Diversity and enthusiasm from Gale Force voices at Futuna

Colours of Futuna presents:
Gale Force Gospel Choir  (Small Ensembles)

The Yorkett Quartet – Carol Lough, Gunilla Jensen, Neil Pryor, Gina Coyle
Bring Me Little Water Sylvie  (H Ledbetter, arr. Max Maxwell)
When I get Inside / Our Father  Trad gospel, arr. Tony Backhouse
Going Down to Jordan (Trad, arr. Soweto Gospel Choir)

Gracenotes Quintet – Juli Usmar, Leigh Talamaivao, Fiona Walker                                                                       Richard Hale, Shelly Andrews
There is a Balm in Gilead (W Dawson, arr. Tony Backhouse)
Gotta do Right (Trad, after a version by the Heritage Singers)

Peter & Anne (Williams)
I Had a Real Good Mother & Father / By the Mark
(Trad, after Gillian Welch)

Vocalicious – Shona McNeil, Rachel MacLeod, Shelly Andrews
Halleluyah (Leonard Cohen, arr Shona McNeil)
Go to Sleep Little Baby (Harris/Kraus/Welch arr Vocalicious)

Indonesian Quartet – Mark Standeven, Carol Shortis,
Anne Manchester, Bill Shortis
Betapa Baiknya (Freddy Ahuluheluw arrr. Carol Shortis)

Triceratops Trio – Ben Woods, Laura Durville, Amber Coyle
Beams of Heaven (Charles A.Tindley, arr. Laura Durville)
Wanting Memory (Ysaye M. Barnwell, after Cantus)

Rise Up Trio – Gina & Jim Coyle
Cross Over to the Other Side of Jordan (from James & Martha Carson)

Pieces of Eight Octet – Liz King, Leigh Talamaivao, Bill Shortis, Gracie McGregor, Angela Torr, Ian Brewer, Andrew Thompson-David, Laura Durville
One Mornin’ Soon (arr. Tony Backhouse, after Johnita and Joyce Collins)
All Night, All Day (arr. Tony Backhouse, after The Caravans)

Futuna Chapel

 Sunday 9th November 2014

Right from the word go this short concert had the feeling of a community event, rather than a formal recital, and I’m sure that’s how the organisers wanted it. Gale Force Gospel choir is a diverse bunch of singers from many different backgrounds, who obviously enjoy the idioms of Negro Spirituals, both the singing and the swinging. They put together a varied programme of small ensemble pieces, incorporating both traditional numbers handed down from the original slaves, and subsequent compositions in similar vein.

Their enthusiasm was infectious, and it captured the full-house audience from first to last. It carried the singers through the odd loss of memory, and the not infrequent dodgy intonation of their a cappella style, but nobody seemed to mind – everyone was clearly having a ball, both singers and listeners.

The Yorkett Quartet was the most polished of the groups, and their opening bracket of traditional numbers was beautifully controlled in phrasing, intonation and ensemble, with exemplary clear diction. This is not easy to achieve in the lively acoustic of Futuna Chapel, but they judged their dynamics most effectively to suit.

The Gracenotes Quintet followed with a sensitive rendering of Balm in Gilead, then a complete switch in mood to the swinging rhythms and clapping beat of Gotta Do Right that was particularly popular.

The Vocalicious group’s Go to Sleep Little Baby was likewise acted out with rhythmic and rocking motions that brought their gentle lullaby very warmly to life.

The Rise Up Trio enacted the story of the Jews’ escape from captivity in Egypt very graphically with their swinging number Cross Over to the Other Side of Jordan despite some highly variable intonation. They invited the audience to join in the choruses, which was done with considerable enthusiasm.

This left the final bracket to the largest ensemble, the Pieces of Eight Octet, who closed the concert with two numbers full of the immediacy of angels. One Mornin’ Soon was propelled along by lively vocal “percussion” from the basses, and the vivid imagery of angels surrounding an ecstatic supplicant kneeling at prayer.

By contrast, All Night, All Day was a gentle, rocking number that rounded off the programme by committing the singers to the loving care of their guardian angels as sleep took over. It was an apposite finish to a well balanced and highly popular concert that epitomised community music making in the very best tradition.

