Tag: choral

Mozart ‘s take on Handel – warmth more than refiner’s fire

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Choirs Aotearoa New Zealand Trust presents:

HANDEL’S MESSIAH as arranged by MOZART

Morag Atchison (soprano) / Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano)

Henry Choo (tenor) / James Clayton (bass)

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Orchestra Wellington

Tecwyn Evans (conductor)

Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 2nd June 2013

Being a bit of a “Messiah-buff” I was, I must admit, excited at the prospect of attending this concert, as I had never heard the famed Mozart “arrangement” of the music. I was naturally intrigued as to how it all would sound, and if and to what extent Mozart might have done the equivalent for his time of what Hamilton Harty in the 1920s and Eugene Goosens in the 1950s did with their arrangements of some of Handel’s music.

I prepared myself for all possibilities, anything ranging from either a full-blown makeover, bewildering in its complexity, to a far more subtle, “spot-the-difference” scenario. I deliberately held back from reading-up beforehand on what Mozart had or hadn’t done, thinking the impact of it all would be all the greater for me through having an element of surprise.

Hearing it all for the first time left me with a curious mixture of feelings. The experience actually brought to mind my first-ever encounter with Ravel’s orchestration of Musorgsky’s “Pictures from an exhibition”, particularly as I had by sheer chance become familiar with Musorgsky’s piano solo original long before I heard Ravel’s revamp for full orchestra. As then, I found myself torn anew between admiration, enjoyment, surprise and dismay at what had been done. Here, I certainly admired and enjoyed many a felicitous Mozartean detail, but was equally taken aback at a number of changes I thought quite wrong-headed. Why, I thought, would a composer change something in another composer’s music that worked so well just as it was?

So, I decided to read about the background to what Mozart had done, and it all began to make sense – as well as, incidentally, having a number of parallels with what Ravel did regarding Musorgsky’s work, and why. Both operations had been planned as “rescue jobs”, and each was the brainchild of a third person. In Musorgsky’s and Ravel’s case, the instigator was the conductor Serge Koussevitsky, while Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s work was commissioned by one Gottfried van Swieten, a diplomat, patron of the arts, and at the time the Imperial Librarian and a Minister in the Emperor Joseph II’s government.

Van Swieten, though an enthusiast for Baroque music, thought that Handel’s work needed bringing”up-to-date” for contemporary tastes. Although a mere 48 years separated the premiere of Messiah and Mozart’s arrangement of the work, the musical world had changed almost beyond recognition during that time. The baroque style had gone, and people were thoroughly accustomed to the more textured and varied tonal colours of the classical orchestras. Messiah was actually the second of four commissions Mozart received from Van Swieten relating to Handel’s music, the others being the masque Acis and Galatea, and the cantatas Ode for St.Cecilia’s Day and Alexander’s Feast. Mozart’s brief was to “modernize” the music, which idea makes an interesting variant upon present-day thinking regarding authentic performance practice.

That Mozart’s work was regarded as successful can be gauged by contemporary reports of the premiere of what was known as Der Messias staged by van Swieten in Vienna in March 1789, with Mozart himself conducting the performance. One review stated that Mozart had “exercised the greatest delicacy by touching nothing that transcends the style of his time….the choral sections are left as Handel wrote them and are only amplified cautiously now and again by wind instruments”. Which wasn’t strictly true, as Mozart recast the openings of several of the Part One choruses for the soloists’ voices – and the “cautiously” comment regarding the wind instruments was something of an understatement. There’s a significant amount of wind writing added to the score – clarinets, flutes, and horns, with extra writing for oboes and bassoons, away from simple accompaniment.

The writing for brass was also augmented, with the high trumpet parts shared (more “taken over!”, really) by the french horn, particularly noticeable during the bass aria “The trumpet shall sound”. Trombones (a wonderful sound!) were also very much in evidence, supporting and enriching (often darkening) the lower lines. In all, the effect for me was a Mozartean “fleshing-out” of Handelian muscle and bones, the wind parts through the instruments’ textures and timbres bringing colour and warmth to much of the music. At first these things seemed alien to the relative austerity I was accustomed to hearing, with the effect somewhat fussy – but after a while my ear began to expect a “warming-up” of those textures, and a more varied colour-spectrum along many of the lines. In this way, Mozart was able to shed new and varied light on the old most successfully.

