Tag: choral

Festival Singers’ Papa Haydn – a Man for All Seasons

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HAYDN – Oratorio “The Seasons”

Lesley Graham (soprano) / James Adams (tenor) / Roger Wilson (bass)

Festival Singers / Orchestra (Simon McLellan, leader)

Rosemary Russell (conductor)

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

Sunday, 20th November, 2011

Of all the works produced by that exemplar of creative industry and longevity Josef Haydn (1732-1809), his oratorio “The Seasons” is surely one of the happiest on all counts. In the work the composer gives full expression to his delight in nature, his obvious relish for country pastimes (blood-sports and all), and his serene religious faith.

What strikes the listener at a first hearing is the work’s ceaseless flow of wonderful things, the composer’s imagination and powers of expression obviously undimmed by his advancing years, despite his complaints to his publisher, thus:

 “The world daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one would believe the strain and effort it cost me to produce these, in as much as many a day my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to the earth that I fall into the most melancholy condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am incapable of finding one single idea, until at length my heart is revived by Providence, when I seat myself at the piano and begin to hammer away at it. Then all goes well, again, God be praised!”

The work’s librettist, Baron Gottfried Von Swieten, has come in for some stick over the years, some of it from the composer himself, who was supposed to have exclaimed at one point that the libretto was “Frenchified trash”. Swieten adapted his verses from those of the Scottish poet James Thomson, whose epic, eponymous work in praise of nature had become one of the most popular texts of his age. Haydn and Swieten quarrelled over various aspects of the work (as happens with nearly all fruitful collaborations of this kind) – but the success of the finished product consigned such differences to the wake of musical history.

The work was here sung in English, the words a curious amalgam of Swieten’s re-translation of his own script back to the original language (losing most of Thompson’s poetry in the process) and various “improvements” made by different editors at diverse times. Some of the original numbers were cut, and others shortened, but nothing was lost which caused great violence to be done to the work as a whole.

Haydn begins with a dark, orchestra-only evocation of winter gloom – a few gravely-descending bars of darkness set the scene before conductor Rosemary Russell brought in the allegro strongly and sternly, placing winter in retreat-mode, and being more roundly dismissed by both bass and tenor (Roger Wilson stentorian and vivid, James Adams sturdy and poetical). Soprano Lesley Graham then welcomed the spring breezes from “southern skies” with true, lightly-floated tones, the cue for the chorus to properly ring the seasonal change with a lilting “Come gentle spring”….

The number I knew once as “With joy, th’ impatient husbandsman….” here became “At dawn the eager plowman”, given plenty of agrarian spirit by Roger Wilson, and relished by the counterpointing bassoon, nicely played by Oscar Laven. We enjoyed these things greatly, along with the “Surprise Symphony” orchestral quotations, and the singer’s slightly more decorative reprise vocals. James Adams impressed, also, with his golden-toned “The farmer now has done his work”, the following Trio giving the orchestral horns the chance to shine throughout a nicely-burnished moment of introduction, and bringing in the chorus, beautifully rapt at “Let warming air turn suddenly soft”, though with a bit of momentary strain when delivering the stratospheric “And let thy sun resplendent shine”.

Lesley Graham’s lovely “Our prayer is heard on high” set the tone for a nicely-poised duet “Spring, her lovely charms…” between the soprano and tenor, James Adams. And the “God of Light, God of Life!” chorus was stirringly done, the rapturous Beethoven-like mood amply and satisfyingly forwarded by the soloists. Apart from an uncertain initial entry by the men in the fugal chorus “Endless praise to Thee….” the vocal lines were woven together with strength and clarity, Rosemary Russell keeping her orchestra equally up to the mark right to the final cadence.

The remainder of the performance reinforced the above impressions, though particular moments remained in the listener’s memory, such as the sunrise sequence at the beginning of summer, a vivid and urgent introduction by Lesley Graham, followed by soloists and chorus making a marvellous refulgence.

The “Country Calendar” commentaries that followed were also characterfully delivered, Roger Wilson bringing alive the Breughel-like harvesting, and James Adams contrasting the hustle and bustle with a sun-drenched paean of idyllic indolence – all of which led naturally to Lesley Graham’s sweet-toned portrayal of a “haven for the weary”, with Jose Wilson giving us  some nicely-turned oboe-playing.

From this “Rural Roundup” kind of mode, we switched to full-on weather-forecasting, portentous announcements from Roger Wilson, with timpanist Doreen Douglas providing telling ambient support. James Adams’ warnings were no less dire, the pizzicato raindrops by now falling about Lesley Graham’s breathless, suspenseful utterances. A sudden lightning-flash, and chorus and orchestra hurled themselves into the maelstrom with great abandonment, a pleasing disorder of unsettling sounds resulting within the confines of the hall.

Autumn, too had its delights, even if the introductory string-playing had some ensemble problems – the Terzetto and Chorus which followed, praising industry and advocating its rewards, had something naughtily Haydn-esque about it, the droll wind figures decorating the soloists’ lines seeming to me to poke gentle fun at the seriousness of it all. The concluding chorus-and-orchestra fugue survived some “woolly” moments along the way towards some wonderfully chromatic upward modulations and a triumphal concluding marriage of honest labour with moral righteousness, soloists, chorus and orchestra shirking not their duties.

Sports of all kinds were celebrated, innocent, knowing and deadly purposeful – we enjoyed both James Adams’ singing and enjoyment in turn of his line “the orchard shades maidens large and small”, and Roger Wilson’s account of the spaniel’s hunting of the hapless bird, shot with a loud timpani retort! As for the deerhunt, the rousing horn-playing (Peter Sharman and Kevin Currie) led the way in grand style, matched in energy and vigour by the chorus, who were then called upon once more a after a short respite, this time for a rollicking drinking-song, “Joyfully, the wine flows free…” The voices did well to sustain their pitch as well as they did across the span of broken phrases, as required by the composer, besides keeping enough energy in reserve for the final “All hail to the wine!”.

Though there were occasional problems with both ensemble and intonation in places, the orchestral playing never lacked for atmosphere and colour throughout – and so it was with the opening of “Winter”, where a lovely, dark-toned instrumental colour at the opening used sombre strings and plaintive winds to suggest the grey mists and gloom, an evocation which the composer equated with his own mortality and failing powers. The Cavatina that followed taxed the strings’ ensemble at the beginning, but Lesley Graham focused our attentions with her tremulously-toned lament at autumn’s passing into darker climes. James Adams’ tale of a lost traveller was also dramatically told, even if the singer didn’t have quite enough breath to easily cap the ascending phrase at “to find comfort sweet”.

The chorus’s “Spinning Song” (surprisingly romantic, dark and dramatic, sounding almost like something out of Wagner!) went with a swing, making a piquant contrast with the saucy tale of the maid who extricated herself from the clutches of a lascivious nobleman. Lesley Graham pointed the detail with some relish throughout, if not with quite enough “heft” in places to be properly heard, though the chorus’s “ha! ha!’s” certainly demonstrated its appreciation of the entertainment.

Roger Wilson’s deep, rich tones saluted the icy grip of winter, imploring all to cling to virtue as a means of salvation – though the brass blooped their first notes in response they recovered to cap the concluding orchestral efforts, and support some fine, strong lines of singing in the fugal passage “Direct us in thy ways”. Everything became somewhat revivalist at the very end, the energy and fervour of the singing and playing filling the hall, and making for a most satisfying conclusion. All credit to the efforts of singers and instrumentalists, and to Rosemary Russell for her inspired and sterling direction, and for bringing such a delightful work to the fore once again, for our pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listening to ourselves: Voices New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents

VOICES OF AOTEAROA

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Karen Grylls (director)

Horomona Horo (taonga puoro)

Music by Hildegard of Bingen, David Childs, Douglas Mews, Morten Lauridsen, Christopher Marshall,

Helen Fisher, David Griffiths, David Hamilton, Benjamin Britten, Henry Purcell (arr. Eriksson)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 19th November, 2011

The concert was brought into being by the sounds of a trumpet played by Horomona Horo, creating both a ceremonial and a haunting effect, and thus suggesting limitless possibilities. One of these, appropriately resembling a voice from long ago, was a Sequence composed by Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century abbess, poet, composer and mystic. Growing beautifully from out of the expectant silence, the text O viridissimi Virga sung the praises of the Virgin Mary, hailing her as the “greenest branch” from which sprang “harvest ready for Man, and a great rejoicing of banqueters”. Hildegard’s unison lines were then interspersed among the choir’s voices, Pepe Becker’s beautifully stratospheric soprano tones prominent amongst them, to which was added the gentle counterpointing of another of the taonga puoro, on this occasion a flute. The presentation seemed like a kind of ritual of birth, of bringing the music into being by awakening the spirit within each and every voice – and on this occasion calling up a creative impulse to speak to us from half a Millennium away – all very impressive in a quiet and undemonstrative manner.

David Child’s lyrical Salve Regina followed, the vocal lines baroque-like in their detailing and deployment – solo, small group and whole ensemble interacting as a living organism, conductor Karen Grylls achieving with the voices a great haunting beauty at the concluding words, “O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria”, aided by a mesmeric repetition of the word “Maria” at the end.

From “Saints and Angels” (the works were bracketed thus throughout the concert) we moved to “Voices of Fire”, beginning with the coruscations of Douglas Mews’ Ghosts, Fire and Water,a work which made a huge impression on me when I heard it performed some years ago. Written in 1972, it was inspired by a poem by British author James Kirkup, his response, in turn to a series of paintings which became known as the “Hiroshima Panels”, and whose subject was the dropping of the first atomic bomb on that city in 1945. The opening lines “These are the ghosts of the unwilling dead” sets the sombre tone of the work, the stark vocal lines having no warmth, expressing only horror and shock at the effects of the carnage, sometimes bleak unisons, sometimes irruptions of biting repetitions of figurations. Spoken voices are powerfully set against the singing in places, the phrase “Love one another” in different languages over a hymn-like backdrop, the silence at the end as eloquent as the last utterances.

