“Little Performers of Great Music”

The boys’ choir chapel is perhaps the most beloved collective in the city. Any performance by these little singers always delights everyone who loves music, choral art and boys. These boys are noisy and mischievous as long as they are not on the stage. But there, when they sing, a wonderful transformation takes place in them.

The Chapel is now preparing for its first major anniversary, its 25th, which will be marked during the celebrations of our city’s 750th anniversary. For both dates the collective is especially adding to its already rich repertoire. In a whole series of anniversary concerts the boys’ choir and its leaders, headed by L. K. Sivukhin, report to the city on their painstaking and fruitful work.

The first such concert took place on Monday in the concert hall of the Gorky Conservatory. For the first time here two original works by the contemporary English composer Benjamin Britten were performed — “Missa Brevis” (for choir and organ) and “A Ceremony of Carols” (for choir and harp) — as well as the piece “Clair de Lune” by the French composer Debussy (in an arrangement for choir with harp).

Soviet listeners became acquainted with Britten’s music only ten years ago and have managed to come to trust and respect this humanist artist. In our city his “War Requiem”, the “Sea Interludes” from the opera “Peter Grimes” and the “Variations on a Theme of Purcell” have been performed successfully. Britten’s music is based on an organic combination of classical and folk traditions and elements of the modern musical language. Britten won recognition both in his homeland and throughout the world.

The performance by the boys’ choir chapel of two works unfamiliar to us is doubly gratifying: firstly, it introduces us to new music, and secondly, to music that is genuine and very interesting. In my view, “A Ceremony of Carols” is especially interesting: essentially these are folk carols with a distinctly English colouring, deeply democratic and very fresh, colourful like spring.

One cannot help but rejoice in the success of the singing boys, who sang everything cleanly, expressively and emotionally (besides the purely musical difficulties, one must also take into account the difficulties of the English language). Good partners for the choir were the harpist Kira Panova and the organist Galina Kozlova.

V. Blinova, musicologist.

Newspaper “Gorkovsky Rabochy”, 24 February 1971