The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge at St James Assembly Hall, Guernsey, July 2025
> See concert details...“The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, founded by Mary Tudor in 1553, arrived in the Channel Islands wreathed in history and acclaim.
When the prestigious classical music magazine Gramophone ranks a choir as the fifth best in the world, it can’t help raising expectations…while the sneaking sceptic in me prepares to be disappointed.
It hardly helped that the three choir members who were staying with us (imagine the logistics of finding 30-plus performers a billet for the week – let’s hear it for Guernsey hospitality) were such amusing, energetic, well-balanced individuals; hardly the obsessively competitive crew one might have imagined jockeying for a place in this elite ensemble.
Hence the anticipation levels for their first concert in St James; a stellar reputation to fulfil, a new(ish) conductor in Steven Grahl, at the helm since early 2024, and the added challenge of integrating with Guernsey singers who had joined them that afternoon for a workshop, together with the Guernsey Youth Choir. In short, there were a lot of moving parts to reconcile.
Launching into the soundtrack of the week’s heatwave, ‘Summer is icumen in’ was followed by early pieces by Weelkes and Gibbons, filling the air with a tapestry of intricate patterning. Notably through this lush interweaving of strands of harmony, specific parts were still clearly audible. Despite their snug integration, the voices kept pure and distinct within their courses, producing an almost three-dimensional effect.
As the nerve centre of this refined and complex machine, the conductor is for me, the focal point of the ravishing sounds that the choir produces. Steven Grahl’s conducting style could have explained the music – without a note being sung.
While understated, the repertoire of movements he used were precisely choreographed to the character of each piece. The St James’ concert of early madrigals and 20th-century songs had a breezy buoyancy, and his style here – while never anything but restrained – had an impish jauntiness that made one beam in empathetic delight.
In the way a whisper makes you focus your attention, this less-is-more approach bound the choir to his direction with threads of silk. Their split-second timing, the minute shifts in dynamic – and through it all, that perfection of pitch from every voice that welds a group of diverse individuals into a single instrument – all was flawless. And all without a score between them. Their hinterland of relentless rehearsing was there if you looked for it; but the illusion of a spontaneous outpouring of joy was complete in the moment it took wing.
Part of the Huanui Music Society and Guernsey Art’s objective in sponsoring Trinity College Choir’s tour, is to involve world-class musicians in the musical education of the island. We saw the success of this in the inclusion of the Guernsey Youth Choir, led by Rachel Wright, singing separately and then with the Trinity College Choir.
It was an immensely impressive performance by the students and their conductor: their clarity and precision was exceptional. This was followed by a blending of the Trinity Choir with Guernsey singers, culminating in a magnificent roof-raising rendition of Hubert Parry’s ‘I was glad’… which really summed up how all those filling the warm air with their applause, felt about the whole unforgettable evening.”
Julia Meredith