Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 2

Gounod: Messe Solennelle
Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe (suites 1 & 2)
Dartington Festival Chorus & Orchestra (plus guest vocals from Exaudi)
Conductors: Brian Kay and Diego Masson

Firstly, erk, a correction: yes it was the Cello Concerto no 2 by Shostakovich that we played in Wednesday's concert, not no 1 (a rather less searching piece).

But anyway, following that intense experience, the prospect of Gounod's unfamiliar mass promised to be something of an anticlimax - it's one of those pieces which gets labelled as 'unjustifiably neglected', as sure a sign as you can get of something being justifiably neglected. In this case, well, it's not long, so would be a useful concert-filler, next to other relatively short pieces like the Beethoven Mass in C, or the Schubert E flat mass (even if putting Gounod in the same programme as Schubert would cruelly show up the differences between the two in tune-smithery).

Here, though, the companion was Ravel's ballet, which, as well as being an orchestral showpiece of the ultimate kind, gives a chorus a run-out in something rather less chaste than standard choral fare. This is particularly so in the second suite, where their wordless singing adds a real Hollywood bloom to the most glorious depiction of sunrise in all music (I'd like to add my personal thanks to Ravel for giving the tune to the violas, while the violins busy themselves with their fiddly background noodlings). But it's in the final section where the chanting really pays off, delivering an erotic charge the piece misses a little bit in the purely orchestral version - you feel just a little bit dirty even playing along.

Other than the music, one reason for looking forward to the Friday concert is that summer school director Gavin Henderson gives a hint of what's to come the following year. I guess the big news this time is that next year will be his last festival (after nearly a thousand years in charge), so there's a vacancy for 2011. Evidently, nobody has been lined up yet, so now's the time to start getting your CVs in order.

Next: Haydn, Mozart and Satoh.