I was far less convinced by the recasting of the chorus openings for solo voices – mercifully, throughout Parts Two and Three, Mozart himself seemed less inclined to press the idea, and left most of the remaining choruses intact, though allowing the soloists to join in. But the magic frisson of some of those quieter original choral beginnings, such as “And he shall purify” and “For unto us” were lost here, and the effect to my ears coarsened by crude interchanges between the soloists and the choir. Unlike with the wind and brass additions, nowhere did I think Mozart improved on Handel’s treatment of his voices, either solo or choral. Incidentally, Mozart used a German translation of the words – but here, we had the original English (odd to think of the work being sung in any other language – maybe that sentiment’s a tad ethnocentric….).

So, there we all were, on the first winter Sunday of the year, gathered in the Town Hall in Wellington (soon to be closed for earthquake-protection strengthening). Though the weather obligingly underlined the change of season, many hardy souls braved wind and rain to make up a creditable attendance. On hand to reward such resolve was the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, attended by members of Orchestra Wellington and four solo singers, the ensemble directed by Tecwyn Evans.

Listening to and thinking about the work and its performance on this occasion was an interesting experience in itself, as I would find myself switching modes, first analyst and then critic, registering by turns what was happening and how it was being performed. Straight away, one registered the grander, darker sound of trombones in the Overture, and the warmer colourings of the winds in various other places. A mixed blessing, as I’ve said – I thought Mozart unduly reduced the stark impact of the aria “He was despised” by adding winds, but his writing of creepily chromatic descents for the instruments in “The people who walked” gave the darkness an almost infernal, Don Giovanni-like aspect. Conversely, the wind parts during the “Pastoral Symphony”, augmented by spit-spot choral singing, caused the music to positively scintillate in places, entirely appropriately.

Though their impact upon the performance was reduced throughout Part One by Mozart’s changes, the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir sang superbly, throughout, coping well with some of the idiosyncrasies of the arrangement (odd accented phrasings in “All we like sheep” at the words “..have-GONE-a-STRAA-aa-AA-aa-AA…” – like someone trying to sing while being vigorously shaken!), but elsewhere displaying agility, strength, ease and wonderful variation of tone. For example, in “Surely He hath borne our griefs” I could feel the physical impact of the men’s singing of the words “bruised for our iniquities” , while a glorious outpouring of tones from the women’s voices at one point during the “Amen” chorus actually gave me goosebumps! I would have liked to have heard those same voices singing the openings of the choruses that Mozart gave to the soloists as well; but there was more than enough left for them to make a rich and indelible mark upon the proceedings.

I thought the soloists were for the most part splendid, each presenting their lines with energy and fullness of tone, and bringing to their utterances a distinctive and readily-communicating character. Though a shade tremulous at the top, soprano Morag Atchison’s voice otherwise enchanted, giving a lovely, committed performance with an engaging sense of great feeling, in the first Part capturing the excitement of the heavenly host’s appearance at “And suddenly…”. Also, she didn’t sentimentalize “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, but gave strength and emphasis to the words and put across the figurations with flair and energy.

Truest-toned of the quartet was mezzo Bianca Andrew, singing as always with the greatest of elegance, even when finding (as mezzos do) the tessitura of both “O Thou that tellest” and “He was despised” simply too low in places for comfort of projection. I’ve mentioned that Mozart’s wind additions seemed to me to blunt the latter aria’s tragic impact somewhat, and, in fact, give the music a human warmth that aligns it more with the world of the Countess from “Figaro”.

I liked tenor Henry Choo’s whole-hearted “Comfort Ye”, his voice also tremulous under pressure on top, but still heroic and bright. He thoroughly enjoyed his “bonus” aria “Rejoice greatly”, and made as good a fist as most singers I’ve heard of the so-o-o awkward “Thou shalt break them”, with its terrifyingly exposed leaps. Alongside him on the platform, fellow-Australian James Clayton put across an arresting, old-style prophet-like  “Thus saith the Lord”, though I found his softer singing seemed to lose some of the voice’s presence, resembling in places a rather-too-disembodied effect.  He brought plenty of energy and bluster to “Why do the nations”, though one of his grandest numbers, “The trumpet shall sound”, was here well-and-truly scuppered by Mozart, who reduced the aria to its opening, removing both the middle section and its da capo repeat.