A different world of feeling, indeed, from Morten Lauridsen’s Madrigali, which followed – six settings of Renaissance verses by various poets, all in praise of “love’s fire” – hence the Six “Fire Songs” of the work’s full title. Each setting is informed by the composer’s initial “fire-chord”, a cluster of intensities, sizzling and coruscating, impulses that recur throughout the cycle. I liked the contrast between the lively and capricious No.3 “Amor, Io Sento L’alma”, a depiction of a growing conflagration of love, and the tearful despair of the following “Io piango”, the weeping underpinned by a mournful bass line. And the concluding “Se per Havervi, Ohime!” set a ground-swelling clustered-harmonied hymn at the beginning through to a rapt, rich sinking conclusion, enlivened by a brief upward impulse at the end, everything beautifully and robustly characterized by the voices.

Then came “Voices of the Earth and Sea”, Karen Grylls talking with us briefly about the works in this bracket being a “collage of landscape”. Helen Fisher’s Pounamu was the one that made the deepest impression on me, the flute-sounds conjured up by Horomono Horo in haunting accord with the long-breathed vocal lines, the Maori text a proverb from Tainui, beginning with the words “May the calm be widespread…..” and later evoking “the shimmer of summer” with constantly undulating lines and the flute’s cry riding the skies like a falcon in watchful flight – all of this was so beautifully realized.

Christopher Marshall’s Horizon 1 (part of a larger cycle of settings) briefly but effectively set words by Ian Wedde from a poem “Those Others’, referring to the Maori view of creation, and sounding the unceasing “breath of life” behind the alto’s beautiful but austere line. Then, David Griffiths’ two vignette-like pieces from the work Five Landscapes took us firstly to Southland’s Oreti Beach, and afterwards to Mount Iron, a Wanaka landmark – the first characterized by ceaselessly complaining winds, and the second filled out with hugely imposing blocks of tone, punctuated by quieter harmonic clusters.

A new and stirring work by David Hamilton rounded off the local content of the program – Karakia of the Stars. Here, voices were used instrumentally, along with Horo’s koauau patternings, the sounds of tapping stones, and the Arvo Pärt-like tintinabulations of little bells – the singers and instrumentalists having evoked the starry firmament, the chant welled up from terra firma, the mens’ voices counterpointing the womens’, underpinned by stampings and gesturing and resounding through the spaces. A note from the composer told us that the chant was part of a longer invocation to the stars “to provide a bountiful supply of food for the coming year” – a ‘between-the-lines” election-year message for our politicians, perhaps?

Lastly, “Voices of Nature” presented music from two of England’s greatest composers, Britten and Purcell – firstly, Britten’s beautiful Five Flower Songs, all but the last settings of English poetry, the exception being the traditional “Ballad of Green Broom”. From the madrigal-like realization of the opening “To Daffodils”, through the angularities of “Marsh Flowers” and the rapt hymnal of “The Evening Primrose”, these songs brought to our ears a wonderful synthesis of creative imagination and stunning performance evocation, ending with smiles at the wry wit of the composer’s “Green Broom” setting. Normally, such a bouncy, good-humored number would nicely round off a concert, but the ensemble chose instead to enchant us further with Purcell’s Music for a While, a song written for John Dryden’s tragedy “Oedipus”, here arranged for choir by Gunnar Eriksson. Pepe Becker’s pure, focused tones were very much to the fore, here, delivering the melody with searing beauty, the lines harmonized in places by women’s voices and the ground bass patterns vocalized by tenors and basses. It seemed for a few intensely lovely moments to tell us just why it is we listen to music and go to concerts.

Imaginative New Zealand choral music from innovative Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Renaissance Influences IV: Made in New Zealand

Music by Gillian Whitehead, David Farquhar, Ross Harris, Douglas Mews sen., John Ritchie, Anna Griffiths and Jack Body

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Saturday, 8 October 2011, 3pm

It was surprising to find the Tudor Consort performing works by New Zealand composers, and even more surprising to read the title of the concert.   However, there was no question, when one heard the works, about the influence of the renaissance composers on these down-under writers.  There was even less question, but rather joyful astonishment, at the skill of these works, and of The Tudor Consort in presenting them.  It was innovative to devise such a programme as this, and to commission two new works – the Ross Harris and Jack Body pieces.

The programme opened with the Kyrie from Missa Brevis by Gillian Whitehead.  The mass was performed section by section throughout the programme, interspersed with other items, as it would be in a church service, though of course there it would be interspersed through the liturgy.  Initially, this seemed odd, not to carry on the Gloria from the Kyrie, in a concert performance.  However, I think it worked well, giving each movement of the mass a freshness and pointing up the individual qualities of its parts better than would be the case if it had been sung through as a whole.

It was a most accomplished work for a composer who was still a student at university at the time of composition.  As the programme note said, “The unmistakeable influence of 16th century polyphony is clear from the outset…’   The full import of this influence grew as the various movements were presented.  But the skilled writing was apparent straight away.   There was much use of clashes of the interval of a second, and splendid dynamic contrasts.

The choir exhibited great attack and superb clarity of words.  In the Sanctus it was noticeable that some singers paid scant attention to the conductor, but the wonderful rise and fall of both pitch and contrapuntal complexity were well conveyed in spite of that.  This movement had a most rapturous ending.

Early on, the soprano tone was rather metallic at times, and one voice in that section had a tendency to dominate.  Nevertheless, in the main the choir’s balance was impeccable.  Only briefly at the end of the Agnus Dei was the choir not quite together.

Following the Kyrie, we heard Winter wakeneth all my care by David Farquhar, a setting of an anonymous 14th century English text.  This was a quite lovely setting of glorious words.  There was an interesting independence of parts, which gave frequent delicious clashes and juxtapositions.  The performance was magical.

The commissioned work from Ross Harris, Vobiscum in aeternum, was based on the well-known Tudor motet If ye love me.   Using the Latin version of the same words, this piece began with a gorgeous soft introduction.  The lattice-work of long-held notes in each part wove a beautiful, reverential solemnity in the fine acoustic of St. Mary of the Angels church.

The singing was beautiful blended, apart from one soprano who still dominated, from where I was sitting.  Otherwise, it exhibited the excellent attribute of carrying the sound and the words seamlessly forward, something the Australian judge of the recent Big Sing Secondary Students’ Choral Festival in Wellington commented on being absent from some of the otherwise excellent choirs that he heard perform.

Ross Harris could hardly have wished for a finer première performance.  The high standard continued in the adjoined Tallis original ‘If ye love me’ in English, that concluded the piece.  The brief for this and for the Jack Body commission was to take an ancient piece of music as a starting point.  I must admit to a sneaking feeling that it was a little pretentious that one composer used Latin instead of the English of St. John’s gospel in the King James version of the Bible, as used by Tallis, and the other to use Hebrew instead of the well-known and loved words, from the same version, for  Psalm 137 (or indeed the Russian of the introductory chant; see below).  However, this may have been the composers’ way of introducing an individuality that separated their compositions from the originals on which they were based – and it would be pretty difficult for a New Zealand composer to write for the Russian language.

Michael Stewart, in speaking to the audience, acknowledged that the next item, The Love Song of Rangipouri by Douglas Mews, did not have a Renaissance connection, but disarmingly stated that he liked it so much that he included it.  This work featured a soloist, Ken Ryan (baritone).  His facility with the Maori language and with the micro-tonality of the chant was astonishing, and his singing was very fine.   Based on a Maori chant recorded at Makara, the words are poetic and mystical; some of the lines were repeated in English.  I learned recently that even in the Far North, the pronunciation of ‘wh’ in Maori as ‘f’ was not traditional, if the early missionary Henry Williams is to be believed.  He wrote regretting the increasing tendency in his time for the ‘f’ sound to be used.

This was a difficult piece, but the choir brought it off, despite a few entries not being absolutely together.

The women of the choir sang two songs from John Ritchie’s Canary Wine song cycle: “I – Queene and Huntress”, and “III – Make Room for the bouncing Belly”.  The texts were by Ben Jonson.  I found it humorous to contemplate what now would be considered doggerel being written by the great Elizabethan playwright and poet: “Room! Room! Make room for the bouncing Belly, First father of sauce and deviser of jelly”.   There were unfamiliar words in the text, such as boulter and bavin, but thanks to a friendly pew-sharer and his I-pod, I now know that they all apply to domestic implements.

The music, good-humoured as is usual with Ritchie père, was utterly appropriate to the words.  It was good to have a lighter item in the middle of the programme; the singing was sparklingly accurate.

Anna Griffiths is a music graduate of the University of Auckland, and sings in The Tudor Consort.  She has won prizes for her compositions, and has had this and another choral piece performed overseas by the New Zealand Youth Choir.  Naseby is a setting of a poem by James K. Baxter, and depicts the Otago township.  I enjoyed the alliteration of the poem’s second-last line: “Then the dark peaks will hold their peace…”.  This was a very skilled and sympathetic setting, idiomatic with regard to the words.  The ending chord was not resolved, thus carrying through the music the timeless feel of the words.

Now for something completely different…  The men sang the Russian chant from the 17th century “Bogospod’i yavisya” (God, Lord, show yourself to us) which Jack Body used as the basis for his piece for full choir.  The men had a robust sound and relished the words, but perhaps could not obtain quite the resonant depth of tone of a Russian choir.

Psalm 137 was sung in Hebrew, influenced by the chant, but not in a Jewish style.  It began with three male voice parts interweaving “answered by a keening figure from the women” as the programme note stated.  It reached a climax at the end with the words “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” (speaking of the daughter of Babylon) – words not usually incorporated in choral settings of the psalm.

The piece was very quiet in parts, yet there was plenty of volume when required.  Intonation was unassailable.  The whole was most effective.

We are fortunate to have composers of this level writing imaginative, highly skilled and effective music for choirs.  New Zealand composers certainly know how to write choral music!  The strong choral tradition in this country no doubt lends strong inspiration, and the fact that there are choirs capable of singing the complex, accomplished music we heard at this concert.

