REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Ryedale Festival premiere of Seven Mercies, Church of St Peter & St Paul, Pickering, May 21

Kathryn Rudge: “Inspired soloist”

RYEDALE Festival floated a powerful reminder of its status in the community with this world premiere of a new song-cycle written by a Pickering-born composer and largely performed by inhabitants of Ryedale.

Joseph Howard’s Seven Mercies was inspired by mediaeval murals in Pickering Church, which have only recently been brought back to life and decoded from beneath the whitewash of centuries.

They refer to specific acts of kindness – properly titled Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy – mentioned by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount and illustrated here by stories from the Bible.

Howard’s music is built around Emma Harding’s poetic libretto, which at its core delivers a song-cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano. Its sections use different female characters whose hardships have been alleviated by someone else’s generosity, often put into a modern context: a refugee, for example, or a hospital patient prevented by Covid regulations from receiving visitors.

That is the backbone of the work and no doubt it could stand alone. But it is immensely coloured and given depth by several choral and brass interludes, as well as introduction, prologue and finale.

Joseph Howard: Pickering-born composer of Seven Mercies

Much of the text here has been devised by choir members themselves. Ryedale Festival Community Choir, under Em Whitfield Brooks, and Ryedale Primary Schools Choir (taken from Pickering Community Junior School and Gillamoor C of E and St Joseph’s RC Primary Schools), conducted by Holly Greenwood-Rogers, were joined by a brass quintet of junior members from Kirkbymoorside Town Band and bell ringer Pam Robb.

Kathryn Rudge was the inspired soloist. Her clean, clear, beautifully projected mezzo was exactly suited to evoking the plight of the desperate and the downtrodden, and Christopher Glynn’s fluently controlled piano gave her superb underpinning. When she took to the pulpit for the finale, she soared angelically above and through the combined forces below, as if offering divine support.

Both choirs had evidently been keenly trained. They represented the voices of the community coming to the aid of the needy. Where the adults were sympathetic and affectionate, the children were infectiously enthusiastic, an apt balance. The young brass were impressive too, in an early fanfare, a lament and a smooth duet for cornets.

Howard’s music, which was always attuned to the text, divided into two styles: a thoughtful, modal English for the soloist that was reminiscent of Vaughan Williams and a much more universal, generally major-key and strongly rhythmic approach for the ensembles. This made sense with such a wide range of talents on hand: all were shown to best effect.

We may thank the Richard Shephard Music Foundation for its association with an occasion that both highlighted an important piece of local history and underlines what a force for good the Ryedale Festival continues to be. The festival itself will run from July 15 to 31 with full details at ryedalefestival.com.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Miriam Margolyes and Ian McMillan poem premiere to grace A Christmas RyeStream

The guests of Christmas present: Ian McMillan and Miriam Margolyes will be performing readings at A Christmas RyeStream

NATIONAL treasure Miriam Margolyes and the poetic voice of Yorkshire, Ian McMillan, will take part in A Christmas RyeStream, Ryedale Festival’s online Christmas concert.

Billed as “a unique choral gift to give this Christmas”, this free-to-view Yuletide celebration can be enjoyed at your leisure over the Christmas holiday period from tomorrow (18/12/2020) at 7.30pm at ryestream.com.

Margoyles, star of stage, screen and Malton Dickensian Festival, and Bard of Barnsley McMillan will read Christmas texts by John Betjeman, Clive Sansom, Thomas Hardy, U.A. Fanthorpe, Edwin Morgan, Clive James and regular Malton visitor Charles Dickens.

McMillan, a prodigious, often amusingly profound word-weaver and compulsive conceiver of witty Tweets, will premiere I Saw A Star, a “Christmas poem for our times”. Written expressly for the occasion, it opens: “I saw a star socially distanced from the rising moon/I heard voices softly whisper words to a freezing tune”.