 

Musicians join in with the fireworks in Wellington

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
OPULENCE – Music by Tchaikovsky, Ravel and R.Strauss

Eldar Nebolsin (piano)
Michael Stern (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Concerto No.2 in G Major Op.44
RAVEL – Ballet Suite from “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose)
R.STRAUSS (arr. Rodzinski) – Orchestral Suite from “Der Rosenkavalier”

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 8th November, 2014

Happily, the days of accepting “as Tchaikovsky’s work” the long-established truncated version made by Alexander Siloti of the G Major Piano Concerto – such grievous cuts in the second movement! –  seem to be at an end. Here, at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s “Opulence” concert at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening last, we had, in all of its undiluted glory, the original work as Tchaikovsky conceived it. Those extended solo string lines of the Andante were allowed their full expressive voice, maximizing the movement’s dramatic contrast with the energy and vigour of the outer sections of the concerto.

This done, the rest was up to the musicians – and we got a performance from pianist, conductor and orchestra that, to my ears, simply got better and better as it progressed – perhaps a shade four-square and pompous throughout the opening exchanges (partly the fault of Tchaikovsky’s writing), but with every entry made by pianist Eldar Nebolsin creating sparks and flashes of impulse which eventually built up to the point of open conflagration. Here was, I thought, a demonstration of keyboard virtuosity which seemed to grow from right out of the music’s heart – it possessed a kind of compulsive playfulness that exuded total involvement, far removed from brilliance for its own sake.

Nebolsin seemed to take nothing he played for granted, voicing his lines exquisitely in quieter places, in dialogue with the orchestral winds, then just as spontaneously bubbling his textures up and over with delight in his more rapid passagework. Yes, that odd-sounding “ready-steady-GO!” orchestral entry (not terribly convincing at the best of times!) at about nine or ten minutes into the first movement didn’t “come off” here with any great conviction, but the orchestral winds then played like souls possessed with their concerted triplet figurations that buoyed along the string lines which followed. From then on I thought the playing really took wing, with a grandly-sprung orchestral entry immediately after the pianist’s astonishingly volatile first-movement cadenza, and some riotous exchanges leading up to the movement’s end.

It seems tiresomely cliched to say so, but the Andante’s opening conjured up an entirely different world of sensibility – firstly Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin, and then Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello gave us moments of aching lyrical beauty, the players’ lines mingling ease with intensity in a way that might well have caused the pianist to exclaim in rehearsal “What a pity to come in and spoil that!”…….however, Nebolsin’s real-time response was to add to the melody’s beauty with phrasings that actually brought to my mind in places the Brahms of some of the latter’s Intermezzi  – Tchaikovsky, who was ambivalent about the German composer and his music, would possibly be spinning in his grave at the audacity of such a comparison!

But there was more to it than lyrical expression – the exchanges took on a passionately operatic air in places, the piano building “Swan-Lake” climaxes with the orchestral strings, and violin and ‘cello “crossing bows” with a vengeance, before returning things to a state of equilibrium, save for that uneasy sequence shared by the lower strings and brass over tremolando violins – some remnant of a painful and poignant memory of its composer’s, perhaps?

How we all delighted at the whiplash crack of the finale’s opening! – again, Nebolsoin’s playing had such a sense of fun accompanying the brilliance! We got a superb horn-solo as a counterpoint to the second theme, and an exciting, soaring, conflagration of strings in their brief but telling flourish which followed. I thought, in fact, the whole performance seemed to be alight, with plenty of “sting” in the exchanges between soloist and strings – an example was that tricky-run-up to yet another whiplash chord at the beginning of the coda – real panache, a wonderful amalgam of impetuosity and confidence!

Had the Michael Fowler Centre been more generously peopled that evening (was that reprobate Guy Fawkes to blame on this occasion?), the response at the concerto’s end would have been simply overwhelming! We did our best, calling the pianist back for more and richly-deserved acclaim, until we could put hands together no more – Eldar Nebolsin’s was playing which made me long for the days when such a soloist’s appearance with the orchestra would usually be followed up  by a solo recital – alas, as civilizations progress, so, it seems, do they also decline……..

We had been told in an announcement before the concert that the interval would be spaced so as to allow patrons the opportunity to observe the Wellington City Council’s annual fireworks display – so, at 9pm most of us had arrayed ourselves either at a convenient window or vantage-point just alongside the building, ready for the visual scintillations and batteries of percussive retorts accompanying such happenings. It all seemed in perfect accord with what we had just heard, actually – so everybody was in a high old humour when the concert’s second half began.