Some of the pieces were written for more than four parts, adding to the achievement for a choir of only 20 voices.  It was certainly different for this choir to perform New Zealand works; works that were difficult and very interesting, including a variety of languages.  They made for a most worthwhile concert.

All the works were well worth hearing, and it is to be hoped that other choirs will take them up – they should be heard again.  One or two only (the Ritchie and the Mews) I thought I had heard before.

The level of expert performance by this choir is all the more amazing considering the comparative frequency of its concerts.  This was only an hour-long concert, but it was a solid programme, and there was a great deal of concentrated and expert singing.   Bravo!

Orpheus Choir shows versatility with Cole Porter

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

An evening with Cole Porter from the Orpheus Choir, conducted by Mark Dorrell with Sarah Lineham (mezzo) and Chris Crowe (baritone) and the players from the Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 7 October 7pm

It is brave for a symphonic choir to tackle popular music of any vein, and though it could be argued that the music of Cole Porter has closer links with classical music than, say, The Spice Girls or Michael Jackson, the idiom in which composers of ‘popular’ music normally work is pretty remote from Mozart.

This evening’s concert did not offer a very strong counter argument to that proposition.

Yet it’s only a couple of years since this choir staged a Cole Porter concert. It did occur to me that if they wanted to dip their toes into Broadway again, or more popular music, there are other composers, other angles on the genre.

On the other hand there was no denying that the character of popular music of any kind sounds a bit unspontaneous from a choir almost all of whose practice has been in the great choral works, and looks uncomfortable in a place normally used for conventional classical concerts. The music and words are typically more intimate, not to say risqué in the case of Porter, and was imagined for the theatre or cabaret.

Mark Dorrell has been acting musical director of the Orpheus Choir recently and becomes permanent director next year. in black jacket and shiny tight pants, he was clearly determined to make the best of the atmosphere of the hall, its lighting dimmed and red stage lighting, but with the choir in normal sober costumes and arrayed in oratorio-style rows on the choir steps, he had his work cut out.

But by ordinary standards, the choir was well rehearsed, sang accurately, with impressive ensemble; and the players of the Vector Wellington Orchestra showed a natural affinity with the style in their arrangements by Wayne Senior.

However, one of the things that struck me was the sameness of the arrangements. Wayne Senior is a talented arranger, and his instinct for the Broadway musical style is keen, but the same hand on all the songs led to a certain uniformity. An evening of varied songs from a span of more than three decades, could have been treated to more colourful and individual sonic dress, perhaps by devising replicas of arrangements by bands like Nelson Riddle, Axel Stordahl, Victor Young.  It was for that reason that the few numbers in which the soloists sang with the excellent Mark Dorrell at the piano were an agreeable change, sounding idiomatic.

The intention was to hit the ground running with the punchy Kiss me Kate number, ‘Another op’nin’, another show’. It’s a great song but it sounded too polite, its attack a bit restrained; its syncopation was just a little too accurate and rhythm just short of the kind of arresting call-to-order that it needs.

The programme included a large number of Porter’s songs, and the selection here was very satisfying, though the number was achieved by singing no more than one verse from several songs, sung without break as if a medley.

‘Begin the beguine’ opened the first group; one of the most sophisticated and complex of popular songs in its harmony and shape, it calls for an easy swing spiced with a subtle Latin rhythm and choir and orchestra made a good job of it. The two soloists came out for the first time for the evergreen ‘Night and Day’, one of Porter’s small masterpieces; it was nicely handled, though neither singer struck me as a crooner whose vocal delivery required amplification and the voices were thus coming from two sources – both acoustic, and amplified. The rest of the songs in the bracket were among Porter’s greatest classics – the beautiful ‘In the still of the night’ and ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ – and it was easy to overlook minor technical or stylistic shortcomings.

There were four songs from the memorable film High Society (Sinatra, Crosby, Armstrong, Grace Kelly), high spirited, care-free and they should have been high points in the programme. For ‘True Love’, Dorrell (he spoke spontaneously several times but without a microphone was hard to hear) took over at the piano with the two soloists (matching the great Crosby and Kelly duet in the film) whose vocal blend was not ideal. It seemed curious, too, that the two singers took positions far apart on either side of the conductor; such stage positioning has become an often absurd gimmick in modern opera productions. Occasionally it would have made sense, but most of the songs rather suggest a degree of closeness between two people. ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ swung happily, and later in the programme, ‘Well did you evah’, sung by the two soloists, was a valiant effort with smart dialogue, with Dorrell at the piano. But good as it was, that song in the film has such a powerful imprint in the memory from the marvellous ensemble in the library, that anything else can pall. ‘Now you has jazz’ seriously miss-fired, seeming about as distant from a genuine jazz feel as you could get.

Each bracket adopted a theme. The first was Latin flavoured, as touched on above; the second was Paris – obviously, drawing from Can-Can (‘I love Paris’ and ‘C’est magnifique’) and Les Girls (‘Ça, c’est l’amour’ – though Crowe seemed unconvinced).

Crowe showed his talents better in the nostalgic ‘Where is the life’ from Kiss me Kate which produced some great songs. Though they avoided the too raunchy ‘Always true to you in my fashion’, Sarah, alone with Dorrell at the piano, sang a very feeling ‘So in Love’; but the up-tempo ‘Too darn hot’ really needs to be brazen and hard driven, a quality that rather evaded the choir.

The last song in the ‘Too darn hot’ set, entirely from the choir, was ‘It’s alright with me’ (from Can-Can) which, unfortunately for me, is forever owned by Errol Garner’s inimitable piano version; this performance had an authentic feel nevertheless.

In the last bracket which adopted the theme of the last song, ‘Anything goes’, began with ‘You’re the top’ from the show Anything Goes, and included ‘It’s de-lovely’ and ‘Let’s misbehave’. There was undoubtedly a growing feeling of ease and suppleness in the choir as the performance progressed and by the time of this last group both choir and orchestra were more comfortable and stylistically relaxed.

The audience was in no doubt about the concert and encores of ‘Blow Gabriel blow’ and ‘Begin the beguine’ were more gutsy and expressive than they had been at first performance.

It strikes me as possible that a foray into lighter music might be more within their range if they looked at European and American operetta from the era preceding Broadway, that began in the 1920s.

 

 

On The Transmigration Of Souls – 9/11 Commemoration by John Adams presented by the Vector Wellington Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Vector Wellington Orchestra’s John Adams 9/11 Commemoration

BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.5 in C Minor

MOZART – Piano Concerto No.25 in C Major

ADAMS – On the Transmigration of Souls

Orpheus Choir, Wellington / Choristers of the Cathedral of St.Paul, Wellington / Wellington Girls’ College Teal Voices

Diedre Irons (piano)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday September 11th, 2011

Review adapted – not a transcript – from a radio review for Radio New Zealand Concert’s”Upbeat”, with Eva Radich)

It was unusual for the Wellington Orchestra to be performing  on a Sunday afternoon.

The 9/11 date gives a clue – and in fact it’s ten years to this very day since New York’s World Trade Centre was attacked and destroyed by two hi-jacked terrorist-controlled aircraft. American composer John Adams was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to write a piece to be performed on the first anniversary of the attack, in 2002. This performance was the New Zealand premiere of this work, which won for its composer the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003, and for the premiere recording in 2005 various Grammy Awards.

The orchestra usually performs in the Town Hall – but here they were in the Michael Fowler Centre on this occasion.

Acoustically, the Town Hall would have been great for the John Adams work – the music was gradually built up with many different textural strands that would have responded even more powerfully to a full, immediate and  reverberant ambience, the kind of things that performers have to work harder to get in the MFC. But there were advantages gained from performing in the bigger venue, most obviously a bigger audience, and more space in which to place the various choirs that the work requires. Having said this in comparing the two venues, I have to say that I thought the sounds were beautifully managed all the way through – the taped sounds of city activity and the various voices reading the names of people who died in the attack and written tributes to them that were displayed in various places afterwards all came across with plenty of clarity and atmosphere, as did the heartfelt efforts of the different choirs and the power and beauty of the orchestral playing.

It must have been a pretty daunting commission for any composer, to commemorate such an earth-shattering event.

John Adams himself admitted to feeling, at first, a bit overawed by the range and scope of it all – he was quoted as saying “I had great difficulty imagining anything commemorating 9/11 that would not be an embarrassment” –  but then he reckoned that any composer that was worth his salt wouldn’t shrink away from confronting something “profoundly intense” and conveying its essence by whatever means. Adams felt that this event had been so well documented and its images spread so widely, that his job as a composer wasn’t what he called “an exposition of the material” – he had no desire whatever to create any kind of narrative or description. Instead his intention was to create in sound a kind of “memory space” for human reflection, absolutely free from any statement about religion, patriotism or politics. Adams likened to the concept the feeling one gets when one visits an enormous cathedral – he cited the experience of going to Chartres Cathedral in France, saying that “you experience an immediate sense of something otherworldly. You feel you are in the presence of many souls, generations upon generations of them, and you sense their collected energy as if they were all congregated or clustered in that one spot.”

So, how did he do it? – how did the piece begin and develop and make its impact?

