten to the brand new Losing the Lark by Asteryth Sloane, the variety and range underlined their exceptional musicianship. Unpredictable But Providential, former BBC Singer Judith Bingham’s playful exaltation of songbirds, was done tongue-in-cheek – soprano Emma Tring’s solo moments miraculously pitched as high as the sound of a hobby bird throughout the recital – while Ben Nobuto’s Blip was not so much sung as intoned, shouted, muttered and exhaled, subversive and witty.
John Pickard’s Mass in Troubled Times – taking its title from Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis, written during the Napoleonic wars – interleaves the familiar Latin with poems dealing with the plight of refugees fleeing their war-torn-countries, but whose ultimate fate is to drown. The Singers first performed the piece in 2019 and, with its implicit drama sustained compellingly over its 28 minutes, it was as moving and troublingly relevant now as then.