Certainly, after the “double-whammy” effect of Tchaikovsky at his most extroverted and brilliant, and the full-on battery of fireworks over the harbour, we were all ready for something a shade more subtle and delicate – and Ravel’s music for his Ballet Suite “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose) was just what the doctor ordered. A pity the whole ballet is seldom played in the concert-hall, as there’s more to enjoy – an enchanting introduction plus a series of wonderful linking episodes (rather like the “Promenades” used by Musorgsky in his “Pictures at an Exhibition”). Still, the Suite is the next-best thing, and it brought out ravishing sounds from conductor and players in all instances.

The Suite preserves the work’s original inspiration – five pieces written for piano-duet for the children of friends, each piece characterizing a favourite fairy-tale. Ravel, too kept the structure intact when he first orchestrated the pieces in 1911 – the following year he added the “extras” which introduce and then link the movements. Tonight we began with the “Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty”, the sounds like the play of vapours around the head of a sleeping child, as if guardian spirits were in attendance.  The orchestral winds had a great deal of solo work throughout, and the players performed their own and the more concerted lines with requisite beauty and character, especially in this opening piece.

Next came another delicate evocation, “Petit Poucet” (Tom Thumb), whose principal melody, played on the cor anglais, had such an aching, nostalgic quality, one could readily identify with the composer’s longing to somehow re-enter the world of childhood. The forest birds made an appearance in this tale as well, a solo violin joining various winds to emulate their wild, plaintive voices. What a change of ambience with “Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas”, the pentatonic figurations creating bustling, excitable movement before a gong evoked the splendour of an Oriental Monarch! How the composer must have loved writing this!

One of the most famous of all fairy-tales, “Beauty and the Beast”, got truly graphic treatment from the orchestral instruments, the story’s two characters clearly demarcated at the beginning, bright-eyed, almost questing wind-playing depicting Beauty’s attractiveness and open, enquiring mind, and then louring percussion supporting the hideous tones of the contrabassoon to portray the unfortunate Beast – a wonderful noise! Then when the lighter winds and the deep-throated Beast got together, the synthesis was breathtaking in its audacity and clarity – a kind of “vive la difference” to savour and remember.

In fact, the only, very slight criticism I could find to make of the playing was of places in the final movement, “The Enchanted Garden”, whose episodes I thought unfolded beautifully, but a shade (just a shade, mind you!) too glibly – the sequences could have done with a touch more breathless wonderment at some of the phrase-ends and harmonic turns, as a child might experience when exploring some kind of wonderland – places where the music’s hymn-like progressions could have caught and held the flow for split-seconds of poised, ecstatic delight, a “registering” of certain moments, one might say. Still, the final peroration very satisfyingly gathered all together and opened up the vistas to the oncoming sunshine, a triumph of light and good and happiness over the dark, the orchestral harps properly drenching our sensibilities with warmth and excitement.

I hadn’t read the titles of the items as carefully as I should have, thinking that we were going to get the “Rosenkavalier Waltzes” at the concert’s end – which I do love! But instead I found myself enjoying the opera’s notoriously orgasmic Prelude – perhaps there’s something about an unexpected pleasure! – before the music went  on to explore various episodes of the drama. A quick look at the item’s listing clarified what was happening – this was a proper “Suite” from the opera, with an opus number, no less!

The programme note implied that the Suite had been made by the composer together with the Polish conductor Artur Rodzinski, in 1944. But the conductor was in New York at the time while Strauss was in war-besieged Germany, suggesting that the Suite was actually Rodzinski’s work, as he gave its premiere with the New York Philharmonic that same year. Strauss must have eventually approved the work, because it was published in 1945 with its present Opus number.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Stern’s conducting and the playing of the orchestra throughout this exercise – I wondered in places whether the work was a couple of sequences too long, but the reaction of the audience at the end certainly dispelled that impression! Parts of it I thought were particularly magical, notably the moments which featured the haunting wind-chord figurations that accompany Octavian’s presentation of the Silver Rose to Sophie at the beginning of Act Two; though I thought some of the opera’s vocal lines lost some of their intensity and focus when played by groups of instruments instead of a single instrumental voice – Sophie’s ecstatically soaring response to Octavian’s presentation here somehow didn’t “tug” the heartstrings as it always does on stage, the impact a bit too generalized from a body of strings or doubled wind lines.

