Tag: choral

“Johann Sebastian – Mighty Bach!” from Orpheus

Posted on by Peter Mechen

J.S.BACH – Mass in B Minor

Madeleine Pierard, Lisette Wesseling (sopranos) / Christopher Warwick (counter-tenor) / Paul McMahon (tenor) / Daniel O’Connor (bass)

Orpheus Choir

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fulcher (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 22nd August, 2010

Because JS Bach’s Mass in B Minor is such an established part of the choral repertoire, it’s interesting to reflect on the somewhat piecemeal origins of the work – as an entity it was assembled by the composer in 1749, one year before his death, but parts of it were actually composed up to almost thirty years before, with some of these parts intended for other works – the Sanctus dates from 1724, and the Kyrie and Gloria come from 1733, used by the composer in one of his “Lutheran” Masses – though ironically the Latin settings suggest the Catholic liturgy as much as the Lutheran. Bach had composed this earlier Mass for the new Catholic Elector of Saxony, at whose court he had hoped to get an appointment as court composer (he got the job!). Opinions among scholars differ as to the likely dates of composition of the rest of the B Minor Mass – most are agreed that the work took its final shape throughout the 1740s, though the Credo setting continues to divide opinion regarding its origin in time and place.

What has all of this got to do with the performance we heard on Sunday of the Mass given by the Orpheus Choir and the Vector Wellington Orchestra, with an excellent team of soloists, all directed by Michael Fulcher? Well, it’s just that, despite this somewhat checquered compositional assemblage, the mighty work continued to amaze and inspire and profoundly satisfy on practically all counts. The performance was a splendid achievement, taking into account the usual “settling-in” period from both choir and orchestra, and a few glitches of the kind readily associated with live performance – once things started coming together there were places when a burnished glow came over both singing and playing. I thought the choir particularly good at maintaining those long-breathed sonorous melodic lines in the grander, more declamatory music – so the openings of each section of the work sounded particularly resplendent, with the women’s voices particularly strong and focused, and the men’s invariably characterful and accurate, though not as full-sounding. The orchestral soloists were, without exception a joy to hear; and once the rest of the players got into their conductor’s vigorous stride (the opening of the Gloria was a particularly breathless affair, especially for the brass), they were able to articulate the music with precise attack and homogenous tones.

What the work really does is present the listener (and performers) with a kind of compendium of Bach’s compositional styles and techniques, an assemblage that, thanks to the sheer composer-craft of technique and imagination of invention, sounds as though its constituent parts flow from one to another as if conceived in the same melting-pot at the same time. Neither its composer nor the performers or audiences of the time thought there was anything unusual about it or about how it was put together – baroque composers were so much less “purist” about their own music than we are about it, and Bach was no exception, if the genesis of this Mass is anything to go by. While the work doesn’t in my view achieve the variety of invention and profundity of feeling that do the two major Passions, St.John and St.Matthew, it still tests the technical skill and interpretative depth of any musician involved with its performance.

A lot of focus was centred on soprano Madeleine Pierard, whose activities overseas, particularly in the operatic field, give an impression of a career developing steadily and rewardingly. She made a delightful impression on a previous return visit to Wellington in 2008 to sing in “Messiah”, and was just as vocally attractive and interpretatively insightful on this occasion. The singer gave Bach’s lines a wonderful mixture of strength, purity and emotion that really made the music come alive, the technical accomplishment she’s already achieved allowing her to concentrate on the text and the line and their interaction to make an expressive effect.The difference this time round, apart from that of the music, was in the quality of her soloist colleagues in this concert, enabling her as a matter of course to engage with them in equal partnerships, true give-and-take affairs that brought out the best in the participants.

As second soprano, Lisette Wesseling brought her own distinctive tones to both ensemble pieces and solos, making a fine job of the lovely “Laudamus te” from the “Gloria” (even at Michael Fulcher’s lively tempo, phrasing her lines with elegance and grace), and earlier blending characterfully with Madeleine Pierard in the “Christe eleison”. Australian tenor Paul McMahon contributed a similarly interactive role with Pierard in a gorgeously-sung “Domine Deus”, also from the “Gloria”. Here, and also with McMahon’s lovely singing of the “Benedictus” from the “Sanctus”, flutist Karen Batten won our hearts with some lovely, limpid playing, generating with the singers many subtle light-and-shade gradations of tone and phrasing.

I recently heard counter-tenor Christopher Warwick sing in the Wellington performance of the Monteverdi Vespers, and was impressed on that occasion by his ability to hold long lines of true tone with real quality – and it was that ability he brought to his singing of the “Agnus Dei”, as well as contributing, plangently and long-breathedly, to the duet with Madeleine Pierard from the Credo “Et in unum Dominum”. He was less comfortable with his first solo, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris”, one whose slightly awkward intervals gave him the occasional pitching problem – but his contribution to the general ensemble was most estimable.

Yet another soloist to give pleasure was the bass Daniel O’Connor, whose focused, agile singing was nicely set off by the horn obbligato in the Gloria’s “Quoniam tu solus sanctus”, and again by some lovely instrumental work in “Et in spiritum sanctum” from the “Credo”, this time with a pair of oboe d’amore adding their lines in thirds and carolling a memorable refrain. It was somewhat diverting to experience such deep, sonorous tones coming from so youthful-looking a figure, but nevertheless one who obviously has great potential as a performer, and who can already hold his own in more experienced company.

The performance took place in the Wellington Town Hall, which couldn’t be a better venue as regards sound. Bach would have written this music for performing in a church, but one suspects that he expected the focus to be well and truly on the music, considering the care he took and the intricacies that he created – he obviously meant these to be heard rather than delivered in a matter-of-fact way as a background to something else happening. In the Wellington Town Hall the acoustic was perfect for the work – a warm and rich sound that nevertheless allowed detail to come through. And there’s something about the venue – I think it’s partly the sound, but also the  “shoebox” shape of the auditorium – that encloses you and makes you feel as though you’re in the same performing space as the musicians, which gives the music-making a greater sense of intimacy. The Orpheus Choir’s performance was one that first and foremost sounded good, given that Bach’s part-writing is extremely demanding, and often written for voices as though he didn’t expect them to need to breathe – so the occasional loss of tone in the more torturous contrapuntal part-lines was something which a lot of performers experience when undertaking this work. And the Wellington Orchestra, after a bit of a scratchy start, gave the music a warm, richly-toned instrumental response throughout. Michael Fulcher kept everything together with great skill – he liked swifter speeds in places than I wanted, most notably in the “Laudamus te” which almost EVERYBODY I’ve heard, both in live performance and on record, goes too fast (Mathew Ross, his violin soloist for this performance, coped with the tumbling figurations most skilfully) – but his choir and his singers and players were almost invariably equal to the task, giving us a strong and direct realisation of this marvellous, somewhat quirky work of “Johann Sebastian – mighty Bach!”.

