Tag: choral

Programme of arrangements of folk songs, Beatles’ songs, sacred choral pieces and popular songs (Waikanae Music Society)

V8 Vocal Ensemble (Judy Dale, Albert Mataafa, Virginia Le Cren, Stephen Rowe, Carolyn Medland, Brendon Shanks, Celia Aspey-Gordon, Rowan Johnston)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 10 October, 2.30pm

These Auckland musicians who form V8 are all former members of the New Zealand National Youth Choir and members or former members of Voices New Zealand chamber choir. Their years of working together show: their presentation is slick, blended and highly musical.  Half of the members have sung with the group since its formation; the other four are more recently acquired.  Their origins are in various parts of the country, and their individual choral experience is extensive.

The group sings without a conductor, Rowan Johnston simply starting the singers by eye contact, and cutting them off with the slightest movement of his music folder.  The selection of items showed skill in all fields of choral singing, but the most effective were perhaps the popular items.  The items were introduced by mezzo-soprano Carolyn Medland in a manner both informative and, at times, amusing. All the singing took place in front of the platform rather than on it.

A stunning start was made with ‘The Star of the County Down’ arranged by Goodall (presumably Reginald), in which the tenors sang the theme with enviable tone and character.

The spiritual ‘Deep River’ (arranged by the group’s undeclared leader, Rowan Johnston) displayed beautiful ensemble, and the outstanding men’s voices.  The women’s voice were very good, but the lack of real contraltos was a disadvantage in this piece.

The traditional Irish song ‘She Moved through the Fair’ (arranged by Daryl Runswick) proved to be an interesting version of the song, with unexpected harmonies.  The tenors performed the solo sections superbly, with lovely pianissimo accompanying parts.  Words were very clear.

One of two arrangements in the programme by Ward Swingle (though in this case he had reverted to Single status) was entitled ‘Country Dances’, and proved to be an amalgam of a number of American folksongs, very much in the Swingle Singers’ style.  It was good fun, and the enjoyment was assisted by precise words, with authentic accents being thrown in for the cowboy sections.

Two items from the classic repertoire followed: a very complex ‘Cantate Domino’ of Monteverdi, which featured a little too much vibrato for this music, and ‘Plorate Fili’ from Jephte, an oratorio by Carissimi. This was quite ravishing, the singers giving great attention to detail.  The use of the soft Italian ‘t’ rather than the hard English ‘t’ was most commendable.   The mood of the story was rendered most tellingly.  Here, and throughout the programme, endings were absolutely together.

The next items introduced a lighter tone, firstly with three arrangements of Beatles songs: ‘Blackbird’, complete with expert whistling, ‘Penny Lane’, and ‘Ob-la-di’, in which Albert Mataafa sang the solo, the others using various mouth techniques (not all were vocal) to accompany.  All very expertly done. Hearing these reminded me of the curious fact that all popular music appears to be in 4-4 time.

The other Swingle arrangement followed – a Chilean folksong ‘De Punta Y Taco’, meaning ‘Heel and Toe’.  Various vocal sounds were employed to accompany three male singers, who obtained an authentic Spanish folk sound to their singing.  The soloists changed to three women singing the tune, with the others accompanying.  It was very professional, sophisticated and skilful.

After the interval came the other two ‘classical’ items: an Ave Maria from recent composer Franz Biebl, and a Pater Noster of Jacob Händl, who lived in the 16^th century.  The group divided to sing polyphonically in the Biebl item, with three singers to the left (mezzos, one tenor) and five to the right (soprano, one tenor, two basses).  There was a solo introduction from Johnston (bass) and a tenor solo in the second verse.  The balance was excellent, and the singers proved what agile voices (and lips) they have.

A different polyphonic arrangement was observed for the Händl work: women to the left and men to the right, but positioned closer to each other than in the previous item.  This produced attractive antiphonal singing, although with too much vibrato for my taste.  Balance was gain superb: in an ensemble of only eight singers each individual is very exposed.

Reverting to popular repertoire, V8 displayed their versatility in a perfect harmony arrangement of ‘Goodnight, My Angel’ by Billy Joel, followed by ‘Fever’ (John Davenport & Eddie Cooley) in which Medland sang the solo and the men provided good vocal percussion, and ‘Africa’ (Paich & Porcaro) where vocal doo-be-doos accompanied Johnston singing solo into a microphone, the while drumming on what appeared to be the amplifier.

New Zealand composition featured in the programme in the form of ‘Plumsong’ by Philip Norman (performed on record by the NZ Secondary Schools Choir).  In the V8 version the reading of the poems by A.K. Grant preceded the singing of the verses of the song.  The recitations were great fun: the poems had been written in the styles of various New Zealand poets, telling the story of Little Jack Horner in their very different ways.  The music then followed the styles of the words.