Adams decided he would dispense with the usual texts composers used for commemorative works, poetry, liturgy or Scripture. Instead he decided to use words that had been scribbled on posters plastered around Ground Zero by people searching for their missing loved ones. In this way the focus would be on the people who were left behind, on their expressions of hope mixed with gradual acceptance of the reality of loss. He began the piece with prerecorded tape sounds of a city, of people going about their everyday business, pedestrians and traffic noises. Then a voice begins repeating the word “missing” over and over, followed by the introduction of names of the dead. The choirs begin to sing, like angels singing halos of tones, the orchestra strings play soft tremolandos, the percussion begins to softly scintillate, the choirs repeat words with growing intensity, like a great tower or archway gradually lighting up all over. A solo trumpet (very American) reminiscent of Charles Ives and of Gershwin, paying homage to a kind of cultural history, suggests an on-going presence of the spirit, as the choirs continue their chanting (Orpheus Choir) and sustained tones (Choristers’ Choir) accompanied by woodwinds playing Straussian Rosenkavalier-like chords. The music grows and changes textures by osmosis, as different instruments add their timbres and colours, brasses introducing a deep,sombre aspect, the overall sounds gathering girth and variety. The heavy brasses, trombone and tubas, play the most sepulchral notes imaginable and the tape voice repeats the word “missing”, everything growing in intensity and focus until the orchestra, like some leviathan awakening, opens up its heavy batteries with brazen bell sounds, expressing anger, war, disaster and danger, before subsiding into an uneasy calm, with only the children’s voices repeating the messages of grief at first, then gradually joined by the adult choir, the voices like waves of sound, reinforced by the orchestra, canonic flurries from the strings, irruptions from brass and percussion expending tremendous energy. The choir repeats the word “Light” as the taped voices return repeating more names of the dead and the phrase “I see water and buildings” (which were the last words spoken by a flight attendant on her cell-phone) repeated, as the intensities narrow down to a few simple phrases, repeated by the taped voices, such as “my brother’, “my son” and “I love you”. And with these sounds the music gradually fades and dies.

What was the reaction of the audience at the end?

Certainly very respectful, enthusiastic, but at the same time, thoughtful, applause – obviously the “Mr Bravos” of the concert-going world weren’t going to have the chance to exercise their lungs at the end of this piece. I think the audience’s reaction was tempered by the solemnity of it all, and rightly so.

What was the effect of the piece on you? How much power did the piece have to move your emotions?

For me, the most moving section of the work was the last, reflective episode following the final altogether irruptions of sound and energy, impressive though the impact of these was. I found that, in a sense, the composer was requiring of me to “accumulate” emotion over the course of the piece, so that I felt the lump in my throat coming up when I heard the words at the end “My brother”, “my son”, and “I love you”. It’s interesting that, when I was listening to the first five minutes of the work on you-tube on the computer earlier in the day, I felt the emotion well up then, very palpably – but I think that was because the video clip I was watching contained images of the events of the tragedy, the buildings on fire, the rescue workers standing amid the rubble, the onlookers distraught, the people jumping to their deaths, the simply-written poster-messages – somehow the visual imagery worked with the music to activate my emotions far more overtly, which I didn’t experience during the actual performance in any way until those last few minutes.  And I think, as I said, that this accumulated effect was what the composer had planned, that in the end it was the simplicity of utterance of these ordinary people who had been bereaved that was so extraordinarily moving.

This work was placed last on the program – did you think that was a good idea?

Yes, I think one was able to carry out of the concert hall an abiding impression of the commemoration of the day, because of hearing the Adams work last. Of course, to then have played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony wouldn’t have actually “spoiled” the Adams piece – but it would’ve lessened its raw impact on the audience, going into the aftermath of the concert. It was a contemplative, rather than an earth-shattering piece, the realization of which the composer made quite clear was his intention all along.

Perhaps it would have upstaged anything that followed it?

Actually, no – I don’t think so – and again, I think the composer intended it to be that way. Hearing the piece was for me like connecting with some kind of collective human energy for a short while, and feeling a commonality of spirit and of impulse that was comforting in its way. I think it was a boldly-conceived and sensitively-constructed work. I wondered whether some simple visual production techniques, such as appropriately ambient lighting, might have enhanced the work’s overall impact.In one or two places I did imagine that something visual could have been brought into play with no violence done to the composer’s intentions. But there again, it was obvious Adams intended nothing more than a sound-picture, and for those sounds alone to have a cumulative effect upon his audiences.

So, what about the other two items? – were they put in the shade by the Adams work?

For me, not at all – and partly because it was very much a concert of two halves, with each creating its own unique world of feeling. The first half was absolutely splendid in a completely different way, featuring Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (arguably the most famous of all symphonies in the classical literature) and a lesser-known, but still imposing work, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.25, with Diedre Irons as the soloist. I was speaking with one of the ushers whom I know, during the interval, and who told me that the first concertgoer who came out of the auditorium a few minutes before had said to her, “World class – absolutely world class!” So, people were obviously impressed by what they were hearing.

Do you think it would be difficult for any conductor and orchestra to tackle something as well-known as Beethoven’s Fifth, something that almost everybody would have heard, and with so many great performances available on recordings? I would think it would be quite daunting a prospect.

I think you’re right about that – and in the face of such circumstances, the only way to tackle such a work is to do exactly what Marc Taddei and the orchestra did – which was to play the music almost as though they’d never heard anybody else’s performance, and instead make it their own. Interestingly, I reckoned it was only the second performance of the work I’d ever heard “live” – of course I’ve heard countless versions on record – but in the concert-hall the music’s still a relatively new experience for me, so I was really looking forward to hearing the work. I’m happy to say I wasn’t disappointed. Under Marc Taddei’s direction the orchestral sounds blazed forth, all departments covering themselves with glory. One of the things that thrilled me was, despite this being the Michael Fowler Centre, and not the Wellington Orchestra’s usual home, the Town Hall, the playing had enough energy and tonal weight to fill the auditorium’s spaces and get across the music’s heroic qualities with plenty of gusto. Particularly successful in this respect was the first movement – great attack, right from the outset, with urgent, rather than monumental tempi, but with the rhythms given plenty of chunky, energetic emphasis. The strings were excellent, but the support from the brass and winds and timpani was also spot-on. Other highlights – one of them in this performance for me was the way Marc Taddei challenged his string players in the scherzo to keep the tempo steady for the rushing string figurations – you remember the lower strings come in first, followed gradually by other, higher voices. The skin and hair was flying as these players bent their backs to the task and kept the momentum of the music going – absolutely thrilling! Another great moment was in the finale when Taddei brought the players in for the repeat, at which point the playing seemed to leap forward all the more eagerly and propulsively.

I did think, in one or two places that the famous “motto” theme needed a touch more rhetoric, a bit more underlining, such as for its very last, grand, first movement statement – after all, it is an intensely dramatic as well as a structural motif. More serious, for me, was the nonappearance of the goblins in the third movement, where Taddei got his strings to play so quietly their pizzicati could hardly be heard against the winds – in fact at one point I thought they’d lost their way and stopped playing, so hushed were their sounds.

And who are these goblins, you might well ask? – Well, in Chapter Five of E.M.Forster’s novel Howard’s End there’s a wonderful description of the Symphony’s third movement, made by Helen, one of the novel’s characters – “….the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe from end to end. Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures – it was that that made them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendor or heroism in the world…..Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave them a little push and they began to walk in a major key instead of a minor – and then he blew with his mouth and they were scattered……..The goblins really had been there. They might return–and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things….” Alas, the pizzicati were so quiet, and the tempi so swift, we couldn’t really register the goblins’ footfalls and their uncanny progress, or feel their ominous presence. And when Beethoven briefly returned to the scherzo just before the reprise of the finale’s triumphal theme, Taddei’s tempi were so quick there was no time for goblins and their ominous footfalls whatsoever!

If you hadn’t read “Howard’s End”, what would you have thought of the performance overall?

Oh, absolutely splendid (though with a touch more drama and rhetoric required for the “Fate” theme) – but you’ll appreciate that there are some episodes in one’s favorite music that have got to be done “just so”, otherwise they don’t work as well as they ought to. This is all terribly subjective, I’m sure you must be thinking!

Tell me about the Mozart concerto with Diedre Irons.

This,alas,was the last in the series of Mozart concertos played by Diedre Irons with the orchestra – such a pity that we’re not going to go as far as the last one of all, which I would love to hear her play. Still, this one, No.25 in C major, was suitably grand and ceremonial, as befits its key, and also a counterweight to the C Minor of the Beethoven Symphony that we heard. This is a big-boned concerto, with occasional touches of the exotic – trumpets and drums speaking with what I thought was a Turkish accent during the second subject group.

After these very grand, ritualistic beginnings the soloist’s first entry is, by contrast, somewhat rhapsodic, making us “stop and listen” – Diedre Irons’s playing has such character, such purpose, so that with each phrase we experience delight in the moment and satisfaction with the whole. I liked her piano sound – it seemed to my ears a more characterful, brighter and more sharply-focused sound she was getting, compared with the instrument in the Town Hall, enabling her to do more with the music.

Has it been a good combination, Diedre Irons with Marc Taddei and the Wellington Orchestra?

I thought this concerto in particular interestingly set the music-making styles of two different musicians together in a very interesting and creative partnership – Diedre Irons’s playing detailed and momentous, able to expand the phrases for expressive effect while maintaining the music’s larger momentum, compared with Marc Taddei’s energetic, somewhat “driven” style, given to tauter inclinations, marshalling his rhythms and driving the lyrical lines. Here, those differences worked well upon one another, and helped to bring out the concerto’s variety of mood and colour, to the extent that, if one didn’t know the music well, one wasn’t sure what was going to happen next (Mozart at his most inventive).

I believe that the first movement cadenza was the work of none other than Kenneth Young, which I didn’t know until after the performance, thinking at the time that it was a wonderful window into a composer’s soul, exploring the music’s fundamental materials in different lights and from varied angles (no cadenzas by Mozart for this work have survived). The slow movement was one of Mozart’s “operatic” realizations – it seemed that the winds’ tender descending phrase had taken us to the world of “Le Nozze di Figaro”, to the Count’s garden in the fourth act, with beautiful al fresco horns alerting us to the wonders of the evening air. Despite a few momentary spills – one or two horn blurps, and, elsewhere, some pianistic sunspots (in somewhat ruminative passages) – Irons and the orchestral winds enjoyed some delicious dialogues throughout, particularly lovely in effect towards the movement’s end. The finale’s chirpy, but somewhat plain-sounding theme, gets a good going-over when triplets turn the tune into exciting rhythmic swirling and tumblings, and later there a lovely dovetailing of pianistic triplets against long string lines as part of the rich variation Mozart brings to the music – undoubtedly some of his most inventive and colourful for piano and orchestra. Soloist, conductor and players despatched it all with the utmost élan and enjoyment, for our enormous pleasure.

