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"Dishes filled with pearls"
12.12.2008After nine successful concerts, which the choir gave throughout the country, the special project which conductor Paul Van Nevel based around music from the court of King Francis 1 has come to an end. François Premier (which surely sounds better than Francis the First) and his sister Marguerite de Navarre themselves wielded the pen with great ingenuity and delicate subtlety in their literary utterances. The composers whom they gathered around them at court were expected to be able to do the same with notes.
The high degree of refinement of the musical writing of De Sermisy, Sandrin or, a little later, LeJeune, was convincingly demonstrated by the singers and Van Nevel. The Volkskrant spoke with justification of “the stockinged feet sensation during intimate chansons” and the Friesch Dagblad concluded that Paul Van Nevel had once again presented the audience with dishes filled with pearls. “As well as the musical expression, the sublime colour of the sound, which are things we actually take for granted with the Nederlands Kamerkoor, there was also yet again the subtle choreography. As always the choir stood in a circle, in constantly changing combinations, varying from four to sixteen singers . [...] He [Van Nevel] determines precisely who stands where. In this way he moulds the sound he wants from the choir. If the Kamerkoor is still granted some time to continue singing, let us hope that will provide us with many more musical journeys with Paul Van Nevel.”
The Volkskrant was no less struck by the exceptional repertoire and the ‘choreography’ applied to it: “A beautiful ending: four singers seated on chairs, eight more standing behind them in a semi-circle. The quartet sings Pierre Sandrin’s Doulce mémoire, that jewel of disappointed love. Pierre Certon wrote a response to it, every bit as sad, which was performed by the group of eight singers. Paul Van Nevel interwove these elements to form a work of rare poignancy.”
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