Two choirs join to expose Salieri the choral composer

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mass in D (Hofkapellmeister Messe) and Te Deum for the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II; La tempesta di mare and Overture: Armida

The Festival Singers and the Wainuiomata Choir, and orchestra, conducted by David Beattie

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Sunday 15 August at 2.30pm

My colleague Rosemary Collier allowed herself to lament that so many choirs had scheduled their concerts in such a short span this month; and the overload continues. On Wednesday 11th there was a concert by the choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral, augmented by singers from Christine Argyle’s Nota Bene, who had joined forces with the Choir of Christchurch Boys’ High School, conducted by Don Whelan. They sang Widor’s Mass for Two Choirs and Two Organs; I heard about it too late and was very disappointed to have missed it.

This past weekend, there have been two performances of Monteverdi‘s monumental Vespers of 1610 by Musica Sacra at St Mary of the Angels, and this concert under review of choral and orchestral music by Salieri.  Next weekend comes Bach’s B Minor Mass from the Orpheus Choir (Sunday 22 August); the following Sunday, the 29th, the Bach Choir tackles two great liturgical works: Cherubini’s first Requiem (C minor) of 1816 and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir; and on Saturday 4 September the Tudor Consort sings major works by Schütz and Domenico Scarlatti.

The Salieri concert involved two choirs; choirs that, like so many others, struggle to attract male voices, and they made an excellent decision to combine for a particularly interesting concert. It was given entirely to the compositions of one of those well-known but little heard composers that populate the pages of music history.

Thanks to that popular but disgraceful film Amadeus, the 19th century myth about Salieri’s role in Mozart’s death, together with an almost entirely false representation of Mozart himself, did serious damage to music history and to the reputations of two composers. They left the impression that Salieri might indeed have been a murderer.

But it has also stimulated curiosity about Salieri and has led to the exploration of his music by orchestras, choirs and opera houses around the world. Opera Otago produced his Falstaff in 2006.

In fact, the two composers were quite close, and though Mozart was disappointed not to get the position of Hofkapellmeister to the court of Joseph II, which was given to Salieri and for whose coronation he wrote this Mass in D, there is plenty of evidence of a normal friendly relationship.

In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri in his carriage and drove him to the opera, to see The Magic Flute, and he writes that Salieri was enthusiastic: “He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not piece that didn’t elicit a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Bello!’ out of him”.

If there had been jealousy on either side, it was much more likely to have been on Mozart’s, for Salieri was by far the more successful composer in Vienna for most of the 1780s.

For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the 1790 coronation festivities in Frankfurt for Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor he had three Mozart masses in his luggage. Mozart was passed over for any official role at the coronation, but he went at his own risk and expense, played his piano concerto in D, K 537 but failed to make much impact.

The Te Deum performed in the second half of this concert was Salieri’s offering for Leopold’s coronation in Frankfurt.

Though the orchestra, drawn mainly from players in the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, announced itself with a degree of uncertainty in the first bars, the entry of the full choir in the Kyrie of the Mass in D reassured me that I was in for an interesting time. The tone was serious without pomposity, revealing a work furnished with attractive and original melody, and put together with taste and polish. It was imposing, and could easily have been mistaken for a liturgical work of Mozart or Haydn. But the musical quality was not uniformly maintained, for example in the rather more routine Credo, though its ‘Et Resurrexit’ was jolly enough. Its virtues lay in its sheer compositional skill and variety, and Salieri’s flair for dramatic colouring.

That the music’s strengths were so clear was due in some part to the performance. Though the orchestra had its weaknesses, a concertato string group in single parts contributed happily; a cello solo in the Gloria, and violin and cello in the Benedictus, acquitted themselves capably in charming episodes. On the whole the festive orchestration, with prominent trumpets and timpani, created the sort of ceremonial effect, including a quotation from the Austrian National Anthem in the Agnus Dei, not far short of comparable works by Mozart.

On the other hand, the decision to draw solo voices from the choir itself was generally less successful: better trained voices were needed, or these episodes should have been left instead to small ensembles. However, the full choir, even on occasion, a cappella, excelled themselves and the effects were often exciting. The Agnus Dei with its arresting pauses, the dramatic impact of ‘Dona nobis pacem’ spoke of a composer of great skill and considerable gifts.

The second half was taken largely by the Coronation Te Deum. The church’s organ (Jonathan Berkahn), together with the orchestra, provided the accompaniment for the full choir, with conspicuous attention to balance and phrasing by David Beattie (conductor of the Wainuiomata Choir); the result was an opening of considerable grandeur. If not impeccable, the orchestra again gave the performance all the colour and rhythmic élan needed; distinguished by a high trumpet at the words ‘Dignare, Domine’. Although Salieri demonstrated his confidence by employing nothing but a plain major triad as pivot for the final section, ‘In te Domine’, a composer of greater genius was needed to carry off such a self-imposed challenge.

The second half had begun with two opera overtures: Armida and La tempesta di mare. I can find no corroboration of the programme notes’ statement that it was the overture to the opera Europa riconosciutta (though that opera opens with a storm) which Salieri wrote for the opening of the La Scala theatre in Milan in 1778; it was also used to re-open La Scala in 2004 after major restoration.

Both overtures were products of the Sturm und Drang era – a reaction against the Enlightenment, Classicism and the rationalism of the earlier 18th century, a precursor of Romanticism – that produced Haydn’s symphonies of the early 1770s, like Il Distratto, and Schiller’s play Die Räuber which Verdi turned into I Masnadieri:.rhetorical, expressing extreme emotion, imitating noises of nature, rising and falling scales and arpeggios, ostinati, drones, dramatic percussion, and… some iffy wind intonation.

Armida was one of Salieri’s most important Italian operas, dated 1774, as a protégé of Gluck whose influential Iphigénie en Aulide appeared in that same year. The story, taken from that fertile Renaissance source of theatre stories for the next three centuries, Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata, was also set by composers from Lully and Vivaldi, Handel, Gluck, Jommelli, Mysliveček, Sacchini, Haydn, Rossini (his gained attention through a spectacular production this year by the Metropolitan Opera, New York), and, most surprisingly, Dvořák. The overture was a little more substantial than La tempesta di mare, with again, clear signs of Gluck’s influence. The depiction of the magic in the story took a form that suggested to me pantomime rather than anything more supernatural.

These pieces did less to enhance Salieri’s musical reputation than the two choral works, but were nevertheless interesting in fleshing out one’s view of opera in the 1770s.

The concert was a welcome adventure, carried off with sensibility and musical diligence.

French (and Estonian) choral concert from Cantoris

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Cantoris: Mood

 

Duruflé: Quatre motets sur des thèmes grégoriens, Op. 10; Fauré: Messe Basse; Pärt: Triodion; Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48

 

Cantoris, Orchestra made up of players from Wellington Chamber Orchestra, Wellington Sinfonietta and Schola Sinfonica; Ailsa Lipscombe (soprano), Catherine Conland (soprano), Roger Wilson (bass), conducted by Rachel Hyde

 

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

 

Saturday, 7 August, 7.30pm

 

The plethora of choral concerts this month is most unfortunate – even though the concerts themselves are certainly not!  In the past, Wellington choral conductors met to confer to avoid clashes.  But on this Saturday evening there has also been an earlier concert at the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, by its choir, performing – Duruflé!