Very great credit is due to conductor Tecwyn Evans, who entered into and realized the spirit of Mozart’s “rejuvenation” with some insightful and in places exciting direction, getting a committed response from choir and orchestra alike. On a couple of occasions I thought his tempi too quick for words and music to properly cohere (both “O Thou that tellest”, and the soloists-led “His yoke is easy” had what felt for me like a kind of driven, “take no prisoners” aspect). But in general his direction brought out both the older composer’s music-for-the-ages essence and the younger one’s delighted creative response to that same greatness.

 

 

Wellington Youth Choir – stories for the telling

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Youth Choir presents:
Storytime

Choral Music from The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Prince of Egypt, and by Samuel Barber, Trad. (arr. Philip Wilby and Gustav Holst), Schumann, John Bratton and Jimmy Kennedy (arr. Andrew Carter), Eric Whitacre, Saint-Saëns (solo), David Williams, Anthony Hedges and the Lighthouse Family (arr. Isaac Stone)

Wellington Youth Choir, conducted by Isaac Stone

St. John’s in the City Church

Friday 24 May 2013

A varied concert of items telling stories was given by the Wellington Youth Choir, under its Acting Musical Director.  It began in great style, with ‘The Circle of Life’, from the movie The Lion King; the music by Elton John and Lebo M, with lyrics by Time Rice.  Drums and other percussion instruments plus whistling opened the piece, along with a very good male solo.  The choir had impressive control of dynamics.

Unfortunately a few singers had the heads so deeply in their music scores that perhaps the conductor could never catch their eyes.  However, I detected very few false entries; the choir was always disciplined and together.  An excellent soprano solo followed, and then Isaac Stone played the African drums in front of him – altogether, an exciting performance, with the choir providing a strong, confident and pleasing sound.

The special lighting was rather strange, plunging the back row of the choir into too much shadow.  Isaac Stone soon acknowledged that they couldn’t see the music, and so more lighting was provided, which had the added bonus that the audience could read their programmes.

Another piece from the movies, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from the film of the same name, had Juliette Irwin as soprano soloist; the performance featured a lovely unified sound from the women, whereas the men had less of that quality, and sounded uncommitted.  However, rhythm and timing were spot on.  The men’s singing improved in the louder passages.  The quality of the harmony singing was usually fine, and in tune.

Barber arranged his Adagio for Strings for voices, as Agnus Dei, more than thirty years later; they are both extremely well-known.  This performance was rather faster than others I have heard, but proved to be a very effective and sensitive one.

The first of two arrangements of traditional songs, ‘Marianne’ and ‘I love my love’, was in six parts, but maintained good balance, attention to dynamics, and matching vowels.  Tuning and ensemble were again very fine.  Another feature of the choir was that for the most part, the singers stood very still, so there was no distraction from their concentration on getting across the mood of the songs superbly well.  The latter song was somewhat slower than I’ve heard it before, but this enabled the choir to bring out the delightful clashes of the interval of a second, and their beautiful resolution.  Difficult harmony set low in the voices appeared to present no problems.

‘The Recruit’ by Robert Schumann was new to me.  The performance was notable for outstanding attack and the absolutely unanimous movement of the words in this lively song.

Homemade refreshments in the interval were welcome, since the church was unheated – hard to take on an evening of 10deg. outside temperature.  Nevertheless, there was sizeable audience in attendance, but largely composed of family and friends, I suspect.  The only publicity I saw was on the website of the New Zealand Choral Federation.

The excerpt ‘Deliver Us’ from Stephen Schwarz’s The Prince of Egypt featured a violin solo, played with strong, euphonious tone by Vivian Stephens, accompanied by Isaac Stone on the piano.  That meant there w s no-one standing in front of the choir to bring the singers in – yet the men came in on the dot.  The women’s part was very low in the voice at the start; perhaps rather too low for young voices.  It brightened up later.

