Schola Cantorum/Yuja Wang — this was an unforgettable five-star event

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★★★★★Half the choir and quite a few punters were in tears after this morning concert, so super-charged was it with emotions of all varieties. The Schola Cantorum de Venezuela — just 17-strong but quite capable of blowing the roof off the Queen’s Hall — not only sang a revelatory two-hour programme of mostly unfamiliar choral music from the Americas, but also delivered all its rich harmonies and zingy rhythms entirely from memory, guided magisterially by their veteran artistic director María Guinand.
And being unencumbered by sheet music they were also free to dance, nearly all the time, with glorious verve and immaculate cohesion. I’ve seen ballets with less going on visually.
The programme went from darkness to light. The first half was tragedy-hued, dominated by abrasive settings of the Lamentaciones de Jeremías by Alberto Ginastera and Alberto Grau. “We cry for the things that are happening in our country this week,” Guinand said, wisely leaving it at that. They must return to that misery now.
The second half was much more joyous. Murray Schafer’s Native American-inspired Magic Songs were a thrilling melange of tribal chants, bird calls and atmospheric backings. And a carnival atmosphere took over for the finale, drawing on ritual ceremonies and Venezuelan popular songs, with the dancing singers invading the audience.
It’s not a choir that makes a fetish out of pristine blend and intonation, as some top British choirs do. Instead you get young soloists who seize their moments like rock stars. Who knows what other chances they will get on the international stage? A tragic poignancy as well as life-affirming energy infused this unforgettable event.
Follow that, Yuja Wang at the Usher Hall later. Delicately shimmering Chopin (Four Ballades), crystal-clear counterpoint in some Shostakovich preludes and fugues, and a brilliantly persuasive interpretation of Samuel Barber’s knotty Piano Sonata, with its final fugue taken at a storming pace — all just a warm-up. She then gave her customary eight encores, ranging from a Chinese song to an astonishing arrangement of the demonic scherzo from Shostakovich’s String Quartet No 8. Who needs four players when you have a pianist who apparently has four hands?