A very Big Sing, very entertaining

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Gala Concert: The Big Sing, New Zealand Choral Federation Secondary Schools’ Choir Festivals National Finale

Wellington Town Hall

Wednesday, 24 August 2011, 6.30pm

To hear 700 secondary school students from all around New Zealand singing together is thrilling indeed, as they did at the conclusion of this three-hour concert. The Wellington Town Hall has hosted much music through its life, but hearing this amount of excellent singing in such a good acoustic is ‘something else’, as is seeing and hearing three boys’ school choirs turning on impromptu haka at the end, and the screaming, enthusiastic response!

Twenty-two school choirs were finalists from the regional choral festivals (Wellington’s was held in June) came together for several days of singing, culminating in this Gala Concert, in which each school sang one of the pieces they had performed earlier in the week. The selection was made by the judges and not, as formerly, by the choirs themselves. This was probably the reason for a better balanced concert than is sometimes the case.

The Big Sing National Finale was to have been held in Christchurch this year; sadly, because of February’s earthquake this has not been possible. This meant a late start for the Wellington Committee to organise things, but nonetheless, all was done very competently.

With a knowledgeable and clear compère in Christine Argyle of Radio New Zealand Concert, herself a choir director, and super-efficient stage crew, it was hard to imagine things being run any better. An innovation this year was the showing on two big screens of videos taken around Wellington during the days of the festival. School choirs, when not required to be at the Town Hall, made up ‘flash mobs’ at various venues such as the Railway Station and the Majestic tower, where bemused locals perforce looked on, as items were performed by the impeccably uniformed students, who then disappeared. A surprise appearance on screen was “the stage crew choir”, who sang very competently from their work-place, viz. the stage of the Town Hall.

The screens showed images from in-house cameras throughout the evening, meaning all sections of the audience could easily see the compère, the choirs, soloists and sections and individuals in the choirs. Shown also on screen were the names of the choirs, the schools’ names, and the names of their conductors. It all worked very smoothly.

Some interesting statistics: 8,500 secondary school students took part in the regional festivals; 700 students were at the Finale here in Wellington; 14 choirs were from North Island schools and 9 from the South Island (on a population basis that means that, proportionately, more South Island schools were successful in choral music; only one Wellington choir was in the final this year: Teal Voices, from Wellington Girls’ College. Another, the Queen Margaret Chorale, sang the winning composition, written by a Queen Margaret College student.

Of course, not every school chooses to enter every year; there is much work involved in preparation (every piece is sung from memory), and expense, particularly in getting choirs to the National Finale venues.

All the choirs had been trained well in how to stand, walk on and off stage, and to arrange themselves in particular formations, with great decorum. Even though there were applause, cheering, and standing ovations frequently throughout the concert, quiet and attention reigned while choirs were performing. Coming on and off stage was done quickly and neatly by all the choirs, which, along with the rapid work from the stage crew, kept the long programme moving.

First up was the Craighead Chorale, from Craighead Diocesan Girls’ School in Timaru, under Vicki McLeod. They were accompanied by piano and violin (not student performers) in the Irish folksong “The Stuttering Lovers”. The choir employed appropriate movement in their performance, which added to the humour. The choir sang with attractive tone, and gradation of dynamics. The 17 singers sustained their tone well to the very end of the piece.

Next up was Southern Hesperides from Otago Girls’ High School, singing Mendelssohn’s “Lift thine Eyes” from the oratorio Elijah. This beautiful three-part choral piece from the big choir, featured lovely tone and superb use of the language. The singers maintained a truly legato line by not overemphasising the consonants. What was remarkable was that they sang without conductor; Karen Knudson simply gave them the notes on the piano, then conducted the first few beats, and sat down while they sang unaccompanied.

Some of the girls remained on stage, because the next choir was Barock, a combined ensemble including Otago Boys’ High School students as well. Again, Karen Knudson did not conduct. The notes were given, a boy in the front of the widely spaced students gave the first few beats (facing the audience) and off they went, in “All my Trials”, arranged by Norman Luboff. Such precision, especially in such a slow piece, and with rallentando at the end, was astonishing with no conductor in front. As with the girls choir, all vowels were made exactly the same way by each choir member, giving great clarity to the singing. I found listening to the singing of this piece a moving experience. The only thing that detracted from this choir’s (and the next’s) performance was that the boys looked untidy compare with all the other choirs. They would have improved their appearance if the blazers had been buttoned.

Most of the boys remained, since the next choir was their school’s. They sang with piano, again without conductor, “The Masochism Tango” by Tom Lehrer, arranged by Karen Knudson. As well as singing, there was choreography involving changed configurations, the choir now facing one way in their wedge-shaped formation, now the other. Acting came into it too, and dancing of the tango. Use of the falsetto voice to represent women and other details made the presentation very funny – but the singing was good, too. However, it may have been a target of Paul Holley’s comment in his concluding remarks that the choirs needed to ensure that the movement does not detract from the music being sung.

For the first time, a combined choir from Nelson College and Nelson College for Girls, Stella Collegians, performed in the Big Sing – as a guest choir (i.e. not a finalist). Five boys and nine girls sang Caccini’s “Ave Maria” under their conductor Kathryn Hutt, with flute and piano accompaniment. The Latin pronunciation left something to be desired, but the harmony was fine, and the flute lovely. However, tone and dynamics became boring because they were unvaried.

A traditional Yiddish song was performed by Euphony, the mixed choir of Kristen School in Auckland. They had good tone and volume, and words were enunciated well (as far as I could tell, not being a speaker of Yiddish). The parts were well executed, despite being quite complex in places. Under their conductor Nick Richardson, the tempo was well controlled, and co-ordinated movement was part of the performance.

Bulgarian composer Peter Lyondev’s name was not familiar to me. Rangi Ruru’s Resolutions choir sang “Kafal Sviri” by him. Their conductor Helen Charlton had the choir singing with quite a different technique from that normally associated with Western music. They sang with a rather nasal head-voice, which presumably was appropriate for this music. This was rather daring in a competition where other choirs would be aiming for a sound produced so differently.

Aorere College is renowned at every Big Sing for the robust, well-produced tone of its singers, and the subtleties of dynamics they bring to their task. The Sweet Sixteen from that school (actually numbering about 28 singers) sang “Te Atua” by Awhina Waimotu. This piece was last year’s composition competition winner. It featured beautiful, gentle singing from this mixed choir under its conductor, Douglas Nyce. The tone was exemplary, and the voices blended well.

The school male choir was up next: Front Row. In their football jerseys, with numbers on the backs, they made a great sight. And a great sound, too. Directed by Pene and William Pati, they performed “Purea Nei”, a traditional Maori song arranged by William Pati, accompanied by guitar. This was a big sound, and movement was incorporated in their performance, which ended with a haka – conductor and all. The choir received a standing ovation from all the other teenagers in the hall, as the haka continued while they walked off.

Another guest choir was Bella, from Freyberg High School in Palmerston North, conducted by Kristen Clark. They sang “Atapo” by Josie Burdon. This choir comprised all girls, who sang unaccompanied. They made a pleasing sound, and maintained good control of dynamics. They began with a very well performed solo karanga, which continued while the choir sang in harmony – most effective.

King’s College, Auckland, was represented by a new choir, “King’s Voices”, who sang Fats Waller’s well-known “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. Nicholas Forbes conducted the mixed choir in a very classy performance. No movement was involved; the choir got its message over with appropriate language and pronunciation. The blend of voices was excellent.

They were followed by Petra Voce, another guest choir, this time from St. Peter’s School in Cambridge. It was their first time at the Big Sing – a contrast with some of the choirs heard at the beginning of the evening, who had been attending since 1995 or 1996. Their conductor Julia McIntyre led them in a close harmony item, “Cornerstone” by Kirckner, with piano accompaniment. The choir consisted of both boys and girls – and a boy soloist contributed his falsetto; there was a girl soloist also. The choir sang very effectively, making a great sound.

Last on in the first half of the concert was Bellissimo from a relatively new school, which was new to the contest: Whangaparaoa College. They chose the ever-popular American folksong “Shenandoah” in a telling arrangement by James Erb. Philippa Jones, their director, obtained a very accomplished performance. The choir (which seemed to specialise in tall males and short females) looked smart with their green sashes and ties. Excellent vocal production and tone were features in this unaccompanied piece, which made a fine effect.

Following interval, SOS from Rangitoto College, a girls’ choir conducted by David Squire, sang another popular number, “All the things you are” by Jerome Kern. For some of us this song always evokes Peter Sellers’ deliberately pathetic version! For a large choir, SOS did not have a big sound. Nevertheless, they sang this close harmony arrangement very competently.

Middleton Grange School’s combined girls and boys choir Crescendos was a guest choir. Under their conductor Phillipa Chirnside, they sang “Africa”, with the accompaniment of drums and piano, and actions. In what should be a very rousing song, their tone was often weak, or poorly supported.

Marlborough Girls’ College was represented by a large choir, Bella Voce – veterans of many Big Sings. They sang a Venezuelan song, “Mata Del Anima Sola” by Antonio Estevez. This was a thoroughly involving performance under conductor Robin Randall, and a very accomplished solo singer, soprano Olivia Sheat, contributed largely, along with the lovely tone from the choir.

Saint Cecilia Singers from Auckland Diocesan School for Girls has been a frequent participant, too. Their conductor David Gordon’s “There is no rose of such virtue” was a fine choice. The choir continued singing as the members walked off stage, and then stopped to complete the item, with just one singer still on stage – an effective ploy.

Macleans College Choir under the renowned choral director Terence Maskell sang Schumann’s “Es ist verraten”, accompanied on the piano. While the German sounded good to start with, a German speaker sitting near me said that after a while she could no longer understand the words; however, English language songs can suffer the same fate. This was a big mixed choir, and the clarity of the lovely Schumann music was certainly there, plus good rhythm and dynamics.

