This made full use of the acoustic, a peeling effect filling every nook and cranny from the saints in their elevated stained-glass windows to the capacity crowd in the hard wooden pews.Īpplause rang out even before the reverb had settled. Part’s Da pacem Domine (Give peace Lord) was another timely reflection, voices entering and leaving the space like the tolling of funeral bells. Gjeilo’s Ubi caritas followed, female voices in call and response before an ensemble entry channelled plainsong.īut for the modern extension to the building, this was Mark I human voice as it might have been on the first Maundy Thursday, the festival when the hymn is sung.Īfter a bruising election, it was time to remember the new mandate that gave that day its name: “Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13.34) Northern Lights, the title piece inspired by the aurora borealis, also riffed on Marian devotion Pulchra es (You are beautiful), launched antiphonally between soprano and alto-tenor-bass in deftly differentiated sound before the ensemble’s warm middle reasserted itself. Tota pulchra es drew a more full-throated vocal palette, a sense of timeless majesty in rich harmonies Chris van Tuinen controlling the rise and fall of dynamics closely, fading infinitesimally at the close.
Overlapping voices gave a sense of inexhaustible, if restrained, power: not a bad metaphor for divinity.Īfter Mary’s song, two hymns to Mary followed, both by Norwegian Ola Gjeilo.