While generally a delight, last weekend’s battle of the choirs exhibited the same mistakes that have been made for the last 17 years, argues Vuyo Mvoko
LIKE the Muslim community’s yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, the annual finals of the Old Mutual National Choir Festival at the Standard Bank Arena have proved to be a major attraction for South African choral music enthusiasts.
But the festival, and by extension choral music as a whole, is threatened with retrogression unless Old Mutual’s noble effort is supplemented by input from other professional parties.
While the overall performance, particularly of the 11 large-section choirs, outweighed the relative disappointments last weekend, the mistakes that were pointed out by the adjudicators in their remarks were the same ones that have been made every year since the contest began 17 years ago.
In the large section of the competition (for more experienced choirs with a maximum of 60 voices), the prescribed Western piece, Handel’s From the Censer Curling Rise, was rushed by many of the choirs. Many lost the pitch and only returned to the right key once they had rested during the accompanying piano solo. In trying to be different, some conductors discounted their choirs by introducing “uncharacteristic nuances” to the piece.
Arguably, though, most of the problems found in the rendition of Western pieces emanated from the choirs’ lack of exposure to accompaniment, and a dearth of continuous professional support.
The African piece Ruri, by M Moerane, was generally done very well, except that many conductors were overly “theatrical” on stage, and many choirs accentuated single words or consonants at the expense of musicality.
This, of course, was not unusual. Throughout the competition’s existence, vernacular pieces have been always been performed far better than Western ones — although the standard section this year proved an exception to the rule.
The standard section’s African piece, Ekhaya Afrika by Lawrence Chonco, was not done well. The song is full of life and expression, yet very few choirs even attempted to interpret it and thereby exploit its inherent dynamism. There was neither drama nor passion from the choirs.
However, the adjudicators, while pointing out that choirs generally lacked resonance and projection and did not maintain the pitch, believed the song was “generally well- handled”.
In Haydn’s Awake the Harp, none of the soloists in the opening tenor recitative was really impressive. In fact, they were generally pathetic. Choirs performed skop, skiet en donner from beginning to the end.
Adjudicators later complained of “great intonational problems”, about choirs moving off pitch, changing tempi, not rounding off phrases and leaving the accompanying piano behind.
The category in which each choir was allowed to sing a song of its own choice, although not adjudicated, spoke of an emerging galaxy of prolific African composers. Most of the songs were new and quite good.
“Absurd” was the adjudicators’ condemnation of the choristers’ enthusiastic body movements (rehearsed or not) that synchronised with the music. Apart from the fact that movement is part of African music, the movements did not interfere with the renditions at all, and were not exaggerated. If anything, it was the adjudicators who missed the point by saying that choirs would “lose valuable marks” if they continued with the practice.
In the large section, the Pietermaritzburg Choral Society took first position with 168 points (out of 200), followed by the Matthews Singers of Port Elizabeth (166). Questionably placed third was the Manzini Choir of Swaziland, with 165 generously awarded points.
Thokozani Choral Society of Durban took the honours in the standard section with 151 points, leaving behind the Orlando Inter Choir of Soweto (143) and the Ngangelizwe Choristers from the Transkei (142).