from saturday's times.
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First Night reviews

May 22, 2004

Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir

By Geoff Brown

Concert

St Clement Danes

TO BE sung to at very close quarters by Danish choirboys is unnerving for both parties, I expect. A touching one too, especially when they are singing in Danish about world peace.

The occasion happened at the end of the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir’s London concert — just one stop on their tour through Iceland, England and Scandinavia.

Boys and men scattered themselves at the ends of the pews, opened their mouths, and after a flick of their conductor Ebbe Munk’s wrist out poured the same healthy, well-blended sound we had enjoyed all night. “Fred hviler over land og by,” they sang. I couldn ’t have agreed more.

Where they differ most from Britain’s chapel choirs, perhaps, is in repertoire. Duties include Danish state occasions and royal visits abroad; on May 14 they were singing at the marriage of Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Miss Mary Donaldson. Bach motets or unaccompanied Schoenberg would probably not fit the bill there; but it would have helped the choir’s touring programme if they had looked a little beyond Scandinavia and not clung so completely to softer options.

A shorter running time for jazz trumpeter, arranger and composer Palle Mikkelborg’s 50-minute cycle A Noone of Night would also have helped.

Scored for choir, boy soprano, trumpet, harp and modest electronic enhancement, the work uses texts by Blake, St Francis of Assisi and others, on life’s frailty and wonder.

And wonders there were. Mikkelborg’s bluesy trumpet soared into the air or communed with the church floor’s medallions; Helen Davies’s harp plinked, musical boxes briefly tinkled; the choir glided through plaintive harmonies, and the soloist flew with a melody fit for Raymond Briggs’s Snowman. But these were not 50 minutes of wonder; not when self-indulgence and spot effects so often edged musical logic into third place.

Transfiguring Hope, newly composed for the choir’s tour by the Norwegian veteran Knut Nystedt, 90 next year, dangled starchier sounds before us. Not very rewarding. But then came the Danish knees-up: popular choral numbers by Nielsen and others, sweet and evanescent.

And whatever they sang, the choir was fresh, enthusiastic and expressive. You can’t be a grump for long when Danish choirboys are smiling at you.

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