“It’s a beautiful thing for Ryedale,” says Ian, whose last performance came at the Penistone Paramount, near Barnsley, on March 20 as part of Penistone Arts Week. “We filmed it last Monday at Pickering Church on a beautiful day, like when we used to go to Pickering for the Santa Special.

“Ryedale Festival said, ‘Can you write us a poem for this Christmas?’, and that set me thinking about Christmas in 2020: that we’re going to have to be distanced, when normally in times of difficulty and crisis, your usual instinct is to step forward and embrace each other.

“But it’s also a poem about next Christmas, and the distance till being able to get together again, expressing hope for next Christmas.”

McMillan has one wish for I Saw A Star: “I’d love it to be set to music, because that’s how I treated the piece as I was writing it for a music festival, making it rhythmical,” he says.

“We’re going to have to be distanced, when normally in times of difficulty and crisis, your usual instinct is to step forward and embrace each other,” says Barnsley poet Ian McMillan

To complement his own poem, McMillan will read Thomas Hardy’s The Oxen and Edwin Morgan’s The Computer’s First Christmas Card, a particular favourite of his.

Margolyes, 79, and McMillan, 64, will be joined in this virtual concert by the Ryedale Festival Consort, directed by David Clegg, with Ben Morris at the organ.

Sopranos Zoe Brookshaw and Jessica Cale, altos Elisabeth Paul and Kim Porter, tenors Jeremy Budd and Julian Gregory and basses Robert Davies and William Gaunt will intersperse the readings with popular Christmas melodies, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Truth From Above, Harold Darke’s In the Bleak Midwinter, Jamie Burton’s arrangement of Silent Night and Thomas Tallis’s Videte Miraculum.

Filmed in St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Pickering, the festive concert will “bring a warm Yorkshire Christmas to homes across the country” through Ryedale Festival’s online platform, Ryestream.

Although it is free to view, donations to support the festival’s reach through its digital programme will be warmly accepted.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, RyeStream was created to share music from beautiful Ryedale locations across the world. In July, Ryedale Festival broadcast its inaugural online festival of eight live concerts from three Ryedale venues: All Saints’ Church, Helmsley, St Michael’s Church, Coxwold, and the triple whammy of the Long Gallery, pre-Raphaelite Chapel and Great Hall at Castle Howard.

A compilation film is still available to watch at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWJXqtAnl6U&feature=youtu.be

In addition, Ryedale Festival is partnering with three entrepreneurial choral groups, Echo Vocal Ensemble, The Swan Consort and The Gesualdo Six, to offer its followers “a unique opportunity to give a very special Christmas present”.

12 Days Of Christmas: A musical gift from Ryedale Festival

Filmed at Castle Howard, 12 Days Of Christmas will deliver a seasonal musical offering to each recipient’s inbox each day from December 25 to January 6. Prices start at £12 for the series, which comes with the option of eco-friendly digital delivery, bringing seasonal choral music to listeners in a year where many may not have been be able to hear live singing since March.

Created as “the perfect present for music-loving friends and family wherever they may be during the festive season”, this initiative has created work for 25 young choral professionals at the end of a challenging year for the arts sector. Go to https://12-days-of-christmas.tidze.com/ for the range of gift box options.

Looking ahead, Ryedale Festival will be celebrating its 40th anniversary next year.

The full programme for A Christmas Ryestream:

John Betjeman: Christmas

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Truth From Above

Clive Sansom: The Innkeeper’s Wife

Alan Bullard: Shepherds Guarding Your Flocks

Clive James: The Crying Need For Snow

Harold Darke: In The Bleak Midwinter

Fanthorpe: BC:AD

Thomas Tallis: Videte Miraculum

Thomas Hardy: The Oxen (IM)

Richard Shephard: The Birds

Edwin Morgan: The Computer’s First Christmas Card

Arr. Jamie Burton: Silent Night

Ian McMillan: I Saw A Star, world premiere

John Gardner: Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day

Charles Dickens: from A Christmas Carol

Arr. Keith Roberts: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas