Tag: choral

Admirable performances of Fauré requiem and other French music from Kapiti Chamber Choir

Posted on by Mary Singleton

The Romantics presented by the Kapiti Chamber Choir
Director: Eric Sidoti; organist: Janet Gibbs
Fauré: Requiem, Cantique de Jean Racine and Les Djinns;
Four motets by Bruckner: Locus Iste, Virga Jesse, Christus Factus Est and Afferentur Regi
Saint-Säens: Calme des Nuits; Rhapsodie I and Rhapsodie II for organ, Opus 7

St Paul’s Anglican Church, Paraparaumu,

Sunday 21 April, 2.30pm

The members of that musical gem of the Kapiti Coast, the Kapiti Chamber Choir, have reason to be well pleased with their new conductor Eric Sidoti. His debut concert with them at St Paul’s church in Paraparaumu on Sunday, April 21 had everybody, singers and audience, smiling. They presented a well chosen and balanced programme entitled The Romantics, a pleasing mix of the familiar and the unknown. The delightful first half consisted of relatively short pieces contrasted with the dramatic Fauré Requiem of  the second half. Opening with Calme des Nuits by Saint-Säens was a brave move but an enchanting one in which Sidoti introduced himself as a master of the atmospheric. Shimmering sounds and beautiful dynamic shaping of phrases were established and continued throughout the programme. A little uncertainty in the sopranos did not last long and they went on to really distinguish themselves. Two short motets by Anton Bruckner followed, Locus Iste and Virga Jesse, where we first heard a really big sound from the choir and where the baseline came through very strongly. Gabriel Fauré ‘s contribution to the first half, Cantique de Jean Racine, is beautifully melodic, rich in sounds and showed how suitable the French language is to this type of romanticism. Two more Bruckner numbers followed, Christus Factus  Est and Afferentur Regi. In the first of these the lack of male tenors showed up. Three of the five tenors in the choir are women, all of whom sing very well  but the sound is not as robust as it should be. In the second the choir seemed less secure than in the rest of the programme.

Slotted in between these were organ solos presented by Janet Gibbs. Janet has been in Melbournefor 10 years and it is a real delight to have her back. It was great to hear really good and hitherto unknown organ music so capably performed. Rhapsodie I and Rhapsodie II for organ, Opus 7, by Saint-Säens contained beautiful single line melodies, a well voiced fugal section and rich organ harmonies.

The first half ended with a piece that surprised and delighted both the choir and the audience.. Les Djinns by Fauré is an eerily dramatic depiction of the Djinns of Islam: full of fear, infernal cries, ghostly sounds and terror. It begins spookily, quietly, rises to a crescendo of fear and dies away to the faintest of sounds. The accompaniment to this was very ably played on the piano by Janet Gibbs and it is a pity that the piano tone did not do justice to her performance.

Mark Sidoti gave brief, interesting, informative and audible introductions to some of the music in a manner which established good rapport with the audience.

The Fauré Requiem is a gentler requiem than many others. It has been called “a lullaby of death” with death as a rest and deliverance rather than pain. Fauré said of it:
“…perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what was thought right and proper after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.”

This is an elegant and subtle Requiem, possibly the most widely loved of all and Sidoti with the Chamber Choir did it full justice. A particular feature of Sidoti’s work was the use of dynamic contrasts and in particular the attention paid to crescendi and diminuendi. He had changed the placing of the choir for the Requiem and this resulted in a rich and more homogeneous sound. The two  soloists were taken from the choir. This was an excellent decision on the part of the soprano, Shirley Gullery, who gave the well-known Pie Jesu all it requires in sweetness of sound whereas baritone Stuart Grant sang musically but lacked tonal quality. Both the soprano and the alto sections of the choir really distinguished themselves in this work with the chorus of angels ending the work most beautifully.

Janet Gibbs handled the organ reduction of the orchestral score with great sensitivity and musicality.

With Eric Sidoti the Kapiti Chamber Choir looks set to continue the high standard of performance established by its founder Peter Godfrey.

 

A great Messiah from the NZSO and Orpheus Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Messiah by Handel

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, conducted by Graham Abbott

Soloists: Madeleine Pierard – soprano, Anna Pierard – mezzo-soprano, Simon O’Neill – tenor, Andrew Collis – bass

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 December, 6.30pm

There was a very near full house at the Michael Fowler Centre for this, now rather rare occasion. In earlier years the NZSO and the Orpheus Choir joined for the annual December performances every year or so, but for a while the tradition was broken. For many years it became common for the Orpheus Choir to take turns with other Wellington choirs to sing the oratorio.

This resumed relationship might have contributed to the big audience which generated the feeling of a festival; of a tradition re-established.

Things began very well with orchestral playing of great assurance in the Sinfonia. It was pared down to a ‘period’ size but made little attempt to produce the more pronounced characteristics of ‘period practice’. The playing was simply crisp, alive, vigorously rhythmic as well as supporting the expression of whatever emotion existed in the words.

If there was one characteristic that all four soloists shared, it was a strong dramatic instinct, not surprising from singers whose primary job is in the opera house. Simon O’Neill’s opening ‘Comfort ye’ and ‘Every Valley’ exhibited a feeling of calm, priestly and – well – comforting; his tenor voice has both a heroic intensity and a baritonal authority that supported his assurance that the rough places would be made plain.

The Chorus enters with its splendid air of religious certainty that the ‘glory of the Lord shall be revealed’. Here was a choir of well over 100 singers that had been rehearsed so well (Mark Dorrell) that they sang with clarity and exemplary ensemble, sounding like a 30-strong, specialist baroque choir, as well as a sense of excitement, involvement and plenty of volume.

Australian Bass Andrew Collis was new to me. His is the quintessential bass, fit for all the magisterial roles that demand moral fortitude and authority, and his first recitative, ‘Thus saith the Lord’, but even more his next outing with ‘The people that walked in darkness’, seemed to lend the performance as a whole, a feeling of absolute assurance and the kind of religious certainty that Handel’s audience expected. This was an old-fashioned oratorio that delivered musical delight, dramatic excitement, and a sturdy lesson in faith and morals.

Anna Pierard sang next; it was good to be reassured about her gifts having had little chance in her role as one of the Valkyries in the NZSO’s Die Walküre earlier in the year. In ‘But who may abide’ her low notes had all the warmth of the traditional mezzo as well as conveying the urgency and trepidation that the words demand. And her voice revealed itself high and bright when called for as she sang ‘when he appeareth’, with decorous ornamentation.

The alto part gets a lot of exposure in Part I and Anna’s next recitative, ‘Behold a virgin’ and the aria, ‘O thou that tellest good tidings’, reflected beautifully the tone of optimism that Isaiah’s words convey, though her ‘Behold your God’ might have been uttered with greater magniloquence. Later, however, she sang her aria ‘He was despised’ as if the grief was her own, plangent and moving, her ‘…from shame and spitting’, underpinned by the bassoon.

The various sections of chorus showed their distinct colours in the next choral number, ‘And he shall purify’, as sopranos began and others followed in fugal fashion; and they captured the sense of the next triple time chorus with the words ‘behold the glory of the Lord is risen’ with almost thrilling exuberance.  One of the most famous choruses, ‘For unto us a child is born’, which for me was implanted (along with the anguished ‘Surely, he hath born our griefs’ in Part II, and much other essential musical furniture) at Wellington College’s annual concerts in the Town Hall around 1950; the words ‘Wonderful, Counsellor’, almost shouted, were alive with its clarity, joyousness and speed. For speed was a distinct characteristic of Abbott’s direction, and a reason why the performance was not too long in spite of doing the work entire rather than with the more usual cuts.

After the Pastoral Sinfonia, known as Pifa, that sets the scene for ‘There were shepherds’, comes the soprano’s first entry, and Madeleine Pierard filled her voice with a sunny arcadian spirit, beautifully supported by the orchestra that matched her air of excitement, with its variety and delicacy of string playing. After a short choral interjection – ‘Glory to God in the highest’ – she resumes in ‘Rejoice greatly’ with brightness, expressive movement, and colouring her voice enchantingly.

And it was this spirit, shared by all four soloists, of immediacy, of engagement and the dramatising of the events and prophesies in the Biblical texts that gripped the audience as if at the opera.

This performance departed from the usual practice of taking the intermission half way through Part II by breaking at the end of Part I.  The pair of choruses, ‘Surely…’ and ‘All we like sheep…’, were high points, though the levity with which the music treats the latter is always a surprise.

Grief also permeates the tenor’s next numbers, and O’Neill’s spitting out of the words in ‘Thy rebuke hath broken his heart’ and the intensity of his top notes as he sang ‘But there was no man’ were again of operatic force. Madeleine Pierard, bass Andrew Collis and O’Neill sang, respectively, highlights like ‘How beautiful are the feet’ and ‘Why do the nations?’ and Thou shalt break them’ with superb understanding, capturing their dramatic function wonderfully.

Several later numbers of Part II are among those often cut, but here their energetic and committed performance ensured their value was fully realised. The Alleluia chorus is always a high-point and the odd tradition of standing was adhered to though, strangely, by no means all stood during the prolonged ovation at the end, where such a gesture was actually deserved.

And the succession of indelible numbers continued almost unfalteringly, with the orchestra and chorus delivering flawless performances to support Madeleine’s rapturous ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’, the revelatory chorus ‘Since by man came death’ with its sudden burst of joy, and the great bass recitative ‘Behold I tell you a mystery’ and aria ‘The trumpet shall sound’ where it did indeed do that.

Then as the end approached, the only duet in the work, ‘O death where is thy sting’ – alto and tenor answering it by their demonstrative vocal gestures, though not a perfect balance; another soprano solo ‘If God be for us’, a fine display of finesse, attention to sense and careful delivery; and ‘Worthy is the lamb’, a sort of wonderful prelude to the final fugal Amen chorus.

They may have been previous performances that approached this one, but I doubt there has been a better in this town. The audience proved that by long applause with more than half standing.

 

 

 

 

Rutter’s Magnificat given impressive treatment by Wellington’s Capital Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Capital Choir – Magnificat by John Rutter
Plus carols, traditional songs, organ pieces by Dubois and Guilmant, and a Telemann flute sonata

Conductor: Felicia Edgecombe; organ: Janet Gibbs; piano – Robyn Jaquiery; flutes: Elizabeth Langham and Megan Brownlie; Soprano soloist Belinda Maclean

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Sunday 2 December, 4pm

This concert was in part a fund-raiser by an unauditioned choir, to mark Christmas and the end of the year. It was brave to have tackled a fairly sophisticated contemporary work, though not written in an avant-garde style which an amateur choir would have difficulty making musical sense of. Nevertheless, there were challenges in Rutter’s rhythms and harmony, in control of dynamics and other interpretive aspects that would have demanded a great deal of rehearsal.

But to start at the beginning: the first half was devoted to carols and a couple of other pieces. One of the latter was the droll setting of Little Jack Horner, sung as a round, in crisp accents. Its origin was not revealed; I have a feeling Philip Norman wrote it. A number of carols followed: Rutter’s Shepherd’s Pipe Carol involving a delightful flute obbligato from Elizabeth Langham; Silent Night with soloists Belinda Maclean, Susan Hamilton and Sally Chapman, all drawn from the choir; the lovely Poverty Carol, a touching, traditional Welsh carol; Sweet Little Jesus Boy which involved a splendid introductory solo by bass Rhys Cocker; and finally O Little Town of Bethlehem in the charming traditional setting, again with Cocker as soloist.

A song setting arranged in mock-bluesy style by Bob Chilcott, The Gift, was too saccharine for my taste.

In between, organist Janet Gibbs whose accompaniments had been heard for some of the pieces, played music by French 19th century organ composers Dubois (Chant pastoral) and Guilmant (Invocation); and flutists Elizabeth Langham and Megan Brownlie played a flute sonata by Telemann. Other accompaniments were imaginatively supported by pianist Robyn Jaquiery.

The Magnificat is one of the earliest Christian hymns to Mary and has been set by scores of composers. It has been traditional to introduce other material into the work and Rutter follows that example, principally with his setting of the anonymous 15th century poem Of a rose, a lovely rose which provides an opportunity for contrasting musical emotions and characters, mostly reflecting the joyous and optimistic interpretation that Rutter invests the central Latin text with. A part of the Sanctus from the Latin Mass is found in the Quia fecit mihi magna, and an entire epilogue section, Gloria Patri and Sancta Maria, after the Esurientes.

There are passages, for example in the first section, Magnificat anima mea, quoting a Gregorian chant and again in the final Sancta Maria. Soprano soloist, Belinda Maclean, gave the Et misericordia – the words repeated several times to the enchanting melody – a distinct secular quality. Her later solo passages, in the Esurientes and Sancta Maria, were further chances to enjoy her vocal gifts.

While Rutter’s Magnificat has an interesting orchestral accompaniment, Janet Gibbs on the Cathedral’s main organ fulfilled the role with a keen sensitivity to the colours and instrumental indications in the score.

An amateur performance this might have been, but the results of dedicated work by Felicia Edgecombe, her choir and soloists, and instrumental collaborators gave this attractive and rewarding choral work a highly impressive and satisfying exposure.

 

Bach Choir brings its 2012 to a splendid conclusion with Vivaldi, Handel and a trumpet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir conducted by Stephen Rowley with soloists Rebekah Giesbere, Ruth Armishaw, Hannah Catrin Jones, John Beaglehole and Rory Sweeney
Janet Gibbs – organ

Beatus Vir, RV 597 (Vivaldi)
Trumpet Concerto in E flat (Neruda) with Mark Carter – trumpet
Dixit Dominus (Handel)

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday 25 November, 4pm

The Bach Choir is one of Wellington’s more distinguished choirs, founded in 1968 by the late Anthony Jennings, a notable harpsichordist and one of New Zealand’s leaders  in the revival of interest in the authentic performance of baroque and early music.

Though the choir’s fortunes have fluctuated over the years, it has experienced a steady improvement in performance standards and confidence under Stephen Rowley.

Vivaldi’s transition from a minor, one-piece composer (The Four Seasons) who was generally absent from the ranks of significant composers (look at any book of music history from before the second world war, even 1950), to a major eminence alongside Bach and Handel has been interesting. His surviving operas have been the most recent discoveries. It was probably Vivaldi’s melodic fecundity and resultant absence of the need to elaborate endlessly one or two hard-won tunes, that caused earlier generations to deprecate and dismiss him.

I had not heard this Beatus Vir before; the earlier of his two surviving settings.  A famous Beatus Vir was one of the first pieces of early Baroque music I ever heard, in my teens – the setting by Monteverdi. And I seemed to hear echoes of it in Vivaldi’s version of a century later.  Vivaldi sets the text (Psalm 111) taking care to reflect meanings, almost of every word, and the use of individual singers, soprano and alto (Rebekah Giesbers and Hannah Catrin Jones) at first and then tenor John Beaglehole, lent the rather severe imprecation of the Psalm brightness and delight.

One of the departures from the strict liturgical character is the repetition of the opening line, imposing a musical rather than an ecclesiastical character on the work, The polish of the orchestral accompaniment from the Chiesa Ensemble comprising NZSO players, lend the whole enterprise a professionalism which the choir readily took upon itself; oboes contributed elegantly in accompanying women’s solos and duets; and Janet Gibbs, largely unobtrusive, emerged occasionally as the principal accompaniment.

But the most striking feature of the performance was that sheer melodic ease that both choir and orchestra handled with such endless accomplishment.

A trumpet concerto completed the first half of the concert: a rarity by a Czech composer, Johann Baptist Neruda, born a generation after Vivaldi, Bach and Handel, proved rather more than a routine baroque concerto. The soloist, Mark Carter, made no concessions to baroque practice, playing a modern, valved instrument; though, probably in accord with the practice of the time, he also directed the orchestra, waving his trumpet about gracefully.  Trumpet and orchestra bloomed in the fine acoustic of the church, allowing the easy legato of the Largo movement to expand, and taking the last movement, marked Vivace, at a pace that was rather slower than that. Though the first movement offered bravura opportunities, it was in the cadenza towards the end that Carter’s fluency finally showed itself. The endless emerging of music by forgotten composers and of lost works by better-known ones, serves to blur age-old judgements about the received masterpieces of the handful of ‘famous’ composers who have dominated music history for several centuries.

Confirmation that such things as masterpieces can still be acknowledged came with Handel’s Dixit Dominus, which occupied the second half. This remains undisputedly a prodigious creation by the 22-year-old composer from his Italian years. Written in Rome while the famous Papal ban on opera was in effect, all of Handel’s dramatic gifts are heard in the Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109); it is marked by one of the most dramatic openings, at least of the baroque period.
It was an arresting start signalling the great opera composer who was to emerge as soon as he reached a more congenial climate – Florence.