Isaac Stone said in his spoken introduction to ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ by Bratton and Kennedy, that it was a favourite of the choir – and it was soon easy to see why.  The excellent harmony arrangement by Andrew Carter was great fun, and gave plenty of scope for the singers to show their skills.

Eric Whitacre’s ‘Leonardo dreams of his flying machine’ was an extended piece, in more ways than merely length – its contemporary angular style and variety of writing would have challenged the choir.  There were awkward intervals and chords, and many difficult effects, symbolising the sounds of the dreamt-of flying machine.  It was hard to pick up most of the words, but the choir sustained the piece well.

Having a solo item gave the rest of the choir a break, but I found ‘Amour! Viens aider ma faiblesse!’ from Samson et Dalila somewhat out of place in this concert.  Natalie Williams sang, accompanied on the piano by Isaac Stone.  This was a big voice, and rich, suited to the mezzo-soprano role of Delilah.  The was sung in good French, but the movement from note to note was not always secure.  Mostly the tone was mellow and exemplary, but top notes were rather strained

Young composer David Williams, a former student of Isaac Stone’s (presumably at Tawa College, where the latter teaches) was present to hear his piece ‘As I fall’, a setting of a poem by Margery Snyder, a young American poet.  The idea of falling was realistically conveyed, and the piece was sung well, growing more and more in complexity and volume as it proceeded.  It was a skilled piece of writing.

‘Epitaph’ by Anthony Hedges was a humorous item, the words including “Where I’m going there is no eating so no washing up dishes”.  A close harmony item, it gave scope for some expressive singing from the choir.

Finally ‘High’ by the Lighthouse Family and arranged by Isaac Stone was a short item in which both men and women hummed for some passages.  It was sung with vigour, using the words well, and with great attention to rhythm

Nearly all the items were sung unaccompanied with no apparent difficulty.  This is an excellent choir.  The concert comes soon after a splendid one by the Wellington Youth Orchestra.  We have great young musicians, who deserve every encouragement.

 

Cantoris takes on The Armed Man

Posted on by Julia Wells

Cantoris Choir: The Armed Man

Karl Jenkins: The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace

Cantoris Choir, Ensemble and Karakia

Director: Brian O’Regan

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Friday, 26th April, 2013

Cantoris are to be congratulated on a very good performance of Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man, as is their new director, Brian O’Regan, and accompanying musicians. As soon as the first drum tattoo echoed through St Andrews, I was glad to be there. The choir made a wonderful start as well, producing a rich and full sound that filled the church. Indeed, it was the warmth and depth of the choir that most stood out for me, carrying the performance through what were occasionally rather banal words (ring out the old, ring in the new/ ring happy bells across the snow). Reading through the programme beforehand, I had wondered how they were going to pull off some of the lyrics, particularly those of the last section, ‘Better is Peace’. The performance stood as a testament to how music can elevate less than astounding words.

The second section, traditionally an islamic call to prayer, was replaced by a karakia, beautifully performed by Wairemana Campbell. The substitution worked well, making this a distinctively New Zealand performance, something that was particularly fitting the day following Anzac Day. The next section, the Kyrie, again showcased the choir’s rich sounds. This part also contained a haunting cello solo by Margaret Guldborg.

The section that was the most striking, however, was section five, the Sanctus. It began quietly, with the underlying menace of the percussion (wonderfully played by Thomas Guldborg and Hazel Leader) belying the sweetness and serenity of the choir. When they reached the Hosanna the audience was rocked by an overwhelming and climactic wall of sound. In a way this made it difficult for the choir in the Charge section, which should logically be the climax of the mass. So much sound and energy had already peaked during the Sanctus that the music struggled to gain enough for the Charge. Although they rallied in the end, for me it lacked the drama of the Sanctus.

After the Charge came the unremitting grimness of the Angry Flames and Torches. It was a relief when the Agnus Dei arrived and the piece began to move away from the horrors described in the middle sections. The choir was particularly soft and sweet during the Benedictus, which also featured some lovely work from the ensemble, although the background organ was perhaps a little overbearing. In the final section, Better is Peace, the choir captured the hope and excitement of the ending, bringing the piece to a spectacular finish.

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!