 

Although there is not a complete cross-over in the audiences for these events, nevertheless, all would obtain larger audiences if concerts were more spread out.

 

However, the downstairs part of St. Andrew’s Church was well-filled (upstairs was not open), despite there not being much publicity.

 

The Duruflé motets, sung unaccompanied, began gently. In this first piece, ‘Ubi Caritas’, there were effective close harmonies.  Here, and throughout the concert, the voice parts were distributed through the choir, rather than all sopranos etc. being together.

 

Dynamics were well observed throughout these pieces.  The men opened ‘Tu es Petrus’ with a rather rough sound, but the ending was beautiful.

 

Was Fauré making a joke in naming the next piece Messe Basse?  It was sung by women only. Presumably he was using the word ‘basse’ to mean lowly, humble, because the work was composed when he was on holiday at Villerville, in Normandy. In collaboration with Messager, he wrote a Messe des Pêcheurs, which was sung in the local church, with a solo violin, at a service to raise funds for local fishermen. Presumably the church choir only contained women, or male trebles. It reappeared with some changes, including score for full orchestra, as Messe basse.

 

The choir was accompanied by Heather Easting on the chamber organ.  Apparently at the talk, Rachel Hyde explained that she was aiming for the soloist to achieve a boy soprano tone, and this soprano soloist, Ailsa Lipscombe, certainly did.  The solo was quite lovely, yet blended well with the choir. 

 

The music was antiphonal, and was sung with a pleasing tone and a light touch.  In the last movement, Agnus Dei, there was some flatness of pitch on the top line, but otherwise it went very well.

 

Arvo Pärt is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I must say that the unaccompanied Triodion sent me to sleep momentarily.  Perhaps that was fitting, in view of the title for the concert.

 

The men’s entry at the start was not convincing, nor were the final s’s of words together.  Once the women entered, things improved.  The first of the three odes, ‘O Jesus the Son of God, have mercy upon us’ featured the opening lines repeated at the end. These repeated lines were very effective.

 

The second ode, ‘O most holy birth-giver of God, save us’ was much more assured.  The deep bass sound was impressive. Here, the words and music had greater clarity than in the previous ode.

 

Apparently simple, the odes employed diverse harmonies, and must have been quite difficult to learn.

 

After the interval, what is probably Fauré’s most popular work, the Requiem, was performed.  Heather Easting again accompanied tastefully, supportively but unobtrusively on the organ, along with the chamber orchestra, in John Rutter’s realisation of the composer’s chamber orchestra version.

 

The opening was gorgeous – except for one male voice!  The rest of the Introitus was marred by some other voices standing out, and the lack of vowel-matching meaning blurred sound.

 

The Offertorium’s opening section is for alto and tenor only, and the whole movement is accompanied by violas and cellos alone, playing with excellent tone.  This all went very well, the basses joining in with a full timbre, but a well-sustained pianissimo.  The bass soloist’s entry was very fine, and his singing was rich and characterful. 

 

The Sanctus featured the violins again, and the enchanting harp playing of Jennifer Newth.  The horn entry was striking, but the horn section suffered a little from intonation wobbles. 

 

Nevertheless, overall the orchestra of 24 musicians played well for a mixed group that included several very young players from the Sinfonietta, having an experience of playing important music in a public concert.

 

In the Pie Jesu, Catherine Conland managed a boy soprano sound, though with little dynamic variation.

 

The quiet opening of the Agnus Dei was beautifully sung and played.  Much was required of the tenors throughout this work, and in the main they delivered.

 

Roger Wilson sang the bass solo in Libera Me with suitable gravitas and tone; the whole movement was very fine.

 

The harp ornamented the music beautifully again in the rhapsodic In Paradisum, which gave an idyllic end to a satisfying concert.

 

The concert lasted one and a half hours, including the interval.

 

Kapiti Chamber Choir at St Paul’s Cathedral

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Dixit Dominus (Handel), Choral items by Ralph Manuel, Katherine Dienes-Williams, Halsey Stevens, Morten Lauridsen, Samuel Barber, and arrangements by Aaron Copland, Haflidi Hallgrimsson and Moses Hogan

Kapiti Chamber Choir (conductor Guy Jansen) with Lesley Graham, (soprano), Janey McKenzie (soprano), Linden Loader (contralto), James Adams (tenor), Roger Wilson (bass), Handel Chamber Orchestra, Peter Averi (organ), Phillip O’Malley (piano)

St. Paul’s Cathedral

Saturday, 24 July, 4pm

A concert with two distinct parts: first, choral music from the 18th century with orchestra and soloists; after a long interval in which most enjoyable mulled wine and nibbles were served while a small string ensemble played charming music by Matthew Locke, a choral recital followed with a variety of pieces, some of them unaccompanied.

Some of the excitement, and certainly the precision, of the orchestral introduction to the Handel work was lost in the over-resonant Cathedral acoustic.  However, the choir worked hard at overcoming this handicap.

The first number, for chorus initially, involved complex counterpoint.  Attack was good, and the dynamics were handled well (no pun intended).  Then the soloists entered. Due to the acoustics, the lower register of both Lesley Graham’s and Linden Loader’s florid opening solo passages were lost.  James Adams came across very well, since the tessitura of his voice was higher.

The solo for contralto which followed showed Linden Loader in fine voice, and the next, for soprano, gave rein to Janey MacKenzie’s beautifully clear soprano.  She was precise, yet had a lovely carrying tone.

The orchestra, brought together for last year’s Messiah and again for this occasion, was a little shaky at times, but on the whole did well.  The continuo playing of Janet Holborow (cello) and Peter Averi (organ) was excellent, especially considering the great distance between the two players.  Perhaps obtaining the use of a chamber organ would have been worthwhile.

There were sprightly rhythms in the numbers for chorus, and plenty of weight, too.  ‘Dominus a dextris’ particularly, featured bouncy rhythms, while the following ‘Judicabit’ at the word ‘conquassabit’ the syllables (and therefore the notes) became detached, giving quite a curious effect.  Perhaps it was word-painting, the words (in translation) being ‘…he shall fill the places with the dead bodies: and smite in sunder the heads over diverse countries.’  The more covered tone in this number was most appropriate to the words.

The men’s chorus was splendid in ‘De torrente’, their pianissimos truly hushed yet sonorous. The soprano soloists began with a only a few strings playing; this was most effective.

The extended fugal Gloria chorus at the end was executed confidently, although some singers are reluctant to favour the conductor with a glance.  Both here and in the second half, some of the soloists joined the choir for the chorus.

Handel wrote the work while in Italy in 1707; there is no record of a first performance.  Perhaps it was first performed in a large Italian church with similar acoustics to St Paul’s?  For my taste, the Dixit Dominus was the wrong music for the building.  Admittedly, it was about the right size, with a near-capacity audience.

After the interval, the choir began singing from the back of the church, unaccompanied and without their scores, Ralph Manuel’s Alleluia.  It was by an American composer, as indeed were nearly all in this half of the concert.  This piece used the resonance to great effect, the more so from being at the back.  It had an exquisite pianissimo ending. 