The three soloists who had shared the Vivaldi were now joined by soprano Ruth Armishaw  and baritone Rory Sweeney, for a  variety of episodes; alto Rebekah Giesbers enjoyed a striking episode with cello obbligato in the ‘Virgam virtutis’; the fast chorus ‘Tu es sacerdos’ went very well, though sopranos sounded a bit stretched as they negotiated the high passages; when all soloists sang together with chorus, as in (vi), ‘Dominus a dextris tuis’, the similarity of timbre between tenor and nominal bass, Rory Sweeney, somewhat reduced the variety that is a significant aspect of Handel’s composition; but this taxing episode for all soloists against throbbing bass strings they carried off splendidly.

‘Judicabit in nationibus’, in which Handel displays his fugal skills, was probably more tricky that it appeared; it’s little wonder, listening to this, particularly the exciting, staccato passage from ‘Conquassabit…’, that he had so quickly made a big impression in the Roman musical world. The two sopranos promptly changed the tone in ‘De torrente’ capturing beautifully the lamenting character of the verse. The soloists’ diction was generally excellent, while that of the choir was uniformly clear, even though they were probably tiring in the pulsating, motoric rhythm of the Gloria that becomes an extended fugue as it moves to its exultant conclusion.

Though both the works of the first half of the concert are very fine, and so well performed as to display their best qualities, this early Handel masterpiece was a splendid way to end the Bach Choir’s year.

 

Kapiti Chamber Choir offers antidote to Christmas commercialisation

Posted on by Mary Singleton

Joyous Christmas Music
Christmas Oratorio by J S Bach

The Kapiti Chamber Choir with Orchestra directed by Stuart Douglas

Soloists: Imogen Thirlwall – soprano, Emily Simcox – contralto, James Adams – tenor, Kieran Rayner – bass
With a 20 piece Orchestra led by Jay Hancox.

St Paul’s Church, Kapiti Road, Paraparaumu

Sunday 25 November, 2.30pm

Praise be to Stuart Douglas and the Kapiti Chamber Choir for giving Kapiti residents the opportunity to hear arguably the best Christmas music ever written, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Accompanied by an excellent orchestral ensemble they gave an enormously joyful performance from the first thrilling trumpet notes of Andrew Weir’s piccolo trumpet to the full bodied final chorale. They were obviously in the hands of a conductor with a great sense of musicality and style.This performance was not just a series of arias and chorales but a thoroughly integrated dramatic event.

The Orchestra, led by Jay Hancox, was a mixture of capable amateur and professional players, many of whom are Kapiti residents. Their playing was vibrant and exciting though just occasionally a little too heavy for the bass and contralto soloists in their lower registers. The instrumental obbligatos, virtually duets with the solo singers, were sensitively performed by Andrew Weir on trumpet, Peter Dykes on oboe and Malu Jonas on flute, all of whom gave thoroughly professional performances.

Douglas’s choice of the four young soloists was excellent. They all sang beautifully and were able to convey the full drama of the Nativity story. Soprano Imogen Thirlwall has performed several times in Kapiti and her rich and powerful soprano soared easily above everything the Orchestra threw at her. Emily Simcox, contralto, who has previously performed with the Kapiti Chorale, has a voice  of great warmth and tenderness which she combines with a riveting presence.

As the Evangelist tenor James Adams proved himself a true story-teller, singing with drama and communicating well with the audience. Bass Kieran Rayner has been singing in Kapiti since he was very young and showed the increasing maturity and depth of his voice. His well-known acting skills were well to the fore in his exciting presentation.

The choir performed Bach’s very demanding score with vigour and precision, providing a big sound when necessary but also great delicacy in the unaccompanied chorale Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier. The usual lack of strength in the tenor section, due to lack of tenors, did not seriously detract from this uplifting performance. The soprano section was notably excellent.

With judicious cutting of the original score by Douglas we were given a full two hours of glorious music – a wonderful antidote to the crass commercialisation of the season. As I was leaving an audience member said to me “I feel so much better for that”.

 

The Tudor Consort in taxing but excellent concert from the Renaissance and Messiaen

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Renaissance Influences V – Springtime

Music by Claude Le Jeune, Claudin Sermisy and Olivier Messiaen

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 24 November, 7.30pm

The last of the series of concerts from The Tudor Consort that sought connections between music of the Renaissance and the present gave rise to the most recondite relationship with links that drew together the medieval story of Tristram and Iseult (as it is in Matthew Arnold’s narrative poem), and a little known work of Messiaen, Cinq rechants (‘five refrains’) for 12 unaccompanied singers.

The Cinq rechants form the third part of a strange trilogy that Messiaen composed after world war 2. The first is an hour-and-a-half-long set of poems called Harawi for soprano and piano; the second part is the Turangalîla Symphony, and Cinq rechants is the third. They are all inspired by/derived from the Tristan and Isolde story.

Its most authentic early form of the Tristan story is found in the German poem by Gottfried von Strassburg of around 1200. It was included by Malory in his Le Morte d’Arthur (though it is not, of course, strictly part of the Arthurian legends) in the 15th century and hence is found in Tennyson’s version of Malory’s poem, in his Idylls of the King.

It would be hard to identify any musical connection between the legend and Messiaen’s composition, though there are verbal references to Brangaine and Yseult in the first of the five poems which Messiaen wrote, partly in a made-up language devised for onomatopoeic reasons.

What then is the connection with the 16th century French Calvinist composer, Claude Le Jeune? The Tristan story and Le Jeune’s Spring theme were linked through Messiaen.   Le Jeune wrote 33 ‘airs’ and six more extended chansons, with the title Le Printemps. We heard five of the latter: ‘Revecy venir du Printems [Printans]’, ‘Voicy du gay Printems’, ‘Chant de l’Allouette’, ‘O Rose reyne des fleurs’, ‘Le Chant du Rossignol’.

Messiaen knew them and was influenced by Le Jeune’s technique of somewhat rigidly echoing stressed syllables in the text with long notes in the music. While this offers sensitive treatment of the meaning of the Old French (of benefit to very few of the audience I imagine), it made rhythms irregular; combined with a melodic penchant that paid more attention to meaning than to lyrical beauty, the results were interesting rather than beguiling.

Thus their performance was not an easy task and the choir displayed singular accomplishment in making them so musical, especially those singers who occasionally took passages by themselves.

The choir also sang a chanson, ‘Au joli bois’ by Claudin Sermisy, who was thirty years Le Jeune’s senior. It was in a much more familiar polyphonic style, Italianate perhaps; the wood might have been beautiful but the singer was grief-striken, not that the spirit of the music or the singing gave that away.

Then, before the interval came the five Messiaen songs. The first began in deceptive calm from women’s voices while the men disturb it, singing pseudo-Hindi words. They continue making use of linguistic, poetic devices that have, for Messiaen, musical equivalences that vary in their effects as the listener grasps or fails to grasp what he is seeking. There is nothing simple in the music; one was often overwhelmed by the virtuosity exhibited by the choir, and wondered that so few hints of imperfection appeared.

For all the difficulties presented for the singers and the listeners, earlier and later hearings, even if only of bits of the cycle such as are found on You-Tube, begin to cohere musically, and encourage one to explore more of the less-known works of this extraordinary composer.

The Tudor Consort continues to offer Wellington wonderful opportunities to enlarge and deepen (if such a flawed metaphor is allowed) our musical horizons.

 

 

Gospel Truth – great singing from Gale Force Gospel Choir

Posted on by Peter Mechen

COLOURS OF FUTUNA – Concert Series

Gale Force Gospel Choir

Carol Shortis (conductor)

Futuna Chapel,

Friend St., Karori

Sunday 4th November, 2012

In a world where hype of all kinds relating to every sphere of activity seems to be piped into our houses with our drinking water, it’s refreshing (ha!) to encounter publicity for an event that turns out to be nothing but gospel truth – announcing this concert by the Gale Force Gospel Choir at Karori’s Futuna Chapel, the blurb read, “……a non-stop blast of foot-stompin’ mad-clappin’ gospel classics that will have you joining in before you know it..” Exactly so, and in the interests of maximum impact I could dramatize further by announcing that I was “throwing down my cyper-pen because that was all that needed to be said!”.

However, such was the pleasure afforded by this  cheek-by-jowl experience, It’s entirely fitting that I relive a few impressions in order to bask in the resonance of the occasion a little more, and perhaps encourage those who didn’t attend to seek out any subsequent occasions at which this group is performing and get similarly caught up with it all.

One of the things that gave the concert real distinction was the venue. Futuna Chapel, situated in Karori, was known to me from times past in an entirely different context, as a place of worship and spiritual retreat. My own experience was a “once-been-there-never forgotten” three-day residence while a callow, 1960s schoolboy, at what I thought at the time was this (still) magnificent place. The chapel, designed by the architect John Scott, and acclaimed in its day and since, has fortunately survived the ravages of time and greed intact, and is now available for our pleasure as a concert venue. The building enjoys protection as a Category 1 Historic Site, but the once-beautiful surroundings, which incorporated a good deal of native bush, have unfortunately been taken over and, for me, besmirched by “development” of the usual rapacious kind we’ve unfortunately come to expect these days. One gets an impression of individual housing units mercilessly jammed together for what imagines would have been maximum financial return for the developers.

Inside the chapel one is fortunately able to leave behind any such temporal preoccupations, and allow oneself to be transported into another world, in which light and colour play an integral part. I thought that the space seemed one in which almost any chamber-like performance of anything would bloom, through taking on the air, space and light of the ambience. Its character seemed at once abstract and personable, austere and warm. We could as well have gathered waiting for a string quartet to emerge to give us a performance of Bach’s “The Art of Fugue”, or for an actor to take the stage and read to us TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, as much as welcome the performers of the Gospel Songs we were expecting.

To begin the program conductor Carol Shortis brought different sections of her choir into the space antiphonally, making for a “surround” effect which enclosed us in a continually-changing sea of sound-hues, caused by the different harmonic strands keeping on the move until the altar-steps were reached. The choir’s singing of Way By and By while congregating on these steps, plus the backdrop of colour as the sun activated the stained-glass windows made a wonderful show of sight and sound.

All of the songs were taught to the group by Auckland composer and arranger Tony Backhouse, whose deployment of the rhythms and harmonic strands among parts of the group made for ear-catching effects in places. Carol Shortis welcomed us to the concert before setting the following I’m Glad to be in the Service, a song with real Gospel swing, one whose beautifully-harmonised control was allied to the kind of spontaneous outpouring of energy which made it sound as though its performers were truly imbued with the “spirit”, and , at the song’s end, unwilling to let go. An old slave-song Steal Away was no less heartfelt, the first unison note flowering into closely-knit harmonies, and opening into an almost militant middle section with the words “My Lord, He calls me on the Thunder”. Only slight lapses of tuning towards the softly-sung ending served to demonstrate to us the difficulty of some of this repertoire.

 

Keep so busy praisin’ my Jesus was begin by the men’s voices, the women lifting the song harmonically upwards to exciting effect, with plenty of dynamic variation in places like “If I don’t praise Him the rock’s gonna cry out!”. I’ve been in the Storm too long was another slave song, this one harmonically adventurous to the point of discomfiture in places, with disconcerting key-shifts capturing some of the raw desperation of the slaves’ plight. Some relief was afforded us with Ezekiel saw a Wheel, the tenors enjoying their downward glissandi on the word “Wheel”, and also with the following Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho, a song which dynamically ranged from opening whispers to great maestoso-like utterances, and a spectacular chromatic descent on the final “down”.

 

The catchy “ba-dum – ba-dum” rhythms of That’s All Right  used an arrangement by Stephen Taberner, a Melbourne-based Kiwi choirleader, one which nicely varied the “dynamics” of interaction between the different voices. More wayward was Nobody’s Fault But Mine, the concert’s final listed item, and one that featured three solo voices from the choir, the first of which was particularly outstanding, confident, true-toned and stylish! To our delight, we were treated to a brief reprise of this first voice at the end, a solo line answered by the full choir. In between times there were lines, counter-lines, clapping and minimalist-like repetitions, the rhythmic and melodic patternings of which seemed to move everybody’s spirit as one – then, to finish the concert Carol Shortis taught us, the audience, some of the patterns of the very first song, Way BY and By, so we could then join in with the choir’s encore – it was a great way to finish the concert and sent us all babbling happily out into the sunlight, thoroughly energized by what we’d heard – Gospel truth!

 

Futuna Chapel and Alliance Française inspire an attractive French women’s choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Beau Soir’: a programme of French and New Zealand music and poems

L’Alliance Française Women’s Choir: Voix de femmes, Janey MacKenzie (piano and voice), Madeleine Dean (poetry reading), Brigid O’Meeghan (cello), Julie Coulson (piano and choir), Marie Brown (conductor)

Futuna Chapel, Karori

Friday 2 November 2012, 6.30pm

O Futuna!  But this concert was not Orff in any sense of the word.  Despite comparatively little publicity that I was aware of, the chapel, its coloured glass radiating beautifully onto the concrete walls as the sun shone intermittently, was full.  The choir of 14 singers (unnamed), and others, gratified the audience with a varied range of music.

A variety of French music was to be expected; the introduction of a couple of New Zealand compositions was an added bonus.

The concert, the choir’s second only since its formation, began with Fauré; first a hymn, Maria, Mater gratiae, which was followed by a short mass: Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville.  This was written, so Marie Brown told us in one of her clear and excellent introductions, with André Messager, Fauré’s friend and former pupil, with whom he collaborated on other works.  They wrote it to raise money for a charitable purpose, while on holiday in 1881.  It appears that there were several versions of this mass, which is titled Messe basse in Grove.  The first version calls for a harmonium, while the last is set for organ accompaniment, without the movements by Messager.  Perhaps the electronic organ in the chapel is not functional; the accompaniment we heard was on digital piano.

The choir made a very good sound and produced a pure tone, but the acoustic at Futuna shows up even slight lapses of intonation, of which there were a number in the hymn; the mass fared better.  The words were very clear and precise – although a little more care is needed in the pronunciation of the back ‘e’, as in ‘Christe eleison’.

There was a beautiful blend of voices, especially in the lower-pitched sections.  Unison sections were unanimous.  The ‘O salutaris’ movement was particularly beautiful, and there was a nice variety of styles between the movements, both in their composition and in how they were performed.

A Baudelaire poem was recited next: Élévation.  The English translation was printed, with that of the other poem, on a separate sheet.  It was read deliciously by Madeleine Dean, who stepped in at very short notice when the original reader became ill.  The translation guided non-speakers of French through beautiful English to the idea of the elevated soul soaring above the sorrows and pollutants of life.

Two Debussy songs followed.  The French words of one and the translations of both were printed in the main programme.  However, 8 point font is really too small to read in the semi-dark; it would have been preferable to have had a full A4 programme, as some Wellington choirs customarily do, rather than half that size, especially when the type of paper used did not show up that size of print well.

The songs are normally solo songs: Beau soir, with words by P. Bourget, and Nuit d’étoiles, words by Banville.  However, they were sung very effectively by the choir,  with perfect intonation.  The ending of the first song, in close harmony, was quite beautiful. Debussy’s use of language is just superb, and the fabulous accompaniments plus the gentle dynamics from the choir demonstrated what a wonderful composer he was.  He knew how to write for choirs, though he is not generally thought of as a choral composer.  The lower voices produced superb tone, while the sopranos were generally good, but occasionally shrill in this acoustic.

Marie Brown said some interesting words about the history of the chapel, then Madeleine Dean read the poem Le cynge by René-François Sully-Prudhomme.  Again, it was a very fine reading, the image of the swan’s characteristics and movements exquisitely described and his environment evoked.  It was appropriately followed by Brigid O’Meeghan playing the very well-known cello solo of the same name from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, accompanied by Julie Coulson.  It was a sonorous and lovely performance.

Berlioz was the next French composer, with two of the gorgeous songs from Nuits d’été: ‘Villanelle’ and ‘Le spectre de la rose’.  I have to confess that, though I have loved these songs for years, I don’t recall previously reading the translated words carefully.  By the prominent French poet Théophile Gautier (the title inspired by Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream), the poems are full of almost self-indulgent expressions of love.  Janey MacKenzie sang them, accompanied by Julie Coulson.  Although they were Berlioz’s own settings for piano (as opposed to his full orchestra version) I have to say that the digital piano did not provide enough timbre or resonance for these luscious songs.

The second one worked better in this building, being mainly lower in pitch.  The higher notes tended to become shrill here.  Berlioz’s sublime music needs perhaps more sensuous treatment from the singer as well as from the instrument, but nevertheless it was most ably performed.  It was a high note on which to end the French section of the programme.

Now to Nouvelle-Zélande: first, to Craig Utting, in Monument, a setting of a poem by Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, about the sort of weather we’ve had over these few days.  The piece began with the choir singing in unison, then dividing into parts.  The music had a grand and surging effect, as befitted a storm, before subsiding to a gentler choral sound, even as we could hear the northerly wind whistling around the chapel, and making its roof creak and groan.

Also about weather, but in a totally different style was Arlen and Koehler’s Stormy Weather.  Its bluesy rhythm and harmonies were amply projected, and the tone at the finish was delectable.

David Childs, formerly a church musician in Nelson and Christchurch but now resident in the United States, blended the New Zealand and French interests of the programme, with his Les Béatitudes.  An effective work, it incorporated interesting choral writing.  The French language was set extremely well.  One could have assumed the composer to be French if the programme had not told us differently.

The final item was John Rutter’s setting of A Gaelic Blessing.  This piece sounded a little less secure than did the rest of the programme, at the beginning, and there were a few less than unanimous endings to phrases towards the end.

Overall, it was a most enjoyable programme presented by very competent performers, who delivered the interesting music and readings with excellent French pronunciation.

 

Choral and orchestral extension of case law advocated by Wellington lawyers and jurists

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Counsel in Concert: At the Movies

Music, mainly classical, from the films

Choir and orchestra of lawyers (with some NZSO and Vector Wellington Orchestra players in the orchestra), Deborah Wai Kapohe (soprano), Amanda Barclay, Jared Holt (baritone), John Beaglehole (tenor), Douglas Mews (keyboards), Kenneth Young (conductor)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday, 23 October 2012, 12.15pm & 5.30pm

These lawyers worked to a brief of abbreviated (or should that be a-breve-iated?) musical works.  Some were very short excerpts, for example, the opening bars only of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, which opened the 45-minutes-long concert and gave Douglas Mews a little burst on the organ in the gallery, and the final item ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, of which we heard only the final part of the chorus.  Most people will be familiar with these two movies (2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange).  Despite its brevity, the Strauss was much more exciting in its impact, being live, than the recording of the full work heard on radio that very morning.

In between, there were several speeches, notably by concert organiser Merran Cooke, who besides being a lawyer is an oboist in the Vector Wellington Orchestra.  Other items from the choir were part of the ‘Dies Irae’ from Verdi’s Requiem, Nella Fantasia by Ennio Morricone (arr. Snyder), from the film The Mission, with Deborah Wai Kapohe (choir and harp very attractive here), Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis (of Chariots of Fire fame), and, most notably, a work especially written for this occasion by orchestra member Aaron Lloydd: Fundamental Obligations of Lawyers.  This set words from section 4 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006; an unusual text, indeed.  The choir made a good, strong sound in all its items, but sometimes was swamped by the brass in the resonant acoustic of the church.  The choral writing was somewhat plain, but effective – more like a chant – it was probably a necessary characteristic if the words were to be heard, which they were.  The orchestral writing was more interesting, with some lovely percussion effects – befitting for bandsman Lloydd.  There were, too, some delicious woodwind effects, with sounds which were evocative – but not of the law!

Then there was a fanfare – that used by 20th Century Fox for the introductory screen to its movies – this case was very quickly resolved, with plenty of clamour.  Its composer was Newman (Randy, I assume).  The theme from Mission: Impossible was another brief display.  This music was by Schifrin, arranged Custer.  One trusts that this and the Morricone arrangement were done  with due regard to copyright law.

The items for the soloists received less condensed renditions.  Deborah Wai Kapohe’s ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Gianni Schicchi, by Puccini to which the singer gave an excellent introduction, was utterly ravishing.  Orchestra and singer were both in fine form.

Jared Holt followed with ‘Largo al factotum’, the famous aria by Rossini, from The Barber of Seville.  Like Wai Kapohe, Holt has returned to a legal career in New Zealand after some years singing in opera overseas.  His Figaro was full of character and wit;

The third solo was ‘La Donna e Mobile’ from Rigoletto by Verdi, the third in a trio of very popular operatic arias.  John Beaglehole’s singing was very fine, if his voice was a little light for Verdi.  The orchestra played with spirit and accuracy.  His introduction and singing had the necessary sarcastic humour.

‘Pie Jesu’ from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem was sung most affectingly by Amanda Barclay and Deborah Wai Kapohe, though the style was somewhat too operatic for this simple piece.  Douglas Mews accompanied sympathetically on the baroque organ.  For the next item, the Vangelis, he played the piano.

Kenneth Young directed his counsel very well, particularly in view of the fact (of which we were informed) that he had taken on the case fairly recently, due to the previous conductor, Owen Clarke, moving to Auckland.

The concert was quite informal in the way the choir wandered on, chattering, and in its late start – perhaps a contrast with the court scene many of the participants are more accustomed to?

Tumultuous applause greeted every item, and the large audiences responded to a very good effort all round from the performers.  An irritant was the clicking of a camera upstairs during a number of the items, a phenomenon increasingly apparent in a variety of concerts recently.

Far from sticking to the letter of the law, the whole enterprise, and the performances, showed flair and originality.  Should we look for the chiropractors’ chorale, or the diplomatic dancers?

 

Wellington Community Choir – delights both human and animal

Posted on by Peter Mechen

LAND, SEA and FRIENDLY CREATURES

Wellington Community Choir

Directed by Julian Raphael and Carol Shortis

Diedre Irons (piano) / Simon Burgess (bass) / Sarah Hoskyns (mandolin)

Nino Raphael (guitar) / Ukulele Ensemble

Opera House, Wellington

Friday, 21st September, 2012

Two years ago, I spent a rollicking, richly-conceived evening in the Town Hall with the Wellington Community Choir, on the occasion of its 5th birthday. This latest concert, in the very different surroundings of the Opera House had a separate and distinct buzz of its own, the contrast underlined by a photograph from that memorable, multi-layered 2010 event reproduced in this year’s programme.

This time round, the performing focus was less on diversity and more on specific repertoire, with two very different and captivating musical strands plucked and resonated for our great enjoyment. We had a “Pasifika” first half, put together under the title “Songs from Oceania”, and then a distinctly “Northern Hemisphere” second half, courtesy of that redoubtable duo Flanders and Swann – with one exception, not the well-known “At the Drop of a Hat” items, but songs from a less-known collection “The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann”.

One registered that, even before the singers took the stage the Opera House atmosphere had created something rather more theatrical than in 2010, aided by back-lighting and a proscenium arch “framing the magic” as it were. But just as strong was the community aspect of it all – as the singers and instrumentalists came on their audience connections were underlined by shouts and waves of greeting, bringing stage and auditorium cheek-by-jowl, as it were. So, we had the best of both worlds by the time conductors Julian Raphael and Carol Shortis made their appearance.

The first song, from Tonga, Malimali Mai, had one of those rhythmic trajectories that has the effect of catching up up whole bunches of people in some kind of mesmeric spell, and getting them to move, think, act as one. The choir sang with plenty of gesturings, and conductor Julian Raphael invited us audience members to clap the rhythms – so we were involved from the outset. Various members of the choir introduced each item during the first half, which heightened the sense of “performer ownership” of the proceedings.

The opening item from Tonga had occasioned a lighting backdrop of the most delicious mango-like hues, underlining the sweetness and warmth of the song’s “place” in our minds. For two songs from Samoa which followed, the intense blue of the sea was emphasized instead; while the songs, firstly Falealili Uma, and then Fa’afetai I le Atua featured richly-harmonised repeated refrains, the second in particular real a cappella stuff. The NZ Maori Wairua o te puna Aroha which followed brought in a strong instrumental beat, and a pronounced swaying motion from the choir, underlining a sense of one people moving in accord.

An old favorite was The Wellerman, an early New Zealand whaler’s song, describing struggles between man and beast relieved occasionally by the “Wellerman” with fresh supplies for the whalers. Here I thought the song’s tessitura too low for the men’s voices to be able to clearly enunciate the tale, compounded by a tempo that was too fast for those same singers – as well as clarity, something of both the melancholy and the drudgery of the whalers’ situation wasn’t for me put across strongly enough. More securely grounded in effect was a New Zealand Lullaby from a slightly later period, early in the 1800s, apparently composed as a joint venture by two women, Maori and Pakeha, its attractive, faintly exotic melodic line accentuated in a Russian-sounding direction by the balalaika-like ukulele accompaniment!

I had to get my atlas out to find Boigu Island – its song Waiye here sounded suitably “ethnic”, which wasn’t surprising considering the island’s proximity to the Papua-New Guinean mainland – instrumentalists gathered around two impressive-looking and -sounding drums which punctuated the ends of the song’s phrases in fine style. The singing had that peculiary “open-throat” sound one associates with Polynesian cultures, slightly raw and very exciting, the men’s lines harmonizing with those of the women’s. More westernized, though still with exotic elements such as rhythmic chanting, was the Australian Soul Wind, the melody line and harmonizing very bluesy in places. Both of these were conducted, spaciously and most expressively, by Carol Shortis.

Two contrasting “Pasifika” items concluded the half, the first Tagi Sina, from Tokelau, dramatic and mournful, with a heavy rhythmic drumbeat underpinning the women’s plaintive melodic line, and the feeling of a whole community expressing sorrow taking up the whole company, the whole intensifying then concluding with a resounding crash. A perfect foil to it all was the concluding Sipaio from Niue, introduced as “Happiness”, with open, long-breathed melodies, accompanied by exuberant hands-and-arms movements suggesting joyful overflowing of feelings. The “tropical” lighting of the very first item returned as well to bring things to a kind of full circle.

From largely oceanic climes and vistas, we were taken by the concert’s second half to different worlds inhabited by non-human creatures, courtesy of one of the greatest musical comedy duos of them all, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. World-famous for their “At the Drop of a(nother) Hat” shows” they also created a collection, “The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann”, less popular, but just as high in literary and musical values. We were given eight of these, five arranged by Julian Raphael for choir, and three sung as either solos or duos by Julian, Carol Shortis and a character called Lambton, who was also the “compere” for the second half, in which role I thought he often became tiresomely wordy, his humour mostly of the heavy-handed W.S.Gilbert variety. Fortunately he was able to redeem himself with a spirited solo performance of “The Rhinoceros”.

Julian Raphael’s similar turn for “The Elephant”, augmented with a pair of elephant ears, brought out all the droll humor of the words concerning a pachyderm who has lost his memory, to the audience’s delight – while his “Warthog” duo with Carol Shortis gave both performers and their audience plenty of fun at the tale of Warthog Wallflower’s neglect at a party, until the arrival of Mr Right Warthog saved the day.

The rest of the songs featured the choir, supported by some superb piano-playing from Diedre Irons, the “guest accompanist” for the evening (occasionally doing a “Donald Swann” and adding an extra voice to those in the choir). The Whale sang and sneezed its way through Seas Antarctical, while the choir, although resisting the temptation to sing while standing on their hands, still evoked the world of the Sloth with words like, “The world is such a cheerful place /when viewed from upside-down / It makes a rise of every fall; a smile of every frown.”  Other wonderful rhyming couplets came in the song “The Armadillo”, in the wake of the unfortunate creature falling in love with an armoured car- “I left him to his singing / cycled home without a pause / never tell a man the truth /about the one that he adores…” music filled with droll, regimented rhythms and ironic gentleness, soft-hearted beneath the armour-plating!

As happened with every one of the actual Flanders-and-Swann concerts, the show’s climax came with the concerted singing of the “Mud, mud, Glorious mud!” chorus from “The Hippopotamus”, a ritualized celebration, indeed. Though there was an encore song with audience participation, called “Midnight makes up its own mind”, our hearts and sensibilities mostly stayed with the Hippopotami on the banks of the cool Shalimar, taking the song and the other spirited evening performances from choir, pianist and conductor happily with us with us out into the evening air.