Animal Crackers, Levens Choir, Cartmel 

Levens Choir, directed by Ian Jones, gave a light-hearted and entertaining concert of songs and poetry on the theme of animals. This contrasted with the more ‘serious’ concerts which the choir sometimes gives us, but to pull it off successfully required just as much hard work and concentration. The programme was built around Eric Whitacre’s Animal Crackers, settings of Ogden Nash’s poems. These were spread through the evening, and were performed from memory – not an easy feat, but hugely successful in term of communication with the audience. The words of the songs came over with impressive clarity: not always a feature of choral music.

Levens Choir demonstrated another of its strengths by having some items performed by sub-groups. Not all choirs would have the confidence to do this. The choir should be encouraged to give such items without a conductor: small-scale pieces lend themselves to a ‘chamber music’ approach. There were also solos and duets, notably Rossini’s Duet for Two Cats, sung by Emily Robinson and Helen Keogh. Christine Wood, Joyce Tedcastle and Gill Smith gave us an arrangement of Dogs and Ferrets. All the piano accompaniments were played with great dexterity and sensitivity by Ken Forster.

A feature of the programme was the poems read by Becky Hutchinson and Keith Hildrew. We heard about hedgehogs, cats, snails, donkeys, pigeons, geese and swans.

Notable among the various items sung by the whole choir were Stanford’s The Blue Bird, with the solo line exquisitely sung by Emily Robinson; Andrew Carter’s very entertaining setting of the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, with its very tricky modulations; and Skimbleshanks, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.

 

David Jones