Music / Radiant Dawn: From Lamentation to Light, Coro, conducted by David Mackay. At All Saints Anglican Church, Ainslie, May 9. Reviewed by LEN POWER.

With a particularly fine program of works by a range of composers across the centuries, Coro choral ensemble’s first concert for 2026 traced an emotional path from sorrow through renewal, joy and gentle resolution.

Conducted by David McKay, works from the Renaissance to the modern day were sung in five distinct movements – Lamentation, The Prayer For Peace, Renewal and Light, Radiance and Human Light.

Starting with Lamentation, the ensemble sang three sacred works from the Renaissance by Jacob Händel, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Alonso Lobo. The sorrow and spiritual intensity of these works was given a sensitive and emotionally charged performance, especially in Lobo’s work, My harp is turned to mourning, with its moving expression of loss.

In the second movement, The Prayer For Peace, William Byrd’s Agnus Dei in three, four and five voices settings was an opportunity to hear the progression of increasing emotional breadth and tenderness in each interspersed version. Stravinsky’s Ave Maria showed a similar sacred simplicity, although composed centuries later. Claude le Jeune’s See the coming of the spring again, was a joyous celebration of beauty and nature. The soloists for this work were Emma Griffiths, Joanna Kuswadi, Cody Christopher, Ian Mills and Patrick Baker. It was sung with emotional intensity and joyful celebration.

The third movement, Renewal and Light, moved into the 20^th century with works by the Brazilian composer, Jayme Ovalle, and British composer, Gordon Jackson. The ensemble nicely captured the sense of the gradual emergence of light and awakening in Ovalle’s haunting song, Azulão, with soloist, Ian Mills, and Jackson’s To Morning.

James MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn, composed in 2007, was the symbolic centre of the program and standalone piece of the fourth movement of the program, Radiance. This beautiful work, with its sense of striving upward toward light, was given a highly sensitive performance by the ensemble.

The fifth movement, Human Light, with its works by Finzi, Chilcott and Lauridsen, brought the concert to a quiet conclusion. Lauridsen’s work, O Magnum Mysterium, with its serenity and stillness, was especially well sung by the ensemble.

For an encore, the ensemble sang Billy Joel’s And So It Goes, reinforcing the message of the works from over the centuries.

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