Concert
Cappella Sanctae Catherinae
Santa Maria church, Birkirkara

There is no dearth of concerts for Yuletide in our islands and some start as early as the beginning of the month. Recently there was a series of concerts at three different venues but presented by Malta’s only all-male voice choir, Cappella Sanctae Catherinae. This by its very nature provides an event with a difference and a completely polyphonic one. Besides, the second of these concerts which I attended, happened to take place in a church I absolutely love, that splendid Santa Maria parish church of Birkirkara.

The choir’s invocation to those present to rejoice, Gaudete! was something the audience could easily take up because surroundings and the singing combined to make this an enchanting 45 minutes or so. The invitation echoed the title of the penultimate work sung by the eight-strong choral ensemble, Gaudete, gaudete from the Piae Cantiones. However, by then the choir had already been through nine different pieces sung in groups of three and introduced with some very useful information about them by Alex Vella Gregory.

Members of the ensemble have equal importance in the polyphonic singing they so obviously enjoy to sing to their audiences. They form four groups of two singers each and it says much for their disciplined training that the sound and texture are very smooth and homogeneous. If it were not so, the numbers are so thin that one voice or more could easily stand out above the others. For directional purposes, Robert Calleja sings baritione and also directs the ensemble. In fact he intoned the first verse of Veni veni Immanuel (anon. c. 12th century) with the other singers gradually emerging from either side of the high altar, first one then the rest in twos providing a very pleasing effect.

Singing Palestrina well is no joke but this ensemble does it well and always includes a work or two by the priest-composer. The choice this evening fell on Alma Redemptor Mater, crisply phrased and smooth, ideally balanced and matched by the equally difficult but well-executed Hodie Christus natus est. In between the choir sang the traditional Basque carol, the charming The Angel Gabriel. No less charming was Quanno nascette ninno, old traditional Italian in the background of which or in one’s ears there lurks the popular Tu scendi dalle stelle. The choir varied their repertoire by “going to Spain” with de Victoria’s O Regem coeli – Natus est nobis and Cristóbal de Morales O magnum mysterium, the former a generation after and the latter one before Palestrina’s and which made for some interesting listening. Between these two pieces was our own lovely carol Ninni la tibkix iżjed.

There was something still more different in Sophia nasci fertur (anon.c. 1500) with its late mediaeval harmonies making it stand out. It involved the singing of three different verses by three soloists, in this case Justin Burwood (cantus), Mark Debono (tenor) and Alex Vella Gregory (bass) who all made a smoothly ideal run of the piece. After the above-mentioned joyous Gaudete, gaudete the concert ended joyously with Wade’s Adeste fidelis sung in Latin, Maltese and English.