The performance reminded me of a number of concerts some years ago (by different groups) where the choristers were spread all round the Cathedral, and used different spaces for different items.  Likewise, a few years ago there were lunchtime concerts incorporating piano and solo singers, who sang from the back, near the main door, with the audience seated around them.  And the Orpheus Choir once performed from the gallery with the orchestra below them, rather than from the chancel steps.

Ave verum corpus by Katherine Dienes-Williams, former Organ Scholar at the Cathedral and now Organist and Master of Choristers at Guildford Cathedral in south England, featured beautiful floating lines, and was sung very well, with excellent tone and vowel-shaping.

Halsey Stevens wrote a setting of ‘Go, lovely rose!’  Its attractively pensive mood and dynamics were echoed in the next song, ‘O nata lux’ by Morten Lauridsen.  This was quite a difficult piece, with clashes and discords, but was confidently sung in a gorgeous pianissimo, with a impressive decrescendo at the end.  Following this item, Guy Jansen gave several brief spoken introductions to the pieces.

Another piece by Lauridsen was performed with piano.  This seemed to make more obvious another feature of this building:  sibilants have a way of sounding completely unconnected with the words they are part of.

While the women singing tenor did a great job, it does alter the sonorities to use women singing at the bottom of their register rather than men singing at or near the top of theirs, with their resultant brightness.  However, when there is a shortage of the male variety, it is probably unavoidable.  In the Handel, with the strings and organ accompanying, the difference in tone was not so noticeable.

Samuel Barber’s famous (hackneyed?) Adagio was arranged by him for eight-part choir, soloist and organ, as an Agnus dei.  It was very effective in this setting.  The choir was beautifully blended, especially at the ending, all singing with the same tone and dynamic.

A very rhythmic ‘Shall we gather at the river?’ with organ, arranged by Aaron Copland, followed.  Then, for a complete change, the choir sang an Icelandic evening song, arranged by Haflidi Hallgrimsson.  The pronunciation certainly sounded authentic, and added to the variety of language and music in the concert, not to mention variety of style.  It included interesting harmonies.  The effect was of stillness, which produced a dynamic of ppp without apparent difficulty.

Finally, Moses Hogan’s setting of the spiritual ‘My soul’s been anchored in the Lord’.  It was performed with piano and organ, and sung with enthusiasm, the conductor achieving a variety of colourings of the voices, yet still obtaining precision singing.  A good fortississimo ended the concert.

La Vie…..La Mort – from the Tudor Consort

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Motets of life and death

by Jean Mouton, Nicolas Gombert and Josquin Des Prez

The Tudor Consort

Director: Michael Stewart

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 12th June 2010

Perhaps it was because I’d arrived with only a few minutes to spare before the concert began; but inside the cathedral was an almost unnervingly ambient worshipful silence – I almost expected to be “shushed!” if I had even dared try to exchange pleasantries with either of my seated neighbours, so I gave myself over instead to contemplation and furtive observation. A large image-screen had been placed just to the right of the performing area, which suggested that there would be “visuals” employed during the concert; and so it proved, with each item having one or two associated images (all very striking) drawn from the art-works of the music’s period, details of which were in the programme alongside notes concerning the item. I hadn’t had enough time to properly “scan” the programme before the concert began, so I was surprised when, after the first motet had been sung, two Consort members stepped forward and began speaking, the first in French and the second translating into English, practically in canon. The poetry, very beautiful-sounding, turned out to be that of Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), whose verses featured several times during the concert, each poem with different speakers and translators, all of whom conveyed both sound and sense of the words most attractively.

The concert’s title testified as to the music’s somewhat elemental subject-matter throughout, finding expression in motets by Jean Mouton (1459-1522) and Nicolas Gombert (1495-1560), with a work by Gombert’s teacher, Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) thrown in for good measure. Opening the programme was a composition by Mouton, O Christe redemptor, a piece he wrote while composer at the Royal Court, judging by its reference to the Queen, Anne of Brittany who was married to no less that two French monarchs. Beginning with the resplendent, beautifully-balanced tones of the full choir, whose focused lines gave the composer’s “smoothly flowing and consonant” style such character, the piece allowed the mens’ voices to shine in places, notably at “Largitor virium”, while giving the women’s voices plenty of melismatic beauties.  The first of Ronsard’s verses was then delivered by two speakers, the intermingling of French and English texts creating a sense of something conveyed through time and reawakened for our pleasure – the poem Je vous envoie spoke of human beauty withering as does that of flowers, with the passing of time.

A Magnificat by Nicolas Gombert followed, one of eight written by the composer while in exile as a galley slave (for what one account calls “acts of gross indecency” – evidently, while working as a composer in the court of Charles V of Spain, he had sexual relations with a choirboy). How the composer managed to write music at all while he served his time on the galleys has not been made clear, while the story that the Holy Roman Emperor commuted Gomberg’s sentence upon hearing these works (which the composer called his “Swan Songs”) is similarly shrouded in conjecture. Whatever his proclivities and resulting indiscretions his work as a composer happily transcended such misdemeanours of the flesh, his mastery of vocal polyphony evident throughout this beautiful work. Especially attractive was Gombert’s use of plainchant to introduce each episode, creating beautifully atmospheric effects of depth and antiphonal contrast. After a less-than certain beginning, the Consort’s tenor voices that began each episode with the plainchant grew in confidence and surety of tone, the contrasting body of varied responses sustaining and building our interest throughout. Less extended, but even more complex was Mouton’s Nesciens Mater, an intensely-worked canonic masterpiece, drawing forth from the Consort great intensity of tone (a shade raw at the high-voiced clustered climax, but all the more involving) set against more celestially-floated textures – an amazingly-sustained outpouring of great beauty. Ronsard’s spoken verses which followed, entitled “Chanson”, were similarly intense, comparing the characteristics of the seasons and the multiplicities of nature with the depths of the poet’s sorrowful feeling for a lost love.

Conjecture has it that Gombert studied with Josquin des Prez, though details of their association are sketchy – nevertheless, the older master exerted considerable influence on the younger composer. The inclusion of Josquin’s motet Inviolata demonstrated the tightly-worked canonic style and direct word-expression for which the composer was renowned, with duetting between different choir-voices, the most extended being that for tenors and basses during the second section at “Nostra ut pura”. Then, the corresponding altos/tenors passages in the first part beautifully brought out the words “O Mater alma”, as did the sopranos/basses combination with their phrasings towards the end, which resulted in pleasingly-contrasted open textures. Ronsard’s poem that followed, Sur la mort du Marie, made a typically sobering effect, the poem a variation on the theme of youthful beauty withering at the hands of fate, again nicely “sounded” between the languages. We were thus prepared for Gombert’s incredibly intense lament for his great predecessor on the occasion of Josquin’s death, the motet Musae Jovis occasioning a marvellous display of controlled outpouring of emotion, the “plangite” given full and sustained expression.