What worked superbly well were the waltzes, particularly the gold-digging Baron Ochs’ lascivious “With me, no night for you too long” tune, which Strauss presents, as here, using, first of all a solo violin (gorgeously played by Vesa-Matti Leppanen) and then, with the orchestral throttle fully open – great moments! But one doesn’t really blame either Rodzinski or Strauss for favouring a kind of good old whizz-bang concert-ending to the suite, instead of going with the prevailing emotions of the opera’s conclusion, and replicating that ambience at the finish.

So, after some heartfelt and beautifully-phrased playing by gorgeous strings (plus some lovely high trumpet work) of the opera’s final “eternal triangle with a difference” Trio, we got the haunting wind arabesques once again along with Octavian’s and Sophie’s final duet – and then the music roared into Ochs’ “Leopold! We’re leaving!” orchestral riot, with great horn whoops sounding above the exuberant rhythms, and a properly-gradated payoff at the end. Everybody seemed to love it! – and as an orchestral showpiece it certainly demonstrated what conductor and players could do, in spadefuls!

 

Carnival for Guy Fawkes’ Day – the music of Alfred Hill

St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series:
Alfred Hill on Guy Fawkes Day

ALFRED HILL (1869-1960)
Quartet No.3 in A minor “The Carnival” 1912 (orchestral version)
Movements: In the Streets / Andantino / Scherzo / Finale

The Dominion Strings, conducted by Donald Maurice

St. Andrews-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 5th November 2014

This work was the earliest of Alfred Hill’s string quartets to be expanded later into an orchestral version, and is better known as Symphony No.5 “The Carnival”. He frequently “recycled” existing works into new formats, and this transcription benefitted from the larger forces which could very successfully convey the bustling, crowded atmosphere of a fiesta.

The opening street scene was graphically depicted with vigorous, sunlit writing and attractive melodies, propelled along by dancing triplet rhythms. Closing gently, as though the fading light of evening were approaching, it could easily have been an evocative film score, no less effective for the absence of visual effects.

The Andantino was full of gentle melody passing from voice to voice, supported by rich harmonies that conjured up the balmy night air, and the pleasures of wandering hand in hand, somewhat apart from the noisy revellers. The languid, surging phrases eventually subsided into a pianissimo close, as though the moon were sinking, heavy with sleep, below the horizon.

The Scherzo woke to a new, sunlit morning, a bright breezy romp full of the new day’s energy, evoking colourful stalls selling wild flowers and sweet treats. It led quite naturally into the energetic Finale which opened with the vigour of almost flamenco rhythms and colour, then moved into a central contrasting section of lilting melodies, with almost a hint of pathos, before returning to the opening mood. There was a dramatic accelerando coda to round off the work with brilliant, festive flair.

This was a thoroughly attractive, almost programmatic work, from a composer who understood the appeal and art of skilful melody writing. The familiar tonal structure made it easy listening, while never sounding tired, but always fresh and creative. The players were clearly enjoying themselves, and their enthusiastic and lively engagement in the work spilled over easily to the appreciative audience.

This concert marked the release of Vol.5 of Hill’s string quartets from Naxos, recorded on CD by the Dominion String Quartet. The last recordings are just complete, with the final Vol.6 due next year. Before the concert, Donald Maurice spoke of the genesis and development of this project over a number of years, then Chris Blake (NZSO CEO) gave some background to Hill’s life and work.

The latter’s prolific output included ten operas (some on Maori themes), thirteen symphonies, seventeen string quartets, many choral works, concertos, chamber music, sonatas, songs and short works for a variety of instruments. Researcher and publisher Allan Stiles has noted that there are over 2,000 titles attributable to Alfred Hill and of those, many have never been published and relatively few commercially recorded. (Programme notes.)

Chris Blake spoke of Hill as “the only significant Australasian composer representing the Late Romantic era”, but I would put Richard Fuchs (1887-1947) very firmly in that category too, although he was a naturalised New Zealander who lived here only from 1939 to 1947. Like Hill he was prolific in many genres, and all his surviving works have been published by the Richard Fuchs Archive, though as yet only a handful of his beautiful songs are available on CD (see www.richardfuchs.org.nz).

Both these composers have been too little heard and enjoyed by New Zealand audiences, but those who attended today’s concert obviously appreciated this opportunity, judging by the turnout and their most enthusiastic applause.

