Ralph Allwood

We started early from Gatwick on the last day of the Lent Half with a choir of thirty with David Goode, Andrew Maynard and Ralph Allwood. We sang in the grand Dom Seniorow old people's home in Krakow and received an early taste of the warm reception we were to receive everywhere. It was both interesting and moving to sing to a small but highly appreciative audience in the Galicia Jewish Museum. Early on a freezing Good Friday we descended 160 metres to the Wieliczka Salt Mine and sang in a huge chapel lit by chandeliers deep under the earth. Later we joined in the two-hour Veneration of the Cross in St Catherine's Church. Bruckner: Christus factus est was particularly exciting in the huge acoustic, and the choir for this tour was characterised by its musicianship and power. The climax of Lotti: Crucifixus coincided powerfully with the symbolic procession, with the Good Friday substitution of rattles for bells, to Christ's tomb.

We had prepared carefully for our visit to Auschwitz on Holy Saturday. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a one-time 16-year-old prisoner saved from certain death only by her ability to play the cello, and later a regular member of the English Chamber Orchestra had spoken to us in Eton of her grim experiences. Our fascinating, charming and kindly courier, Alina Peretti, had been a 14-year-old prisoner there, and her sister had been murdered four days before the Russians came. She gave us some flowers to lay, but declined to join us that morning. As she spoke to us she was clearly moved in thanking our young people for their singing at the same time as she related a small part of her experiences. Leaving cameras behind we silently followed our quietly-spoken guide for two hours as he showed us round the site of the worst cruelty known to man, where at least 1,200,000 people had been murdered. We chose the execution square for Alina's flowers and Charlie Stacey, our cello-playing youngest singer, to lay them. It took several hours for the party to blink its way back into exuberant life, ready to sing for the Easter Sunday service at St Joseph's Church. We sang Mozart's youthful Missa Brevis and the Handel Hallelujah Chorus with the spontaneously requested extra music we have come to enjoy on these occasions. Afterwards we gave a short recital including Alex Jones' excellent singing of Vaughan Williams' "Rise, heart, thy Lord is risen" and "Dum transisset sabbatum" by John Taverner, now traditional on Easter tours, and were greeted by a standing ovation.

After a guided tour of Wroclaw the next day we gave a concert as part of the Wieczory Tumskie Festival. Having stood in a cold vestry for an hour waiting for a lecture to finish we sang for ninety minutes with a break only for Michael Heighway to play Bach's Toccata in F.

Travelling to Poznan the group met their hosts for the next three nights, and later joined with the Poznan Nightingales, the best of the three men and boys' choirs in Poznan, with their 88-year-old conductor Stefan Stuligrosz. Their sound was powerful, dark, wonderfully blended and intense, and their style strongly influenced our subsequent singing. We joined together for the final three items and received a generous standing ovation. Polish choral singing became important in Poznan in the 18th century during the Prussian occupation. The Polish language had been banned in public, but, in defiance, Poles noted that this hated regulation didn't extend to singing. Next day we sang in the beautiful University Concert Hall, once again with the Poznan Nightingales, moving on the next day to Warsaw.

On Saturday 29th March we joined with the Il Tempo Baroque Orchestra in the Chopin Academy of Music for a benefit concert in aid of the Laski School for Blind Children. The ensemble of period instruments played delightfully. A musical highlight of the tour was Henry Vaughan's singing of 'Vouchsafe O Lord' as part of the Purcell Te Deum accompanied exquisitely by baroque strings, theorbo and chamber organ. We shared our Warsaw hotel with a rowdy school party who happened to turn up at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto that morning at the same time as us. They were Israeli, and now, with reverence, they laid wreaths and sang. We also visited the completely rebuilt old city, systematically destroyed by the Nazis in revenge for the brave 1944 uprising. Our final event was Mass and a recital at the Laski School's Church on Sunday 30th March, way out in the sunny countryside and attended by nuns and blind children from the community in their small simple church built in the 1920's. The blind children's obvious deep appreciation of our singing was very moving. The nuns guided the children in singing and reading from braille. The Incognitos, so often an important and popular part of our programmes, sang three songs in our concert after mass to enthusiastic applause.