More obsequies were observed with Mouton’s tribute to Queen Anne of Brittany, Quis dabit oculis nostris, sung at the various places where her funeral rites were performed. I liked the fine surge of major-key emotion at the composer’s rhetorical declamation “Britannia, quid ploras?”, throwing into stunning relief the hushed repetitions of “defecit Anna”, the energy of life drained, the full-throated song now muted at “Conversus est in luctum chorus noster” (Our song has changed to mourning). But I thought the different invocations to the various groups of people to “weep” not as “pointed” as I expected them to be, rather more dry-eyed in effect than I imagined was possible. Significantly, Michael Stewart also kept the final “Anna, requiescat in pace” in check, eschewing a more obvious outpouring of emotion in favour of a longer-lasting subtlety. After such whole-heartedness, Ronsard’s somewhat droll characterisation of the body’s farewell to its soul (in translation, somewhat reminiscent of Robert Burns’s poems) lightened the mood, even if the delivery of the speakers emphasised the matter-of-factness of utterance more than thehumour.

Concluding the concert was Gombert’s affirming “Tulerunt Dominum”, a setting of the Gospel verses describing Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the angels in Christ’s empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. Dramatic and emotional, the setting captures the desolation of Mary’s feeling of abandonment at Christ’s disappearance with the words “Tulerunt Dominum meum”, and the reassuring words of the angels in reply, the composer establishing an almost lullabyic aspect in the motion of the lines, the insistent, but beautifully-pulsed voices creating an almost minimalist precursor of style in places. Angelic voices floated the lines with intense purity, while the “Alleluias” grew from out of the performance’s ever-burgeoning emotion to resound like ringing bells, in minor-key mode, but secure, strong and exultant to the end.

A word regarding the projected images of largely renaissance art that accompanied the items – I confess that for the most part I didn’t register them strongly, which isn’t to say that that they shouldn’t have been used. I certainly didn’t find them distracting in any way, though my attention was taken up so overwhelmingly by what I was hearing, I was conscious afterwards of having failed to “connect” the visuals significantly with the music. The idea was employed with such welcome simplicity as to render the images almost as part of the venue’s decorative and functional detail. I’m sure that people attuned to art history and/or better able than myself to synthesize sight and sound would have greatly enjoyed the enrichment of the Consort’s lovely singing with these obviously beautiful and significant works of visual art.

Saint-Saëns, Psalms and Spirituals from the Festival Singers

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Saint-Saëns – Mass Op.4 / Works by Felix Mendelssohn, John Rutter, René Clausen, Zsolt Gárdonyi, Moses Hogan and William Henry Smith

Clarissa Dunn (soprano), Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano),  Chris Anderson (tenor),  Kieran Rayner (baritone)

Jonathan Berkahn (organ, piano), Paul Rosoman (organ)

Festival Singers

Rosemary Russell (director)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 29th May 2010

“Camille Saint-Saëns was wracked with pains,

When people addressed him as “Saint-Saynes”;

He held the human race to blame,

because it could not pronounce his name.”

Readers who remember Ogden Nash’s verses will sympathise further with Camille Saint-Saëns in his predicament at being known as a composer primarily for his zoological fantasy “Carnival of the Animals”, though his “Organ” Symphony and several of his concertos for violin, for ‘cello and for piano, have always figured in concert programmes. All gratitude, therefore, to the Festival Singers here in Wellington, for presenting in concert a relative rarity, the composer’s Mass Op.4, written in 1856 when Saint-Saëns was twenty-one, and working as an organist at the church of St-Merry, in Paris. Originally written with orchestral accompaniment, along with the two organs (grand and petite), the work was performed by the Festival Singers in the composer’s later arrangement made without the orchestra. Always his own man in whatever he did, Saint-Saëns largely ignored the more “operatic” vocal style of the liturgical music of his contemporaries, instead choosing to emulate various “historical” precedents, such as the exchanges between the two organs which open the work, and the alternating of organ and choir immediately following, called “alternatum”. Other influences on the work are those of plainchant, of renaissance-like polyphony, of Bachian counterpoint and the sense of drama expressed in the masses of Haydn and Mozart.

At first, the opening alternating statements by the two organs were puzzling – though nicely antiphonal and varied, there was little sense of forward movement or projected focus, which in itself created a kind of tension. The entry of the voices for the Kyrie then seemed to uncover a hitherto concealed pathway along which the music could then move. Whether the youthful composer had this almost “cut adrift” effect in mind at the outset which could then be energised in a specific direction, I’m not sure; but a sense of expectation-cum-bemusement was engendered by the organ dialogues at the beginning, making the entry of the choir a moment of real frisson, of sudden enlightenment and compelling forward motion.

As with the performance of the Dvorak Mass last year, I thought the Singers revelled in presenting to its audience music that ought to be far better known. The work of both soloists and chorus constantly delighted the ear, the full choir able to set the voluminous spaces of the cathedral resounding, even if some of the singing of the sections, through dint of lack of numbers, couldn’t manage the evenness of tone required by some of the exchanges (the women outnumbering the men, and their lines consequently rather more consistently full-toned and secure). Each of the four soloists, soprano Clarissa Dunn, mezzo Bianca Andrew, tenor Chris Anderson and baritone Kieran Rayner, gave particular pleasure with their work, and blended their voices beautifully throughout. Both Jonathan Berkahn and Paul Rosoman contributed stirring organ solos, the latter setting the spaces thundering and shaking with the larger instrument’s grandeur of utterance in places, and setting off the delicacy and poise of Jonathan Berkahn’s playing of the “petite orgue”, accompanying the choir throughout most of the work. Rosemary Russell’s direction seemed to me to be exactly what the music asked for at all times – one could imagine a more tautly-conceived introduction, perhaps, but such a course may well have gained little for the work and lost that air of expectancy which both the silences and the natural flow of the organ-playing built up.

After the interval came the “Psalms and Spirituals”, a sequence whose success surprised and delighted me, as I thought it worked well. The Psalms were begun with Mendelssohn’s energetic and festive “Jauchzet dem Herrn”, the unccompanied choir confident, secure and accurate, and the solo soprano voices from the body of the choir spectacularly good. Somewhat less compelling as a work and as a performance was John Rutter’s “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes”, the ethereal tones of the “petite orgue” blending sweetly with the small but properly plaintive tenor voices, the full choral passages confident, if occasionally over-balanced on the women’s side. I thought the fragmented vocal lines towards the end (broken up by frequent organ passages, albeit beautifully played) made it difficult for the choir to maintain its tones securely, though forgiveness was forthcoming at the very end with the delicately-floated “Amens”.

American composer René Clausen’s “All That Hath Life And Breath Praise Ye the Lord” featured lively unaccompanied singing, with a striking “many tongues” effect towards the end of the piece, not completely accurate in pitch, but with a real sense of bubbling excitement in the textures – again some sonorous, well-focused work came from a solo soprano choral voice, while the rest of the sopranos brought off a lovely ostinato-accompanied reprise of the main theme midway through. I liked the second John Rutter Psalm “The Lord Is My Shepherd” better than I did the first one, the singing well-rounded (tenors keeping their line despite a touch of strain) and a delicious organ solo sounding as though poet Christopher Smart’s cat Jeffrey had wandered into the work from one of Benjamin Britten’s pieces. Another Rutter Psalm-setting “O Clap Your hands” evoked a dance-spirit with occasional bell-like descending figures, though I thought either the composer or the performers could have given the work’s last couple of pages a little bit more energy and “ring”.

