Smugging smugathon: King's Singers at Westminster School
The King's Singers
Great Hall, Westminster School
9 October 2017
So I am moderately pleased with myself that I have seen now the actual real King's Singers, actually really singing in front of me (thanks, Mark, for the ticket). I'm maybe not that surprised now to decide finally that they're not my cup of tea.
I quite enjoyed the first third of this 'audience'. The group performed music by Lassus and Byrd, and then after an incongruous, pleasant item by Rodney Bennett another short set of music by Reger, Brahms and Rheinberger. The Byrd and Lassus were good but not quite as good as I was expecting, principally in the tuning of some of the parts: never wrong but not always perfect. They completely won me round with the German Romantics, however – beautiful ensemble, sensitive balance (albeit tilted towards those of stronger voice, particularly the lovely tenor Julian Gregory) and of course impeccably rehearsed.
They lost me after that, in two separate but related ways. One is that, sadly for me, I found the rest of the music ghastly (by Patterson, Rutter, Whitacre and Chilcott, plus a load of Chilcott-arranged folk songs and close harmony). The second is that the King's Singers' shtick, when divorced from music I would consider good, seemed to me also a bit ghastly. Six youngish, mainly Oxbridge men wearing hideous, shiny blue three-piece suits with big red ties, all looking jolly pleased with themselves while performing clever-clever arrangements (this is the Chilcott) that couldn't be further from the spirit of the original – it was a smugging smugathon.
Sense of humour failure on my part? No doubt, but I can't help myself. My consolation is that, if the King's Singers had only performed music I like and not this clever-clogs nonsense, they probably wouldn't have lasted the fifty years they celebrate next year.
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