I'd like to pay tribute to Alex's Jones' excellent leadership of the group. It is an exacting job, and one which needs tact as well as forethought. A final dinner at a lovely restaurant in an imaginatively converted fire station enabled us to thank Alina and Martin, our gentle (but karate champion) coach driver and rounded off a tour which we will remember not only for the wonderful buildings in which we were privileged to sing to such warm appreciation, but also for the occasions on which we were able to get closer to human beings not only far from our land but far from our own culture and experience.

I am wary of speaking to people on aeroplanes. With the prospect of five hours when I can sit, alone with my book, and be fed, there is too much at stake. Any vestige of sunny affability gets checked in with my baggage, and I read. But I made an exception eighteen months ago when the person next to me clearly had the same idea. Briefly greeting him I settled down in my seat. He gave me a desultory grunt and nod and turned back to his book. "Aha, a kindred spirit!'', I thought, noticing also that the book anxiously waiting on his lap to be read interested me. So, to his thinly-disguised irritation, I started a jolly conversation. We talked for four hours. Stephen Walker and his wife Sally run Walker-George Films, making documentaries. Among his latest have been one on George Melly, on old people forming rock bands and a punk Rocker learning to conduct an orchestra. He is also a novelist: "Countdown to Hiroshima", notably. After an hour or so of conversation I had an idea.

We have here at Eton a series of seven or so 'ECMS' concerts each year devised and organised by senior boys and performed by boys of all ages. They are supposed to be chamber concerts, but we often make exceptions. A few weeks before my fateful flight, a boy had come to me asking to conduct the Bach Magnificat. "Oh come on, Alex," I replied, while impressed with his pluck, "I could give you plenty of pieces by Bach which would be so much easier and no less musically satisfying". No, it had to be the Magnificat. So, playing for time, I told him that if he could get the permission of the Head of Wind and Brass and the Head of Strings, he could do it. Hah, that'll put paid to his idea! But two days later he came back to me with a victorious grin. Digging a feeble final ditch, I asked him if he had a boy in mind who could sing the tough aria 'Deposuit', and did that boy’s teacher approve? Yes, yes, yes. And he produced From his inside pocket a (. . . draft, I delicately pointed out) list of players and singers.

Now this would be a merry little story of everyday music department cut-and-thrust if it weren't for the tragic sting in the tail. As most of us now know, this friendly, intensely musical, intelligent and highly enthusiastic boy, Alexander Stobbs, has the lung-wasting condition known as cystic fibrosis.

If you had met Stephen Walker and his wife Sally on one of their many subsequent visits to the Brompton Hospital or to Eton to film Alex with his friends, teachers and fellow musicians, you would have been forgiven for an impression that they were kindly aunt and uncle. Every move they made was in Alex's best interests, and they became firm friends of doctors, nurses, family and colleagues. The Magnificat performance itself, filmed in Eton College Chapel last March, was a triumph, and three million people have now seen the resulting documentary. Alex has since had three offers of marriage and an offer to write a book. The most moving comment that I heard was from a psychotherapist, who reported that one of her patients made a turn for the better after seeing the film, and is now recovering. And the extraordinary thing is that, yes, the odds are that a coincidences of some sort is bound to happen from time to time, but I now know that of all the people who could have made this documentary, Stephen Walker was by far the best.

It was meant to happen.

The Times - Four stars

Every year selected singers from cathedral, church and school choirs take part in the Eton Choral Courses, from which the conductor Ralph Allwood further cherry-picks the elite Rodolfus Choir.

They make a light, bright, exciting sound as evidenced by this terrific double CD of Monteverdi's Vespers. There is real spring in their tone, particularly in the Nisi Dominus, and crystal diction throughout. The solo voices have a youthful plaintiveness - enjoy the balancing tenors over the walking lute in Laetatus Sum. Margaret Faultless leads the excellent Southern Sinfonia, while the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble add a princely lustre to the worship.
RICK JONES, The Times (Dec 1st, 07)

Each summer, in a most imaginative scheme, the major English public school, Eton College, hosts a series of summer schools for pupils of other schools - usually those attending state rather than public schools - who are about to apply for university places. The basic premise is that the pupils concerned will already be highly accomplished academically and will benefit from a couple of weeks of intensive tuition in their preferred subject. The courses offered encompass a wide range of subjects and one of them is the Eton Choral Course, which is directed by Ralph Allwood, an outstanding choral trainer, who is Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College.