Saint-Saens’s music made a reappearance with his “Ave Maria” sung as a duet by Clarissa Dunn and Bianca Andrew, a welcome change from the over-performed Gounod setting, and one which again enlarged one’s appreciation of the composer and his work. Accompanied by some sensitive piano-playing from Jonathan Berkhan, the singers captured the joyous radiance of the first part of the prayer, and the clouded-over, minor-key supplication of the second.  Bianca Andrew took a strong and heartfelt canonic lead through the latter episode, before easing gratefully back into major-key mode together with her equally melifluous-voiced soprano partner for a beautifully-floated “Amen”. The composer might or might not have approved of his music being juxtaposed with such a bluesy number as “Somebody’s knockin'”, the first of the Spirituals, and probably the funkiest of the selection, the piano accompaniment being particularly moved by the spirit in Jonathan Berkahn’s capable hands. I liked the variation of atmosphere from piece to piece underlined by the different accompaniments, a capella alternating with piano, and a primitive-sounding African-style beat for “Keep Your Lamps!”, which conductor and percussionist launched successfully after a “ready-steady” first attempt. The groundswell of feeling engendered by the final item “There is a Balm in Gilead” satisfied on all counts, appropriately featuring a sweetly dignified soprano voice from the choir and a gently-rocking piano accompaniment – a warm and engaging way to end an enjoyable concert.

Joy is Come! – Choir of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Choral and organ music for Palm Sunday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity, by Howells, Weelkes, Haydn, Andrew Careter, Simon Lindley, S.S. Wesley, Bairstow, Finzi, Givvons, Tallis, Elgar, Bach and Stainer

Choir of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, conducted by Dr Richard Marlow and Michael Fulcher, with Richard Apperley, Michael Fulcher and Thomas Gaynor (organ)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Saturday, 22 May

Fourteen different items made up this programme, which ran rather longer than the hour-and-a-quarter advertised. It showed the skill of the choir in singing works spanning four-and-a-half centuries. Nearly all the choir members stood very still, and did not indulge in distracting movement; thus, the audience can concentrate on the music.

Most of the items were conducted by visiting Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Dr Richard Marlow, who is retired from the position of Director of Music at that College.

On the whole the balance and blend of the choir was good, though occasionally the sopranos were too prominent. There was variety in the programme, and some variety from the voices also. Soloists in some of the pieces were not named, but were mainly well sung. The problem from time to time of the slow resonance of the building was probably exacerbated by the fact that it was well under half-full.

The first item, a Te Deum of Herbert Howells was perhaps one of the few where the organ, in the loud sections, rather overcame the choir. In the quieter middle section, the balance was better. Otherwise, the playing for the choir by Richard Apperley and Thomas Gaynor was exemplary (the latter, who recently won the inaugural Maxwell Fernie Centenary Award, played for three items only. The piece came to a thrilling climax.

The next piece, ‘Jubilate Deo’ by Thomas Weelkes, seemed a bit mechanical – was it insufficiently rehearsed? It was not possible to pick out more than a few words. This was not a problem through most of the remainder of the performance. The solo parts here were fine. It was sung by a smaller group, the Cathedral Consort. The membership of this group was not fixed; when they sang unaccompanied later in the programme, there was some variation in the personnel.

After an attractive organ introduction, Benedictus by Haydn featured a young soloist who improved as she went along. ‘Joy is come’ by modern composer Andrew Carter was quite lovely.

Another contemporary composer, Simon Lindley, wrote the beautiful ‘Now the green blade riseth’, which featured good phrasing and a very fine accompaniment. The words came over much better than in some of the previous pieces.

Samuel Wesley, born 200 years ago this year, wrote ‘Blessed be the God and Father’; its superb pianissimo opening was most effective, the words were clear, the soloist very fine, and the ending lively.

Michael Fulcher played the relatively well-known Choral Song and Fugue by S.S. Wesley very effectively.

Edward Bairstow and Gerald Finzi were roughly contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century, and both wrote well for choirs. The former’s ‘Let all mortal flesh’ was quite marvellous, while in the latter’s ‘God is gone up’ Marlow obtained the jubilant sound well. The organ part was interesting, and no mere accompaniment.

Orlando Gibbons’s ‘O clap your hands’ is quite complex, multi-part unaccompanied music, and was sung well by the Consort. At the end the singers did a beautiful decrescendo-crescendo. This was fine music-making indeed.

Thomas Tallis contributed the only Latin text item: ‘Loquebantur variis linguis’. Here again, the unaccompanied Consort gave us a gorgeous weaving of parts. This piece made the best use of the resonance of the cathedral.

I did not feel that Elgar’s ‘The Spirit of the Lord’ was great music, but it did have n exciting organ part.

Bach was represented by his wonderful Fugue in E flat (‘St Anne’) – grand three-part fugue. A little more phrasing would have made for greater clarity; the resonance of the building jumbles the sounds, and the last section particularly was rather fast for this space.

The final work, ‘I saw the Lord’ by John Stainer is a very four-square piece, but had some interesting chromatic harmonies.

The tone of the choir improved as the concert went on; by the end it was burnished, bright and beautiful. Marlow obtained some great sounds from the singers, and the organists were a major part of the success of the concert.

Songs My Mother Taught Me – Mother’s Day Music from Nota Bene

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music for Mother’s Day

Music by Grieg, Bruckner, Pärt, Tavener, Holst, Gounod, Biebl, Gorecki, Dvorak, Haydn, Vautor, Hely-Hutchinson, Hrušovskŷ, Richard Puanaki, David Childs, David Hamilton, Carol Shortis

Nota Bene Choir

Frances Moore (soprano) / Julie Coulson (piano)

Christine Argyle (director)

Lyndee-Jane Rutherford (presenter)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday 9th May

Christine Argyle’s “Nota Bene” Choir got the mix right for their Mother’s Day concert,  with a programme of music whose first half did strong, sonorous homage to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, before paying tribute after the interval to ordinary, everyday mothers, with songs of affection, remembrance, and wry humour – and finishing with “Rytmus”, Ivan Hrušovsky’s well-known “choral etude” in praise of Eve, the first human mother, as a brief, but exciting finale. With a waiata-like guitar-accompanied opening (actually called “Ka Waiata” and written by Richard Puanaki), and featuring greetings and spoken commentaries by theatre and television personality Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, the event kept an appropriately light touch throughout, the music expressing an attractive amalgam of fun, energy, sentiment, nostalgia and profundity in nicely-gauged doses.

