Maisie Hulbert

Maisie sang as part of the St Martin in the Fields Choral Scholars for a beautiful service.

Those words of Fletcher’s crop up again as the last of the four sections of Kenneth Leighton’s Crucifixus pro nobis. This is an ambitious choice by David Rowland because the music is austere and uncompromising, making serious demands on the performers. The soloist is particularly challenged by Leighton. Here, the mantle is taken by soprano Maisie Hulbert who has the first movement all to herself (with organ accompaniment) and reappears in the third movement. She sings very well in the first movement, ‘Christ in the cradle’; I like the tonal quality she produces, even if the words aren’t always clearly enunciated. She seems to me to put over the sadness in the music. Miss Hulbert also does well in the third movement, ‘Christ in his passion’, of which she and the choir give a powerful performance. In between these movements comes ‘Christ in the garden’ which is for choir and organ. The music is intense and dramatic and David Rowland gets his choir to project it strongly. The consonance and relative simplicity of the music in the final movement, the only one that is unaccompanied, provides a pleasing and consoling contrast to what has gone before. Here, Leighton sets ’Drop, drop, slow tears’, as Walton did, but adds a third stanza.