Press
Return to the list of articles
Silver Bells: VOCES8 on Christmas Eve
Claire Seymour of Opera Today
December 28, 2023
In 2021, VOCES8 invited us to pull a Christmas Cracker. This year they encouraged us to relish the quiet sparkle of Silver Bells. Their Christmas Eve live stream, from the ensemble’s home at St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, presented a characteristic mix of ancient and modern, and many of VOCES8’s staple favourites – but, there was new repertoire, too, and it was the latter that proved most compelling, delineating as it did both the contemplative and the celebratory. [...]
Old and new met at times. Melissa Dunphy’s O Oriens reached further back into the past, based as it is on Gregorian chant. It was wonderful to hear the chant melody spread through the voices, in linear and vertical directions, and varied transformations. The ensemble and unison intonation at the opening was spot on; then the chant spoke through chordal clusters, the whole gradually expanding by means of intensity of colour, dynamic and weight. The appeal, “veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis” (Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death), was almost fierce, but there was a return to timeless serenity at the close. [...]