A goodly audience came to the Chapel of St Cross to appreciate excellent music-making in aid of a very good local cause – the Winchester Beacon (and former Night Shelter), writes Derek Beck.

Christopher Tolley’s hand-picked Thomas Weelkes Singers numbered just under thirty voices who displayed a kaleidoscopic range of colours and dynamics in their unaccompanied two-part programme.  The first half focused on 16th and 17th century sacred music beginning vividly with music from St Mark’s, Venice.  Two halves of the choir answered each other across the choir-stalls and, as in later motets by Thomas Tallis, there was always a strength in the vocal tone and a thrilling forward propulsion in Dr Tolley’s firm direction.  No effete Renaissance reticence here.

Part two began even more powerfully with The Deer’s Cry, a 2007 setting of an Irish folk legend by the Estonian Arvo Part.  This was impassioned singing with much divisi writing in the vocal parts but delivered with unflinching intonation and the widest range of volume.  The soprano and alto voices alone sang Holst’s ethereal Ave Maria from around the high altar with immaculate tuning in eight parts.  Mr Valiant-for-truth (after Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress) was the concluding item marking this month’s 150th anniversary of the composer Vaughan Williams’s birth.   

Once again, it was a privilege to hear such exemplary choral singing, perfect in blend, rigorous in ensemble and pure in pitching.  They relished the acoustic of the venue which also admirably projected the intimate sounds but many subtle colours of Mark Eden’s classical guitar solos which punctuated the evening.  In these economically challenging times it is hoped that this event will greatly assist in supporting and promoting the Beacon’s activities.