Burnside High School is noted for its music courses and high calibre of performance. The choir Bel Canto continued this tradition, with a mature sound from this girls-only group, singing New Zealander Tecwyn Evans’s “The Lamb”. Director Sue Densem sang the opening notes, and then the singing was unaccompanied. There were difficult harmonies in this piece, but a superb performance resulted. I particularly liked the great use of the words in phrasing the music.

Teal Voices, an 18-voice choir from Wellington Girls’ College, sang Debussy’s “Noel des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons” with Michael Fletcher conducting. The French language pronunciation sounded competent; the singing featured a great dynamic range, including beautifully controlled soft singing.

Westlake Girls’ and Boys’ High Schools combined choir Choralation exhibited their expertise by singing an Arvo Pärt piece, “Bogoroditse Dyevo”. This was quite a short piece, sung with clarity in Russian – a very fine performance under conductor Rowan Johnston.

Finally, in complete contrast to the static previous item, Westlake Boys’ Voicemale, conducted by David Squire, incorporated much action and even props into their singing of “Toyota”, an item from David Hamilton’s musical Crumpy. The boys simulated a vehicle, crouching or kneeling, with one boy holding a steering wheel, and others at appropriate positions whirling umbrellas to simulate wheels. It was all very funny, but there was good singing, too.

Queen Margaret Chorale conducted by Louise Logan, sang “Freedom”, whose composer, Simone Chivers, received the SOUNZ Composition Award. This was a large choir, and they sang well, but this was a slow, dull piece, without the appealing qualities of last year’s winner that was sung by The Sweet Sixteen in this concert. More care was needed in the word-setting; the emphasis of the word ‘freedom’ should not come on ‘-dom’, as it repeatedly did in this piece.

I haven’t mentioned accompanists, all of whom played competently and sympathetically.

After a short speech by Grant Hutchinson, the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Choral Federation, and remarks from one of the judges, the awards were presented.

The judges, Dr Karen Grylls (New Zealand Voices and New Zealand Youth Choir music director), Andrew Withington (New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir director) and Australian choir director Paul Holley, judged on all the performances they heard from the choirs during the several days, not on those heard on Wednesday night.

Did Southern Hesperides and their joint choir with Otago Boys’ High School Choir overstep the time limit? That some choirs had done so was mentioned by Paul Holley in his judges’ (yes, plural) remarks. Otherwise I cannot account for neither Southern Hesperides nor Barock achieving gold, or at least silver awards. Others I spoke to after the concert were similarly surprised. Teal Voices I also thought worthy of a higher award. Paul Holley, from Brisbane, said he admired the quality and variety of what he heard. He urged choirs to ensure that movement does not detract from the music being sung. He described Knockout (KO): know and own what you are singing. He congratulated all the soloists, the choral conductors, and the choirs.

Here are the results:

Bronze awards: The Sweet Sixteen, Aorere Collete

Southern Hesperides, Otago Girls’ High School

Saint Cecilia Singers, Auckland Diocesan School for Girls

Otago Boys’ High School Choir

Front Row, Aorere College

Silver awards: Bella Voce, Marlborough Girls’ College

Belissimo, Whangaparaoa College

Euphony, Kristen School

King’s Voices, King’s College

Maclean’s College Choir

Resolutions, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

SOS, Rangitoto College

Teal Voices, Wellington Girls’ College

Voicemale, Westlake Boys’ High School

Gold awards: Craighead Dicocesan Girls’ School

Choralation, Westlake Girls’ and Boys’ High Schools

Bel Canto, Burnside High School

Platinum award: Choralation, Westlake Girls’ and Boys’ High Schools

SOUNZ composition award: Simone Chivers

Auahi Kore performance award for the choir giving best total performance of a work using Maori text: The Sweet Sixteen, Aorere College

Hutt City trophy: Best performance of a New Zealand composition: Bel Canto, Burnside Hugh School

Youth Ambassadors’ award (“outstanding engagement with all elements of the Finale”): Belissimo, Whangaparaoa College

Cantoris and Rachel Hyde take flight with Pärt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ARVO PÄRT

Bogoroditze Djev  (O Mother of God) / The Woman With the Alabaster Box

Kanon Pokojanen (Odes 1, 7 & 9) / Nunc Dimittis

Cantoris, directed by Rachel Hyde

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington – Lunchtime Concert Series

Wednesday, 17th August 2011

(review adapted from transcript notes of a review on RNZ Concert’s “Upbeat”,with Clarissa Dunn, 19.08.11)

Tell us about listening to Arvo Pärt in the middle of a wintry Wellington day!

Arvo Pärt’s music was, I think a wonderful choice of repertoire with which to finish one’s work with a choir. Pärt is a composer who’s contributed of late to a quiet revolution that’s taken place within the confines of contemporary classical music, turning his back on much of the avant-garde modes of expression in favor of something whose simplicity and beauty of utterance has won a huge following, including  many listeners who would have regarded most contemporary music as too elitist, difficult, austere, esoteric and frankly unattractive.

Was Cantoris’ programme a good representative selection of Pärt’s choral music?

Yes,I think it was – the choices were both vibrant and contemplative, outwardly expressive and inwardly mystical, simply beautiful and quietly austere – people who didn’t know the composer’s music would, I think, get a good idea of its salient qualities from attending this concert.

He’s a composer who’s undergone something of a journey to reach his present status.

Well, certainly a multi-faceted journey – inwardly and outwardly, as they say in analytical circles. In his youth Pärt was remarked of as a composer who “only had to shake his sleeves and notes fell out of them”. His early compositions followed the austere lines of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Bartok, and then to the serialism of Schoenberg – this quickly got him into trouble with the Soviet Authorities (Estonia had been taken over by the Soviet Union) and performances of his works were actually banned. His response was to withdraw and study early music from Medieval and Renaissance times, the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church plainchant making its mark as well. He emerged from this silence with an entirely new compositional philosophy.

How would you describe this change?

Pärt has famously described his later music as “tintinnabuli” – like the ringing of bells, music characterized by simple harmonies, using single unadorned notes or triads, deriving from the music of medieval and renaissance times studied so intently by the composer. The interesting thing is that this music, like a lot of the early music that was Pärt’s inspiration, has such a powerful simplicity – using little rhythmic complexity, unselfconscious harmonic display using pure intervals and almost no dissonance, and a clarity of texture at all times. What comes from this is music that touches many listeners deeply and profoundly. Pärt’s own words sum up this new way of making music: “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation”.

Tell us about Rachel Hyde, who’s stepping down an musical director of “Cantoris” after this series of concerts.

Rachel is going to concentrate on finishing a law degree – in her own words “it’s now or never”! She felt that with all the things she wanted to do, her work with the choir was suffering, so it was better to relinquish that and let somebody else carry on with the good work. She’s going to continue working with her children’s orchestra, the Schola Sinfonica, and also, hopefully, will do the occasional public concert with groups like Bow, the String Ensemble she helped to found, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra.

This series of concerts – where are they taking place?

The choir is giving two more concerts in this series – free of charge to the public, incidentally – the first tonight at Wellington’s City Gallery at 6pm and then on Sunday in Porirua, at the Pataka Arts Centre at 2pm.

I understand the weather has caused some performing groups some difficulties this week – what about Cantoris?

Rachel told me that the rehearsals hadn’t been without difficulties due to the weather – at least one rehearsal was called off entirely, and one of the choir’s strongest-voiced male singers has been left with next to no voice due to a cold – the entrails weren’t exactly propitious, one would have thought, and it’s a tribute to both Rachel and her choir that the music was delivered with such expertise and energy and beauty, despite all tribulations.

So, let’s look at the programme, six shorter pieces for choir – in general, how well did you feel the voices put across this music?

I’m pretty much a beginner listener, when it comes to Arvo Pärt’s music, and going to this concert and listening to the recordings we’re going to play has been a revelation for me, as I’m sure it will to others who go to any of the concerts. Compared with the singing on the recordings, Cantoris’s approach was gentler, less assertive than the singing of choirs such as the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, a group who would have been pretty well steeped in the composer’s music. In view of the difficulties experienced by the group in preparing for this concert, their achievement in making the music live and breathe the way it sounded to me is, I think all the more commendable.

The first piece, very short, was Bogoroditse Djevo (translated, it means “O Mother of God”) – here, a lovely, well-focused performance, not trumpet-toned in the big moments (as I’m sure the trebles of the Kings College Cambridge Choir were able to do when it was first performed by them in 1992 – Pärt wrote the piece for the Choir to perform at their Christmas Concert that year) but gentler-grained, like the pipings of woodwinds.

The Woman With the Alabaster Box (1997) came next – an interesting work, a setting of Matthew’s Gospel (from Chapter 26 Verse 7 onwards). Again, the piece was very nicely and ambiently sung, and somewhat more demanding to bring off compared with some of Pärt’s output, duet to the composer’s extending his harmonies to include some expressive dissonances. Interestingly, this was a setting of the words in English, the story of the woman who empties a box of expensive oil over Christ’s head, to the consternation of the disciples, who complain that the oil would have been better sold so that money could be given to the poor. In places the setting seemed almost deliberately unidiomatic, as if to avoid English speech stresses and render the words as pure sound – a kind of marmoreal effect, which I found was a bit alienating. I admired this work but didn’t fall in love with it!  Actually, I thought Cantoris’s performance was warmer than the one I heard on the commercial recording – here, we heard some lovely work in thirds from the men, well sustained, and carrying them through some uncertain moments later on. Throughout the concert, there was this imbalance between the men’s and women’s voices, the tenors and basses obviously missing strength of tone due to the effects from colds.