The programme skilfully rang the contrasts throughout, so that we had juxtapositionings such as solemn, Wagnerian Bruckner leavened by excitable, energetic Aarvo Pärt, and then David Hamilton’s West Indian rhythms next to Henryk Gorecki’s rapt, richly-harmonised mesmeric lines. The choir’s configuration would often change between items (womens’ voices only for Gustav Holst’s “Ave Maria”, for example), and soprano Frances Moore contributed several solo items accompanied by pianist Julie Coulson, which were interspersed throughout the concert.

After the opening preliminaries,  Grieg’s “Ave Maris Stella” demonstrated the choir’s finely-nuanced control of tone and texture, not over-moulded, so that those piquant harmonies of the composer’s sounded as fresh as ever – a far cry from the rich upholstery of Bruckner’s very Wagnerian writing for voices (like something out of “Lohengrin”) in his “Ave Maria” setting, featuring some testing top-of-the-stave lines for the sopranos, who emerged from the encounter with credit. All the more excitable, then, seemed Aarvo Pärt’s hymn to the Virgin “Bogoroditse Djevo”, very “Slavic” in its energy and love of contrast.

I equally enjoyed the work of another “holy minimalist”, John Tavener, whose conversion to Russian Orthodoxy inspired works such as the chant-like “Hymn to the Mother of God” (the narrator touched briefly on the importance of Mary in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy), here delivered with wonderfully suffused resonances, the choir relishing the clustered harmonies and glowing evocations of worshipful prayer. The sparer textures of Gustav Holst’s music (sung by womens’ voices) exposed a touch of stridency during the more “striving” lines of the opening, but the withdrawn ambiences at “Et benedictus fructus tui Jesu” readily captured the setting’s beauty.

Frances Moore’s turn was next, with Julie Coulson providing admirable support for her soprano partner in Gounod’s perennial favourite “Ave Maria” – a lovely performance by both musicians, the singer having plenty of upward heft and true tone on the high notes, though her breath-taking was a bit obtrusive in places. Still more changes were rung by the next item, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” setting, in this performance for men’s voices only, the singers arranged with a trio of voices set apart, and soloists within the choir, giving the textures a degree of spaciousness and making for lovely antiphonal effects. Each exchange between the voices had a slightly different character, varying dynamics and colours in a perfectly delicious-sounding way. The trio of voices (tenors Nick McDougal and Andrew Dunford, with baritone Isaac Stone) got a rich ground-sound, while the higher-voiced group had more plaintive, almost reedy tones which emphasised their placement and their different lines.

Music by two New Zealanders and two “Davids” followed, firstly David Childs’ “Salve Regina”, an attractive minor-key setting with a soprano soloist, Gilian Bruce, from the choir, some momentary ensemble imprecisions of little moment when set against the heartfeltness of the singing. The last few utterances  were notable for the terracings of the words “O clemens, o pia” and “dulcis virgo”, the descriptions nicely differentiated.The work made a good pairing with the “other” David’s piece that followed, the “Carol of the Mother and Child” by David Hamilton, the Caribbean rhythms fetching up some delicious syncopations from out of the setting’s infectious gait.

Concluding the concert’s first half was Henryk Gorecki’s sublime “Totus Tuus”, a hymn of devotion to the Virgin Mary, written to commemorate Pope John Paul’s third visit to his homeland of Poland in 1987. “Totus Tuus” translated from the Latin means “totally yours”, and was the Pope’s apostolic motto, the opening words of a prayer declaring utter devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity. Declamatory and arresting at the beginning, with cries of “Maria”, much of the work was rapt and devotional, using conventional but extremely rich harmonies which varied in colour and intensity as the piece progressed. The contrast was marked between the work’s forthright opening and utterly mesmeric conclusion, the word “Maria” at the end repeated more and more softly, like the conclusion of “Neptune” from Holst’s “The Planets, with the womens’ voices disappearing gradually into the ether. The effect was of having undertaken a significant journey through realms of timelessness, thanks to the strength of the voices’ response to Christine Argyle’s confident, patient direction throughout.

Not surprisingly, the concert’s second half had a rather more secular feel, with the focus directed firmly towards earthly mothers, beginning with a song written by David Hamilton “When My Mother Sings To Me”, featuring a unison opening verse, whose words were then given canonic, and then harmonic treatment in subsequent verses. A natural ally for this item was, of course, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, here sung by Frances Moore, tremulous, and with some breathless phrase-ends, but sweet-toned and with wonderfully secure high notes. Her two other solo items, a folk-song by Josef Haydn and a somewhat quirkily theatrical setting of the “Old Mother Hubbard” nursery rhyme by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, were brought off with aplomb, the Haydn song-birdish and radiant, and the Hely-Hutchinson setting mock-Handelian with a dash of dramatic rhetoric, singer and pianist relishing the fun of it all. A pity the quintet of voices which came together to perform 17th-century composer Thomas Vautor’s “Mother I will have a Husband” didn’t bring more temperament, more “spunk” to their otherwise nicely-sung performance – it all needed to be a bit more boldly characterised.

But the highlight of the second half of the concert was a piece composed by Carol Shortis, in response to a commission from one of the Nota Bene choir members, Judy McKay. This was for a work dedicated to her mother, Dulcie Reeve/Coutts, described as a “pianist, piano geacher, gardener, mother, grandmother, homemaker and friend to to many – generous of Spirit, loving of Heart”. The music was to a text by the Bengali poet and author Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a poem called “My Song”. Pianist Julie Coulson’s arabesque-like figurations made for an atmospheric, almost bardic beginning to the music, the voices exploring a wide range of expression, from whispered to full-throated tones, colourings subtly changing as the composer gently drew together the choir’s cluster-harmonies (with a particularly telling harmonic “shift” towards the end). The whole work was suffused with glowing feeling, by turns radiant with the soprano soloist soaring aloft, before gliding gently downwards, and a softer tranquility of remembrance and wonderment which lingered after the sounds had ceased to be.

Cantoris explores the motet literature, from Bach to Rubbra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris: Motet Perpetuem, directed by Rachel Hyde 

Bach: Lobet den Herrn and Jesu meine Freude; Brahms: O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, Op 74 No 2; Bruckner: Ave Maria, Op 6, Os justi, Op 10; Poulenc: 4 motets pour le temps de Noël, Op 152; Rubbra: Tenebrae Motets, Op 72, Nocturne 3

St Peter’s church, Willis Street

Saturday 1 May, 7.30pm

It must be about a year since I heard Cantoris, which was one of Wellington’s leading choirs under he direction of Robert Oliver; like most musical bodies it has had its ups and downs since then. Under Robert Oliver the choir gained distinction by presenting complete performances of Handel oratorios; it is no longer possible to excite large audiences with such things, and concerts of late have been more eclectic. In the five years that Rachel Hyde has been in command, Cantoris has largely regained its former standing.

This was eclectic, though it consisted of music called motets.

The motet is not a very precisely defined class of choral composition, generally described as a choral composition to Latin words that are not a part of the Mass, but used in other church offices; its texts are usually from the Bible.

Bach’s six motets, written probably in his early years at Leipzig, are the most famous and provide models for most subsequent so-called motets. That was the theme of the concert; each of the later motets in the programme were directly or indirectly influenced by Bach’s.