Ballades, Songs and Snatches – singer and piper at Futuna Chapel

Colours of Futuna Concert Series

Songs, instrumentals and duos

Rowena Simpson (soprano)

Kamala Bain (recorders)

Futuna Chapel, Friend St., Karori, Wellington

Sunday 2nd November, 2014

If there’s anybody reading this who hasn’t made the mini-pilgrimage to the exquisite Futuna Chapel in Karori, Wellington, I would strongly recommend to whomever that action be urgently taken. The building alone is worth the visit – an award-winning architectural design by Hawkes Bay architect John Scott, commissioned in 1958 by the Catholic Society of Mary, and built by the brothers of the Society themselves as a place of spiritual retreat and contemplation.

Alas, the chapel’s original setting amid native bush stretching back to the hillsides has been besmirched by development, a process which threatened to gobble up not only the land and the bush, but the chapel itself, until a Trust was formed to negotiate with the developers to save the original building, at the very least.

Part of the Trust’s fund-raising efforts to maintain the chapel is the establishment of this concert series, something that happens to be both worthwhile and instantly rewarding for all contributors to the enterprise. While virtually nothing of the original setting remains, it’s possible, once inside the chapel, to shut out the ironies of the cultural despoilations around and about, and experience something of the place’s original purpose – John Scott’s design continues to resonate and overwhelm, simply and quietly utilising light and space in a timeless and unforgettable manner.

So, Futuna Chapel has been, thanks to sterling efforts on the part of people for whom such things have a transcendence beyond material gain, more fortunate in its preservation than, say, another historic Wellington venue, Island Bay’s Erskine College, much older, but as beautiful and distinctive and as worthy of preservation. Alas, efforts to instigate restoration of Erskine have encountered attendant problems which come with ownership, age and costs that I suspect may well require the attentions of some arts-loving, community-minded millionaire for anything lasting to be achieved.

Back in Karori, the “Colours of Futuna” concert series provides the Sunday afternoon visitor to the chapel with added value, a fusion of light, space and sound for which the building might seem to have been purpose-built.  Of course music has always been part-and-parcel of most expressions of spiritual faith, and the venues constructed for this purpose have usually enhanced this propensity for supporting “voices raised in worship” – though hardly cathedral-like in size, Futuna Chapel certainly supports and fulfills this state of things according with and in addition to the building’s original purpose.

For the latest Sunday concert we were delighted by a programme that could have been called “ballades, songs and snatches”, given by soprano Rowena Simpson and recorder-player Kamala Bain. Spanning centuries and continents, the two musicians moved easily between different musical forms and styles, sounds and languages, observations and emotions, enough variety without neglecting deeper feelings, and including both familiar strains and in places, newer, ear-catching sounds.

I’ve encountered both of these musicians revelling in presentations with more than a whiff of the theatre about them – so it seemed entirely natural that each should comfortably utilize the performing platform as a kind of “stage”, especially such one as this, whose light and space would suggest any kind of naturalistic or dramatic vista – Rowen Simpson began the concert with an unaccompanied setting by English composer Michael Head of poet Bronnie Taylor’s “The Singer”, a piece with some haunting major/minor key alternating, and some beautiful vocal ascents, such as at the words “and the sound of fairy laughter” right at the end.

Right at the song’s end Kamala Bain’s recorder took up the melodic threads, the player remaining at the back of the chapel for an antiphonal effect, one which further opened up our vistas appropriate to such an out-of-doors song, bringing a touch of ritual to it all with an anonymous 14th Century Italian ballata “Lucente Stelle’ – even more distant antiquities were shaken and stirred by the next settings, two exerpts from the Exeter Book of Riddles, the work of contemporary English composer Nicola LeFanu.

The soprano read us the riddles first, not to spoil the game, but to clarify the texts – the first, Siren, had a lament-like aspect, a wide-ranging vocal line, part ecstatic, part tragic, in places almost “Queen-of-the-Night”-like in its melismatic demands – complementing the singer, the recorder sounded a kind of birdsong obbligato, underlining the ‘nature-piece’ aspect of the music. The second riddle “Swan” not unexpectedly proved smoother-toned, calmer of movement, the recorder dulcetly reflecting the waters, the vocal line again soaring, but very gracefully, briefly trilling ecstatically with the recorder, before the latter returns to those long watery lines.

One could have been excused for imagining we had been transported to an aviary for the next item, Australian John Rodgers’ “Three Short Pieces”, featuring the movement of the recorder-player to a different location for three different birdsongs, very effective and naturalistic. From evocation we were taken to invocation, with Lyell Creswell’s “Prayer to appease the Spirit of the Land”, a work dedicated to Tracy Chadwick, a New Zealand soprano who died young, from leukemia. This was original a Maori text rendered into English, sung gently, with floated lines over a very “earthy” recorder accompaniment, with breathy tones and pitch-bending suggesting wind-notes – altogether a moving tribute to a young singer.