The next three items I did fall in love with! These were exerpts from the composer’s Kanon Pokajanen, written in 1995, an extended eighty-minute work in total, and dedicated by the composer to commemorate the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral. This is a stunning work, and it features Pärt’s slow-moving triadic harmonies, intensifying in places into bell-like tones – a real embodiment of the composer’s idea of “tintinabuli”. The music has a strongly-flavoured Slavic tone, to my ears – I think you can hear that Russian Orthodox Chant tradition which the composer explored, very reminiscent, naturally of Rachmaninov’s writing for choirs in his Vespers – the same kind of sound, not like any other music I know. It places great demands on the singers, and Cantoris, again struggling in places with a slight imbalance between women’s and men’s voices managed to convey plenty of atmosphere and feeling. The women’s voices were particularly steady – very mesmeric and evocative. The occasional rawness of tone gave the performance an attractive “here-and-now” quality, rather than something that sounded as though it was being performed celestially or somewhere comparable on the other side of the Great Divide. While looking up information on the internet about recorded performances of this music, I read a heartfelt review of the work from a teenaged boy who described how he lay on his bed and sobbed at the music’s sheer beauty and expressive power – a life-changing experience, one would suspect. The work’s been famously recorded by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir on the ECM label – over eighty minutes of pure, simple other-worldly sound.

The concert finished with Pärt’s “Nunc Dimittis”, the well-known prayer for a soul’s departure*. Though not without some momentary unsteadiness in the voices at the initial cry, this was quickly corrected, and gave us that sense of humanity searching for the light – some lovely solo work from one of the sopranos, very secure in her pitching, creating a real feeling of frisson in places, and leading with surety towards the great moment of salutation of the light by the massed voices at the word “lumen”. Later there came more of Pärt’s tintinnabuli, bell-like oscillations from all parts of the choir, the men’s deep voices almost being felt rather than heard, and the women’s secure tones nicely pitched – the music seems not to resolve at the end, but simply stops, as if, in one’s mind the sounds repeat down the ages, representing humanity’s everlasting supplication towards light and goodness.

(*not “Out of the Depths” as I blurted out on air unthinkingly, which was, of course “De Profundis”)

Bach Choir performs excellently in varied programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Victoria: Motet: ‘O quam gloriosum’; ‘Missa O quam gloriosum’
Britten: Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Victoria
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor
Bach: Chorales BWV 669, 670, 671; Chorale Preludes on the chorales: BWV 672, 673 and 674
Bach: Prelude and Fugue no.9 in E, BWV 854, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I
Bach: ‘Ruht Wohl’ from St John Passion

Bach Choir, conducted by Peter de Blois with Douglas Mews (organ), Maaike Christie-Beekman (soprano), Katherine Hodge (contralto), Thomas Atkins (tenor, Simon Christie (bass)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 7 August 2011, 2.30pm

This was a concert that deserved to be better attended; an interesting and diverse, yet linked, programme was well thought-out and well performed. The music by Victoria music was sung unaccompanied; the Bach accompanied, and the Vaughan Williams had an ad lib organ accompaniment, contributing additonal variety.

It was a surprise to find young tenor Thomas Atkins singing solo, in the middle of a brilliant season of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the University Memorial Theatre, in which he has a leading role.

I was pleased at last to see printed in a New Zealand concert programme the paragraph from the printed programmes for concerts at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the piece about uncovered coughs giving the same decibel reading as a note played mezzo-forte on a horn, and the disarming suggestion “A handkerchief placed over the mouth when coughing assists in obtaining a pianissimo”. Certainly, I heard but little coughing at this concert.

The Victoria motet was sung with a good robust sound, but it was marred, as were other items (e.g. the Sanctus of both the Victoria and the Vaughan Williams masses), by a slightly dubious first chord, pitch and attack-wise.

The Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Victoria was to have been played on the main organ in the gallery of the church, but unfortunately that organ was found to be ciphering badly (that is, notes sounding by themselves, unbidden – usually pedal notes), and so the chamber organ had to be used. Perhaps the main organ was anticipating the damp weather which arrived dramatically half-way through the concert, flinging a side door open to enable us to hear and see the hail falling.

It was quite perplexing to decide where the home key for Britten’s organ piece was – there was dissonance aplenty, and ambiguous chord progressions, especially in the fugue. Douglas Mews appeared to be in a little difficulty at the beginning of the work, probably because of the small instrument he had to play on (which Peter de Blois unkindly referred to as ‘the sewing machine’).

The character of the mass by Victoria balanced ‘great simplicity with… controlled passion’, as the programme note had it. The choir produced beautifully blended sound, excellent matching Latin pronunciation, and good dynamic variation in unison. There were some rough sounds from the men at times early on, but this did not persist. A jubilant Benedictus showed that the choir could produce plenty of volume, while the Agnus Dei featured exquisite sustained tone, and in the final sentence, lovely soft singing. This movement was the best of the Mass, with singing of fine clarity, quality, and complete accuracy.

The style of the period of the composition was conveyed well; the counterpoint was clear and the tone was sustained well through the long vocal lines.

Vaughan Williams’s Mass was very animated, the Gloria being especially lively. Both Simon Christie and Thomas Atkins sang very well in their solos and ensembles, with admirable tone and clear enunciation. The women did not measure up quite as well, but were certainly much more than adequate. Katherine Hodge’s voice did not carry as well as the others; holding her head up more and out of her music would assist with projection. Peter de Blois himself sang the solo plainsong introits in both the Victoria and the Vaughan Williams masses where they were required; this was fine from where I sat, but I do wonder if it carried to the people sitting at the back of the church.

Douglas Mews’s tasteful and effective accompaniments added to the effect of the Vaughan Williams work, which was set for double choir. It is a thoroughly pleasing work, simpler in style and shorter in length than many masses written for choirs to sing outside of a church setting, though its relatively short duration suits it for liturgical performance also.

The first Osanna, following the Sanctus, was spoilt by some very strange tone at times; it did not appear to emanate from one voice part only. Again, it was the Agnus Dei setting that was perhaps the most effective. It is very dramatic for both soloists and choir.

The second half of the concert consisted of chorales by J.S. Bach, and his associated chorale preludes for organ. The reproduction of the title page of the published Clavier Übung and the portrait of Bach embellished a well-designed printed programme.

The first chorale was followed by the relevant chorale prelude: ‘Kyrie Gott Vater in Ewigkeit’. It was for manuals only, as were the two other chorale preludes. It was a relatively simple variation on the chorale melody. The second chorale and its prelude, ‘Christe, aller Welt Trost’, were more ornate, but also more meditative. The singing showed care over tempo, tone and dynamics, while the organ piece was also more intricate than its predecessor, with interesting harmonies.

Third were chorale and prelude ‘Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist’. The chorale was a more substantial and more robust work than were the previous two. German pronunciation was good, but not as clear as the Latin had been.

The organist had a yet more complex piece to play, with elaborate counterpoint and ornamentation. The chorale prelude was followed by Prelude and Fugue no.9 in E from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. We are more accustomed to hearing these pieces played on the piano or the harpsichord. Naturally, they are perfectly able to be played on the organ; perhaps the only reason we do not hear them more often from that instrument is because there is so much music to play that Bach wrote specifically for the organ. The warm flute sounds of the chamber organ and the clean and clear playing of both prelude and the faster fugue, with all entries of the fugue subject apparent, made this an enjoyable and satisfying performance.

The final item was the beautiful ‘Ruht wohl’ (Rest in peace) chorus that concludes Bach’s St John Passion. This chorus is a delight, but I though the performance a little disappointing; the choir sounded a trifle tired. The falling cadences of the music are more tricky to keep on pitch, and this did not always succeed, the intonation slipping a little. Nor was the choir quite as unified as it had been in the other works in the programme. Douglas Mews’s accompaniment was at his usual excellent standard.

All in all, this was an excellent concert. The attention to tone, pronunciation and detail were, on the whole, very good. This was the best singing I have heard from this choir for many years – which is not to say that recent concerts have not been good, but this one scooped them.

The 16th century fashion for the 40-part motet: Tudor Consort sing Striggio and Tallis

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

The 40-part motets of Striggio and Tallis and other liturgical music by Tallis

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart, with Peter Maunder (sackbut) and Douglas Mews (chamber organ)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill Street

Saturday 23 July, 7.30pm

Tallis imitates Striggio
On Saturday’s Classical Chart, broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert, presenter David Morriss took special pains to introduce the CD sitting at No 1; it was a 16th century motet by Italian composer Alessandro Striggio. The piece, sung on the top-ranked CD by I Fagiolini, was written to be sung by 40 distinct voices, each with his and her own part: ‘Ecce beatam lucem’.Striggio was court composer to the Medicis in Florence and the motet was written for the wedding of a Medici to the daughter of an Austrian noble family, so the music was appropriately composed by an Italian to words by a Viennese court poet (in Latin, naturally).

Morriss departed from custom by telling us that he was a member of The Tudor Consort which was to sing the piece in Wellington’s Catholic Cathedral that very evening, and suggesting that this live performance would be even better than that of I Fagiolini. Enough Wellingtonians (and perhaps others) heard the message to pour into the city on a cold, wet evening, making parking difficult in all the Thorndon streets in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral.

The basilica was packed and the unusual step was taken of opening the organ gallery for the overflowing crowd.

The Consort’s history with the Tallis motet
Now this was a special occasion for The Tudor Consort: 2011 is the choir’s 25th anniversary; at their 20th anniversary, for which founding director Simon Ravens had came out from Britain to conduct one of the concerts that celebrated the occasion. It was the one that included the 40-part motet, ‘Spem in alium’, by one Thomas Tallis; it was in St Mary of the Angel’s church (the first and rather spectacular concert of the mini-festival had been in The Great Hall of the former National Museum – now the school of arts of Massey University).

The Tallis motet had been among the works sung by the choir in its early years – it was conducted during a return visit by Simon Ravens in the International Festival of the Arts in March 1992 – when their concerts routinely filled whatever space they inhabited. I was at that performance, the first ever in Wellington and perhaps in New Zealand. Even more astonishing was the encore – a repetition of the whole motet.

Even without Ravens’ electrifying pre-concert talks, which were similarly packed out, the Tudor Consort’s renown was making a widespread impact.

A peak in Wellington’s musical life
 It was just one of several things, however, that generated a high level of activity and excitement that pervaded Wellington’s musical scene at that time, which was bringing large numbers into choral and other concerts.

