Proteus Ensemble Review

Silence within Silence

KEITH BRAMICH is impressed by The Proteus Ensemble’s concert yesterday at Ken Woods’ Elgar Festival

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a quieter, more attentive large audience than at yesterday morning’s choral concert. Stephen Shellard’s Proteus Ensemble, performing at Ken Woods‘ Elgar Festival, gave us about an hour of beautifully controlled part songs by the area’s most famous composer, Edward Elgar.

I always think of Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire, UK, as a kind of ‘sawn-off’ church, because of its strange shape, due to its partial demolition in 1540 following the reformation. Inside, however, the acoustic is glorious.

Stephen Shellard’s eight professional singers performed a cappellafor about an hour, interspersed with speech by local speaker Peter Avis. We heard fifteen part songs, setting a wide range of authors.

Sopranos Vicki Field and Alison Shone, male altos Sebastian Field and David Whitworth, tenors Ed Harrison and Ashley Turnell and basses Christopher Monk and Steve Grice blended beautifully, the standard remained high throughout the concert, and the quiet passages and cadences in Elgar’s writing sounded especially beautiful.

Particularly lovely were There is sweet music from 1907 – fantastically performed, and apparently very difficult to sing, partly because it’s in two keys at once, with the tenors and basses in G major and the sopranos and altos in A flat major – and also They are at rest, setting words by John Henry Newman. Elgar’s song dates from 1909, so this came after his much better known setting of Newman’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Angelus, also from 1909, was the result of the Elgars’ holiday in Tuscany. The words in a Tuscan dialect were apparently translated by Elgar (or could possibly even have been written by the composer).

Elgar wrote part songs throughout his composing career. Many of them seem to have been penned very quickly, often whilst on holiday or, in the case of Love, Op 18 No 2, on his fiftieth birthday – a Sunday morning while his wife and daughter were at church, apparently. You can find a list of all the songs performed in this concert in the box below.

Not many of these works are in the standard repertoire, but this may soon change, thanks to The Proteus Ensemble’s recent CD, released last year. This contains recordings of all fifteen part songs heard in this concert, plus two extra ones – Deep in my soul and Love’s Tempest. The CD and yesterday’s coffee concert both share the name of Elgar’s song There is Sweet Music.

It can be fascinating to hear about other audience members’ experiences during concerts, especially when they haven’t been exposed much to Western classical music. After this event, I spoke to an Indian yoga teacher in the audience, living in the UK, who told me this:

Music has no barriers and it has its own language. To someone who wouldn’t be aware of describing it in this musical vocabulary, but had a yogic approach, I would like to say that it works on the crown chakra. The chakra deals with spirituality and helps healing the nervous system. It has a rippling effect which leads to high levels of concentration and a deep meditative state. This is a surprise here, because normally it would take more effort for a beginner who has stepped into the spiritual world and is learning about sounds, vibrations and frequencies.

The music resonates at a higher level, which one normally achieves through a lot of effort and years of meditation. Here this has been simplified through various sounds and themes which have an ancient dialogue, bringing human beings together to find the spiritual connection which the soul seeks. It brings silence within silence.

I’m sure that Edward Elgar would have been pleased to make this connection with another world.

Elgar Festival 2025, of which yesterday’s concert formed part, continues until Sunday 1 June 2025. Highlights include festival evensongs with music directed by Stephen Shellard, opportunities to hear Elgar’s wind and string music, an Elgar for Everyone family concert, an organ recital by David Briggs and a cello and piano recital by Raphael Wallfisch and Simon Callaghan.

The music of featured composer Ian Venables, who celebrates his seventieth birthday this summer, can be heard in various concerts, and there will be a screening of Anthony Cheng’s documentary film Hidden Music about Venables, followed by a question and answer session with the composer. Venables joins soprano April Fredrick to teach a young singers’ masterclass, and the festival ends with a gala concert in Worcester Cathedral, conducted by Ken Woods, at which music by Elgar and John Ireland will be performed alongside the first performance of the orchestral version of Venables’ Out of the Shadows with baritone Gareth Brynmor John.

Further information: elgarfestival.org