So it was interesting that the singing of the two Bach motets was less polished than several of the later ones. That is undoubtedly because they present greater challenges, largely attributable to Bach’s musical erudition and his fascination with the mathematics of music.

I was a minute late and had the charming experience of hearing the choir in full flight as I entered: the urgent sounds of Lobet den Herrn, brisk, supported by clean staccato singing, with organ accompaniment (a debatable addition). Balance among the women’s voices was excellent but the men’s voices were less homogeneous, and there were moments of suspect ensemble. These flaws were most evident in the two Bach motets (in the sixth stanza of Jesu meine Freude the tenors, opening alone, drew attention to their fragility); in the Brahms motet, too, vocal quality was uneven among the tenors.

Bach’s largest and most imposing motet is Jesu meine Freude which demands singing of some dramatic quality because of the varied character of each of the 11 stanzas, that create such an elaborate and satisfying architectural structure.

Brahms modeled his German motet, O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, on Bach’s, though he did depart from one formal norm of the motet – Latin words, and the complexities of the opening section were handled bravely if not perfectly. The last, ‘Du wollen wir…’ allowed a purer, cleaner sound to emerge, particularly the women’s voices that were quite admirable.

Two of Bruckner’s motets followed, again accompanied by the organ (borrowed from the New Zealand School of Music). Gentler, more submissive than Brahms, they allowed all sections of the choir to be heard to better advantage; I realized that the problems of obtrusive individual male voices was overcome by softer singing: the Ave Maria was gorgeous. Voices blended beautifully in Os Justi too, and there were subtle fluctuations of dynamics.

Poulenc’s four a cappella Christmas motets were charming examples of the composers cheerful piety. Again, the choir’s strengths were more evident than its weaknesses, coping well enough with the testing rhythms, though I found the emphases on certain words rather at odds with the meaning: for example on ‘jacentem’ in the first motet. Striking a sort of news-reader’s tone made Hodie Christus natus est rather interesting.

The Tenebrae motets by Rubbra, to words that to a non-catholic, are shockingly brutal, were not familiar to me, all seemed set to music that dealt succinctly and exactly with the subject, and the choir excelled themselves in the Third Nocturne, handling it with a deliberate, serious tone yet very musically.

It was a worthy revival of music by a gifted but neglected composer, whose music was more familiar when I was young, to end an admirably devised programme.

The concert was a benefit for the restoration of the church’s organ.

New Zealand Youth Choir – the Wellington Connection

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Members of the NZ Youth Choir

Fundraising Concert for Asia/Australia Tour

Music by Tallis, Stanford, Brahms, R.Strauss, Mendelssohn, Shearing, Rachmaninov, Penderecki, Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Carter, David Farquhar, Wehi Whanau

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

23rd April 2010

At the end of June the New Zealand Youth Choir heads off to Asia for an international tour that will include concerts in Singapore, South Korea and China, before returning to Australasia via further performance dates in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. During April, the Wellington members of the Choir gave a fundraising concert at St.Mary of the Angels’ Church, one which readily demonstrated not only the group’s corporate abilities, but individual choir members’ variety of musical skills. If the other “chapters” of the choir possess comparable abilities, the assembled group will, under their artistic director Karen Grylls, a musical force to be reckoned with.

Throughout the concert one had to “bend one’s ears” to pick up the microphoned voice-announcements in between each item, some of which were almost impossible to decipher in the reverberant acoustic of the venue. Fortunately the musical performances were unaffected, even if the placement of the singers in one or two instances didn’t do the performances complete justice. Generally the church’s ample acoustic served the singers and instrumentalists well, in both solo and ensemble items.

The concert began with a group of two English anthems, the well-known  If Ye Love Me by Thomas Tallis, and the setting by Charles Stanford of Psalm 119 Verse 1 Beati Quorum Via, the choir conducted by Ruth Kirkwood.Immediately one registered the soprano lines in the Tallis work as clear, beautifully-defined strands with a rich, full quality. With the Stanford motet the mens’ voices had more chance to shine, particularly the tenors, whose singing featured long-breathed lines and lovely pianissimi. Throughout the six parts the tuning was good and the tones both delicately and richly-sustained equally by the smaller groups and the full choir.

Following this was the Brahms Quartet Der Gang zum Liebchen (Way to the Beloved) Op.31 No.3. I would have brought the voices further forward for this, as Belinda Maclean’s excellent piano-playing was given too much physical prominence by the placement of the instrument, in places obscuring the close-knit vocal lines. Nevertheless, the group’s lovely singing gave pleasure, with only the softer, more delicately pointed harmonies failing to register as they ought, due to the balance. Strauss’s song Morgen worked better, with its more open textures and soprano Amanda Barclay’s clear, focused tones, sensitively accompanied, again by Belinda Maclean. The performers took us into the song’s heart, capturing all of the setting’s awareness, expectation and rapture – a lovely performance. Belinda Maclean was to demonstrate further talents with two harp solos later in the programme, her playing of what sounded like a “Willow Song” bringing out such beguiling qualities as a pliability of touch and phrasing that made every note a pleasure to listen to.

The choir’s delivery of Mendelssohn’s Drei Volkslieder did the music proud, with the first song’s gentle pastoral lilt set against the slightly sinister tread of the following piece’s minor-key mood, all tensions resolved with the carol-like finale. Imogen Thirwell’s wonderfully capricious performance of David Farquhar’s Princess Alice was another whose effect would have been more telling had the singer been placed further forward – as it was, her bright, eager voice and clear-as-a-bell diction delighted, as did her use of facial gesture to “flesh out” and punctuate the words. More word-pointing, this time from the whole choir, enlivened the George Searing number Lullaby of Birdland, with some lovely harmonisings and echoings of the lines throughout. At the other end of the “entertainment” scale were the performances of both Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo, the Hymn to the Virgin from the composer’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil”), and the Sanctus from Penderecki’s Requiem, the Rachmaninov bringing out the voices’ deepest and richest tones, casting a dark and ruminative spell, and the Penderecki filled with tensions and strained beauties, the lines constantly fractured or broken for expression’s sake.

More individual performaces included baritone Josh Kidd’s bright, energetic and attractively Italienate singing of Bellini’s Vaga Luna, Isaac Stone’s droll, nicely folkish rendering of Britten’s setting of the English folksong The Foggy Foggy Dew , and Jessica Lightfoot’s rapt, dusky-toned playing of the slow movement Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, beautifully partnered on the piano by Evie Reiney. When one thinks about it, it stands to reason that a person’s musicality would more than likely manifest itself in a number of ways, though such demonstrations of multi-faceted technical proficiency still seemed remarkable. The focus appropriately returned to the choir for the last bracket of items, including a rhythmically-alert and glorious-toned rendition of the Negro Spiritual I‘m Gonna Sing, and a beautifully-grounded final number, the Wehi Whanau’s  Wairua Tapu, complete with body actions, music that gives one the feeling of belonging to a very specific part of the world, one that the members of this choir will undoubtedly play their part in representing with great honour and distinction.