There were several contributing developments in the mid-1980s: the inauguration of the marvellous (at least in its first decade) international arts festival; the emergence of a vigorous Wellington opera company; the proliferation of chamber music; the increasing contribution to the city’s music by the two separate tertiary music schools through concerts and an annual opera production by each school; the determined growth and energizing of the Wellington orchestra; and the blossoming of new and the reinvigoration of many existing choirs, stimulated in part by Simon Ravens’s brilliant success with The Tudor Consort.

I might also add that the fact that The Evening Post allowed me, from 1987 to the end, and several assistant reviewers, to cover a great deal of the music, is likely to have been of real importance. Typically we contributed around a dozen music reviews each month.

The 40-part motets
Recent research has shown that it was probably the visit of Striggio to London in 1566/67 to sparked Tallis’s interest in writing something comparable.

At this concert the two motets were sung: the Striggio at the beginning and the Tallis at the end.The Striggio was accompanied by sackbut (Peter Maunder on the trombone) and organ (Douglas Mews); it began interestingly, with certain men’s voices penetrating over others, and it was this character that made the experience rather unique in choral performance. I suspect that conductor Michael Stewart’s concerns were with individual detail and not with a conductor’s normal concern: the blending of voices, and it was the very variety of timbres and voice qualities that were audible throughout both the 40-part motets. So the varying size and grain of voices were free from the usual discipline of uniformity. It added enormously to the delight of the whole performances.

During the Striggio all forty singers were arrayed across the front of the sanctuary, but for the Tallis, only 10 were in the front and the rest were spread along the side aisles so that the conductor spent his time turning from front to rear, from side to side, signaling the bewildering entries accurately.

Stewart in the front of his choir presents a lively image. Not given to overly fussy gestures, it is the raised arms that seem to be carry the music to the place where the composers may have imagined their music was directed. His demeanour reminded me of cartoons of Berlioz on the podium, clearly drawn by an artist filled with admiration for the music he was inspiring. Stewart’s gestures seemed to have a similar inspiring effect on his singers.

The Striggio motet was quite short, perhaps six or seven minutes (I didn’t time it) and, compared with the Tallis, with fewer extended passages in which one could sense the full complexity of all those individual voices. The earlier piece seemed to allow more concessions to the style of the usual polyphonic choral setting with far fewer parts apparent.

While the longer more confident lines of interweaving counterpoint of Tallis create an air of greater permanence and moment because there is a denser feeling in his writing.

The other Tallis pieces
Only about half of the 40-strong choir remained to perform the shorter ecclesiastical pieces by Tallis that occupied the rest of the concert.

One could have thought the various short liturgical pieces were merely fillers between the two motets that had surely attracted the crowd. But all those who came because they genuinely loved Renaissance polyphonic choral music would have enjoyed the variety of music that this one composer could bend his talent to: the more complex music for the Catholic ritual compared with the more straight-forward, vertical harmonies, of the pieces for the Anglican rite. The English words of the ‘Magnificat’ and ‘Nunc dimittis’, are set to music that is conscious of the congregation’s comprehension of the words. The organ accompaniment was significant, even in tempo, though not constant as with a traditional hymn; the ‘Nunc dimittis’ ended with a curiously unusual final cadence.

Being conscious of the difference between the Anglican and Catholic (and both Tallis and Byrd had to tread carefully through the switch-back, lethal, religious ferocity that punctuated their lives) threw a new light on the Latin settings of responsories and antiphons where the spiritual impact was sought more through purely musical characteristics – sonority, flowing contrapuntal lines, the pitting of high voices against a bed of men’s more earthbound voices. The two settings of ‘Salvator mundi’, offered an interesting contrast within the traditions of the Catholic liturgy, the second appearing more sonorous and enjoying the warmth of its polyphony, with perhaps a little more attention to the blending of voices – just to show they could do it.

The ‘Loquebantur variis linguis’ caught the attention through its carefully discordant setting of those words, suggesting the polyglot talents of the apostles. ‘Candidi facti sunt’ seemed to play with the listener by starting successively in three different manners, eventually giving space for the tenors’ central plainchant performance.

‘O sacrum convivium’ used the current styles of polyphony in more orthodox manner, and it allowed the audience to enjoy, if it had escaped them before, the chance to hear harmonies involving more sustained contrapuntal passages.

The last motet, ‘Te lucis ante terminum’, more like a hymn in three distinct stanzas, was set as plainsong in the outer two stanzas and polyphony in the second. These examples of Tallis’s music demonstrated further, both the composer’s versatility as he navigated the reefs in religious storms, and the continued, constantly renewal of the choir’s talented singers and their series of imaginative and enterprising directors.

We await a performance of Striggio’s ‘Ecco si beato giorno’, reported to be the mass for 40 to 60 voices from which motet was evidently drawn.


Gounod’s Saint Cecilia Mass in lovely performance by Capital Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Capital Choir conducted by Felicia Edgecombe

Gounod’s Messe-solennelle-Sainte-Cécile, and a miscellany of choral songs

Central Baptist Church, Boulcott Street

Tuesday 5 July 7.30pm

I’d only heard about this performance of the most famous of Gounod’s masses a few days earlier and was at once animated by the prospect. Though previous experiences of the choir hardly led me to expect them to tackle a reasonably large-scale liturgical work of this kind, I was excited in anticipation and my hopes were well met.

The concert was dedicated as a benefit for a Christchurch choir with which Capital Choir had made contact – the South Brighton Choral Society, two of their members had been flown to attend the concert, they spoke about their situation  and they returned with a cheque for the balance of the takings. The Christchurch choir is the main choir of the city’s astern suburbs, which have suffered the worst damage from the earthquakes.

Capital Choir is an all-comers’ choir of around 60 voices, mostly sopranos; if there are some voices that would hardly survive in a small ensemble, the skill of their conductor, Felicia Edgecombe, lay in creating a most impressive, homogeneous sound that was balanced and generally in tune.

While I waited for the Gounod, the choir entered singing chant-like the words ‘Viva la musica’, and the first half consisted of a handful of light items: Franck’s Panis angelicus, two songs by conductor Edgecombe and three popular songs – The Girl from Ipanema, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and When the Saint go Marching in. They were sung with energy and evident enjoyment and it was clear that great pains had been taken to achieve first-rate ensemble, and to created an effect that was warm and opulent; the more problematic male voices, fewer, as usual, in number, were nicely integrated. Vocal production seemed always unforced; what was missing in the last group perhaps was a little of that elusive ability to swing.

They were ably accompanied by the choir’s pianist Belinda Maclean.

By the time the Mass began I was well prepared, as a result of their singing of the near contemporaneous Panis Angelicus, for a performance that would vocally beguile the ears. The Kyrie indeed did that, reassuring me of the choir’s ability to do justice; the soloists were the next question, and the opening page of the Gloria set me at rest for the soprano solo was taken most capably by erstwhile pianist Belinda Maclean whose accompanying duties in the Mass were taken over by Rosemary Russell. (Naturally one missed the orchestra, especially in the instrumental Offertorium, so essentially an orchestral interlude, but the ears soon accept the situation. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Gounod had scored it for a large orchestra – as well as double woodwinds, it calls for four bassoons and four horns, pairs of trumpets as well as cornets, organ with pedals, and six harps). Baritone Rhys Cocker took a very attractive ‘Domine Deus’ section of the Gloria, followed at the ‘Qui Tollis’ by tenor Chris Berentson whose voice sounded rather tight at first but soon relaxed, notably in his solo at the opening of the Sanctus.

The Credo is the longest section and the one that has been subject to a certain scorn, ‘swaggering’ for one writer, but which seems to me simply a fulsome statement of the composer’s at-that-stage anyway, touching and unclouded belief. The big tune is splendid and the confidence of its performance was infectious.

At the ‘Et incarnatus’, the three soloists take over alone, soon alternating with the choir: here, they did not quite achieve the expected hushed, mystical atmosphere that is called for, though at ‘Crucifixus’ a dramatic quality emerged; then one of the few moments of unsteadiness came with the ‘Crucifixus’. But vigour and confidence recovered fully at ‘Et resurrexit’, which even achieved a certain grandeur.

One has got somewhat used to the Sanctus anthologized by sopranos – notable Kiri – but the tenor is more authentic in a liturgical context, and as I said above, Chris Berentson dealt with it comfortably. It’s a lovely movement, majestic without bombast, and the choir performed it with considerable warmth and emotional variety: well rehearsed.

The Benedictus was the final opportunity for the soprano; with a voice somewhat tremulous, whether incidental or intended, Belinda Maclean’s singing was far from inappropriate at this stage of the mass.

Throughout most of this early work (well, he was about 35 but had not yet made a great mark as composer), Gounod maintains a dignity and authentic expressive power, but in the Agnus Dei he seems to succumb to something that weakens the spiritual atmosphere, breaking up the normal rhythm of the words so as to diminish their sacred import; there is something routine about the melody that takes charge in this movement. As well as the choir continued to sing, they hardly overcame the diminished dignity with which the composer’s first masterpiece concludes. At least it is not prolonged and ends without undue flamboyance.

During much of the 20th century it became fashionable to deprecate Gounod’s works that had been so popular in the mid-19th century, especially, after some of the facts of his life and his character became widely known. In recent decades the balance has been largely restored, not only for  the best of his liturgical works, but more especially the ‘other’ operas such as Sapho, Le médecin malgré lui, Mireille,

The Saint Cecilia Mass had made a real popular impact at its premiere in the great church of St Eustache in November 1855 only six months after the premiere there of Berlioz’s Te Deum. In some parts of Europe, Munich for example, the mass was more esteemed than any of the operas, and it was certainly the composition, preceding Faust by about four years, that brought him emphatically to the attention of the general public.

A quote by his (non-believer) friend (for the most part) Saint-Saëns is interesting:

“The appearance of the Saint Cecilia Mass caused something of a stir. Its simplicity, its grandeur, its serene luminosity rose over the musical world like a dawn, and embarrassed many people… Rays of light emanated in floods from the Mass.”