LAST Friday the Eddleston Parish Church was packed for the annual summer concert by the combined choirs of Eddleston Voices and Parish Church Junior Choir.

Musical director, Lorraine Mulholland pulled out all the stops for this, the 10th ‘Music for A Summer Evening’ by thrilling the audience - and the choirs - with her programme.

Her own musical talent and enthusiasm are infectious.

From the youngest in the Junior Choir to the senior Voices, it was clear all were enjoying themselves immensely.

A very clever compilation from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream caught the energy of the Junior Choir, complete with character t-shirts and skilful narration of the confusing plot.

The audience just about followed the twists and turns of lovers falling for the wrong partners, the hazards of drugs and fancy dress and the happy resolution of misunderstandings in midsummer madness. There followed a romp of popular ‘oldies’ from the Voices (Glen Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker’s Lullaby of Birdland and Judy Garland’s signature tune, Over the Rainbow) before guest solo pianist, Graham McDonald took to the keyboard and thrilled the audience as he did last year.

Eddleston Parish Church is blessed with a splendid upright Steinway and both the choirs’ accompanist, Clare Dempster and Graham McDonald used it to full advantage.

McDonald’s capacity to compose, improvise, and produce variations on a theme are now legendary. As he pointed out, the Harpsichord Suite No.5 was never played on a piano in Handel’s day, and so there was licence for some ‘tinkering around’ which was reminiscent of the late Glenn Gould, who famously grunted and hummed his way through Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ On the Ritz was followed by Mancini and Mercer’s Moon River which will forever be associated with Audrey Hepburn for whom it was specifically written in the film ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’.

Others have sung ‘Moon River’ but none can match Hepburn’s breathy rendition and the Eddleston Voices struggled to hold some of the harmonies in this arrangement by Roger Emerson. David Bowie’s Life on Mars was also a challenge but the Voices did well to convey the weird world of a young girl’s struggle with reality.

The climax of the evening was an excellent medley from Les Miserables (Arr Ed Lojeski).

Victor Hugo’s story of passion, courage, redemption and the indomitability of the human spirit has been captured in this record-breaking musical (currently the longest-running in the world) which has moved audiences to tears since its first performance in October 1985 at the Barbican in London.

There were many who were moved on Friday night at Eddleston, particularly when Lorraine Mulholland was thanked by the Rev Calum Macdougall at the end of the evening and her choirs joined in with their own enthusiastic appreciation. It has been a decade of dedication (and 25 years of conducting the Junior Choir) which has made an enormous contribution to the local community.

By Pamela Strachan