Sitting in the nave of St Mary’s on Saturday evening, what struck me most was the sound: three-dimensional, widescreen, yet intimate and ethereal. The choir, set eight rows deep, were gathered in the chancel behind the arch, their voices projecting through it into the length of the nave; distinctly placed in the soundstage, with the distance lending each a softened clarity. St Mary’s has long been nicknamed the “cathedral of East Sussex”, and the acoustics on Saturday earned the title, turning our ancient church into an instrument in its own right.
Saturday’s was the second “scratch” performance of Handel’s Messiah at St Mary’s. The first, in April 2022, was organised by Rebekah Gilbert in her final weeks as mayor of Rye and drew a choir of about fifty. This time nearly 80 singers had signed up, arriving that afternoon for a single run-through from 2.30pm with conductor Anne Whiteman before the 7.30pm concert. The format, no prior rehearsal, just turn up and sing, has a distinguished lineage: the Royal Albert Hall’s annual Messiah from Scratch was founded in 1974.
Handel wrote Messiah for the Easter season; it premiered in Dublin in April 1742. The shift to a predominantly Christmas work was gradual, becoming the norm in Britain only from the 1960s onwards. A spring performance in Rye, two weeks after Easter, is closer in spirit to Handel’s original intention.
As was the performance. The largely absent vibrato gave the solo lines clarity, purity and authenticity. Tenor Gary Marriot’s Ev’ry valley shall be exalted set the pattern early, the extended runs on “exalted” carrying powerfully down the nave. Soprano Grace Constable’s Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion also demonstrated this to great effect. In Jonathan Breeds’s The trumpet shall sound, the bass aria with solo trumpet obbligato, bass and trumpeter answered each other’s phrases across the chancel, the acoustics suspending the sound in space and time before releasing it to the heavens. Rebekah Gilbert’s alto aria He was despised, the emotional centre of the work, was memorably moving.
The great choruses And He shall purify, Surely He hath borne our griefs, and the majestic Halleluiah, thanks to Anne Whiteman’s conducting, demonstrated that wide soundstage once again, perfectly balanced against Richard Eldridge’s organ and the small instrumental ensemble with Andrew Gill on trumpet and Ian Gill on cello.
The concert was introduced by Richard Moore, chair of the Rye Old Scholars Association and founder of the Rye Wurlitzer Academy. £1700 was raised on the night which will be split between the Academy, which gives free theatre-organ tuition to young people on the historic 1925 Rye Wurlitzer, and which has trained 180 students since its inception in 2010, and to the Rye Old Scholars Generation X Fund, which makes small grants to ex-students of Rye College under 30 who wish to go on to further study or start a new venture.
Image Credits: Heidi Foster , Phil Gooch .