Another New Zealand work, by Dorothy Ker, was a setting of a poem by Ruth Dallas, “On the Bridge” for soprano solo, a folkish setting, sounding in effect like a spontaneously-conceived improvisation from the singer, the impulses at first high-flying, then trailing off gently.  And then came the next item, a work by the Dutch composer Karel van Steenhoven, one called “Nachtzang”  (Night Song). Recorder-player Kamala Bain “warned” us about this piece beforehand, stressing the necessity for we listeners to “use our imaginations” – it was a bit like the musical equivalent of a “Government Health Warning”, but at least we were prepared!

The soprano’s wordless line floated long-breathed notes over the top of an agitated molto perpetuum figure, before singer and recorder wove their lines around one another in bird-songish fashion, producing some extraordinary unison and intervalled passages. In places the singer “vocalized” the lines, occasionally breathing agitatedly, at other places crying out like a baby – the recorder contributed ghosty tremolandi to various episodes, with the outside wind occasionally contributing a naturalistic counterpoint!  The sounds certainly took us “out of ourselves” and into more uncertain worlds somewhat removed from our comfort-zones.

Such were the contrasts and drastic changes of sounds and moods wrought by the performers throughout the afternoon that we were beginning to expect almost anything could happen at this stage – and it did, with the presentation of several Scottish Songs from the eighteenth-century “Orpheus Caledonius” collection made by the singer and folk-song enthusiast William Thomson. Kamala Bain brilliantly caught the “snap” of the rhythms of Auld Rob Morris, and was then joined by Rowena Simpson for the second song, Lady Ann Bothwel’s Lament, which had a lovely high vocal tessitura in places and a droll drone recorder accompaniment. The music of the third song, Sleepy Body, seemed to belie its title, the soprano turning instrumentalist and playing a glockenspiel to assist with the delightful recorder-tones.

“This brand new work” began the sentence introducing the programme’s next item, “Night Countdown” by Wellington composer Philip Brownlee (present at the performance). Setting the words of a poem by Peggy Dunstan, the music explores the state of being that exists “in the space between wakefulness and sleep”. to quote the composer’s own words. The sounds weren’t necessarily literal reproductions of the poem’s images, but were used in an attempt to encourage different interpretations of the words’ meanings. The singer read the poem before the music began, to give us an idea of the word-terrain to follow. Rowena played the glockenspiel and Kamala the largest of the recorders, the latter encouraging some amazing timbal variation from the instrument, including a kind of simultaneously-produced array of harmonic/overtone sounds.

The vocal line moved lazily and sensuously at first, but arched confidently towards more ecstatic regions as the night’s multifarious elements were “banked up” in an impressive catalogue. Singer and recorder-player enjoyed the “chorus of barking”, before joining voices for the last few phrases of the poem – the climactic “one me” was sung and spoken together as if by a chorus. A lovely work, the words and music having more than a whiff of the power of those “A Child’s Garden of Verses” poems by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Jacopo da Bologna’s 14th Century madrigal Non al su’amante featured the story of the Goddess Diana bathing in a mountain stream and being observed by a passing hunter – what beautiful singing and playing lines, here!  Especially telling was the blend of lyrical voice and excitable recorder figurations. The story didn’t appear to have a happy ending, judging by the melancholia that seemed to grip the piece over its last minute or so’s duration! A happier, more energetic outing for all concerned was provided by an anonymous 14th Century French ballade, “Constantia”, a dancing, tintinabulating expression of joy from voice and instrument that makes one wish one could be a time-traveller!

This was a great concert for home-grown music, as next was Helen Fisher’s setting of Lauris Edmond’s poem I name this place, one of the verses from a collection “Scenes from a Small City”. As befitted the occasion for which the piece was written (the wedding of friends) the music has a renaissance-like feel, a ritualistic elegance to its lines and counterpoints, flavoured also in places by a “folkish” quality – the concluding flourishes by singer and player towards the end underlined the celebratory nature of the occasion. And to bring things to a close on a further optimistic note, we heard “Sumer is icumen in”, an appropriately cheerful and sonorous farewell to the afternoon’s evocations.