The Rodolfus Choir is a handpicked group drawn from past and present members of the Eton Choral Course so I suppose it’s the crème de la crème. This choir of some forty young singers give concerts, broadcast and make recordings. I’ve already heard several of their discs, all of which have impressed me greatly, as does this latest one.

The pieces by Brahms and Bruckner that are included in this fascinating programme were already familiar to me. They are done extremely well. Bruckner’s demanding Christus factus est is delivered with superb control while Ave Maria is no less impressive. Brahms’ strong and deeply felt motet, Warum ist das Licht gegben, is very well handled. The repeated interjections of the word ‘Warum’ punctuate the piece arrestingly, as they should, and Allwood shapes the performance with great understanding.

The Strauss setting, with which the programme concludes, is another piece that I’ve heard several times. The composer’s huge and rich Deutsche Motette (1913) is, perhaps, the apotheosis of the tradition that is celebrated by this CD. Der Abend (1897), which is offered here, is a shorter and less expansive piece but it still presents fearsome difficulties to choir and conductor alike, not the least of which is the division into no less than 16 separate vocal parts. The music is founded in glorious autumnal textures. Once again, the Rodolfus Choir displays first-rate control and discipline and the purity of the top sopranos and the strength of the basses are noteworthy, the more so since this is a choir of young singers.

The rest of the programme is uncharted territory as far as I’m concerned and here I must mention my one quibble about this release. There is a fascinating essay about the music by David Goode - though I had to look hard to find out who was the author - but sadly Herald has joined the ranks of the record companies that make texts and translations available only as a download from their website. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think this is acceptable, especially not for full-priced CDs. In the first place it’s not as convenient and secondly not everyone can access the Internet. One simply cannot appreciate vocal music properly without access to the words and it’s particularly galling not to have the words when one is dealing with music that is unfamiliar, as I imagine much of this programme will be for many listeners. In my view Herald have compromised the enterprise of this programme through this omission.

The item by Wagner is a curiosity. It was written (for four-part male voice choir) on the occasion of the re-interment of the ashes of Weber at Dresden in 1844. Frankly, it’s of little intrinsic musical interest but I’m glad to have heard it. The Mendelssohn pieces, six little motets written to be sung at services on specific feast days after the reading of the Epistle are also fairly slight compositions. However, they’re all finely crafted and they make very pleasant listening. The fresh singing of the Rodolfus Choir makes the best possible case for them.

Of much greater substance are the three pieces for six-part choir, written by Reger in 1899. These are chromatic and rich in texture. Under Ralph Allwood’s discerning control the singers keep the textures light and their singing is committed and full of light and shade. They do well also in the six Eichendorff settings by Hugo Wolf, which date from 1881. I particularly enjoyed ‘Resignation’, the third of the set, which is quite lovely, and also the simple and direct ‘Letzte Bitte’ (‘Last Prayer’), which follows it.

This is a lovely disc. The singing of the choir gives consistent pleasure. Their dynamic control is very impressive and they keep the textures clear, something that must be far from easy in some of these pieces. Their enthusiasm and commitment are evident throughout and that, as much as their technical accomplishment, is in itself the best possible tribute to the training they have received from Ralph Allwood. They are clearly and sympathetically recorded.

Despite the issue of the texts - about which other listeners may not get as hot under the collar as I do! - this is a highly recommendable recital, which I enjoyed very much.

John Quinn

Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 & Choral Arrangements by Clytus Gottwald are now both out on Signum Records

Course 1

Eton College
Friday 4th July to Saturday 12th July

Course 2

Eton College
Sunday 13th July to Monday 21st July

Course 3

Eton College
Tuesday 22nd July to Wednesday 30th July

Course 4

Malvern College (tbc)
Friday 1st August to Saturday 9th August

Course 5

St Peters, Oxford
Monday 11th August to Tuesday 19th August

Course 6

Trinity, Cambridge (tbc)
Wednesday 20th August to Thursday 28th August

Find out more about the Choral Courses