The first was in the style of Jenny Bornholdt, and was a very intricate piece.  A touching piece in Sam Hunt’s style followed – with tenor Brendon Shanks’s rendition of the poem being a hilarious imitation of the poet’s hoarse voice and reciting style.  Bill Manhire’s was a lament in formal style, as was the music, reminiscent of William Byrd.  Michelle Legat was represented by a kind of singing through the words.  The whole work was both clever and funny, and very well performed.

The concert ended with ‘Humpty Dumpty Medley’, a medley of English nursery rhymes arranged by Hart, as sung by the King’s Singers, in which the rhymes were all related back to poor old Humpty. This was most entertaining.

As an encore, the group sang Kern & Fields’ ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ in a gorgeous arrangement, very expressively performed.  This made an appropriate conclusion to the Waikanae Music Society’s enterprising, artistically superb, interesting and thoroughly enjoyable 2010 concert series.

Wellington Community Choir and Nota Bene Choir, Julian Raphael (director),  also featuring:
Carole Shortis (composer/conductor), John Rae (composer/drummer), Club Ukulele / Marimba Mojo / Djansa Djembe Drummers

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 18th September, 2010

The printed programme accompanying this rousing and heart-warming event contained a number of enthusiastic testimonials from members of the Wellington Community Choir regarding the group and their activities, one of which I thought beautifully summed up the reason people get involved with music, be they music-makers or listeners:

“…The choir is a place where I found my inner voice. Not only my singing voice, but my real inner voice. When I sing, I feel I can sing my being – I can BE….”

I quote without permission; but though it expresses a kind of metaphysical idea, the sentiment readily puts into simple words the power of music to act upon people, be they performers or listeners – to connect with the spirit and move the deepest emotions, as well as warm towards and bond with others. All of these impulses were triumphantly on display in and throughout the Wellington Town Hall on Saturday night, through the auspices of the Wellington Community Choir and Nota Bene Choir, under the directorship of music educator and inspired conductor Julian Raphael. The Hall was as full as I think I’ve ever seen it, and at times the place simply shimmered with sounds and rocked with rhythms which seemed to engage one and all, musicians and audience.

Along with Julian Raphael and the two choirs, a number of various groups and individuals specifically contributed to the evening’s kaleidoscope of colourful music-making – composers Carole Shortis (Wellington) and John Rae (Scotland) both contributed pieces to the concert, and each took part in the performances, the first as conductor, and the second as the drummer. Instrumental groups such as Club Ukulele (players from within the Community Choir), Marimba Mojo (from Lower Hutt), and the Newtown-based percussion group Djnsa Djembie Drummers added their distinctive and ear-catching timbres to particular pieces, their participation underlining a community spirit pervading the whole, while maintaining a high level of performance expertise which marked the presentation throughout.

Having attended many “classical” concerts of all kinds in the Town Hall I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with some of these past experiences and the present concert, being as I was mightily impressed at the Community Choir’s level of support and the degree of involvement with and enjoyment of the performances by this near-capacity audience. Given that classical music organisations everywhere are concerned with trying to make ends meet, faced with the problems of aging audiences and decreasing numbers of attendees at concerts, I wondered whether there were things to be learned from the success of this present undertaking.

Of course, the “families and friends” factor would have provided a good deal of fuel for the occasion’s popularity, something that professional performing groups don’t generally rely upon to generate good houses. But quite apart from the numbers attending, I thought that what any classical concert organiser would envy here was the out-and-out identification and involvement of those present with what the performers were putting across – in short, those almost palpable lines of connectiveness between performers and listeners.

To be fair, I have to say that I’ve experienced several classical concerts this year which have demonstrated a similar frisson of inter-communication, in one or two cases at events which weren’t particularly well-attended. Sometimes it’s the music itself which generates the initial excitement, as with the recent presentations of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at St.Mary of the Angels Church in Wellington. Sometimes particular musicians can themselves create in advance powerful and compelling expectations of involvement with what they present, as invariably happens whenever the charismatic New Zealand String Quartet performs (the group’s Schumann-and-Shostakovich concerts, for example). Also, anybody who’s experienced a song recital presented by soprano Margaret Medlyn would readily testify to her all-embracing identification with what she performs and her ability to get it out there in no uncertain terms (in a particular recent case before a resoundingly enthusiastic Hunter Council Chamber audience).

Finally, the Vector Wellington Orchestra regularly presents its concerts with wholehearted enthusiasm from conductor Marc Taddei and with total commitment from its players. In each of these instances, the experience for me was of something out of the ordinary – not a whiff of routine, of stuffiness, of blandness or tired convention. And so it was with this present concert – still, would that such mutual engagement could happen more regularly in the classical music world!

The items chosen by the Community Choir for the concert covered an enormous range of human emotion and activity – spiritual, political, cultural and environmental. They were grouped partly for variety’s sake, and partly to allow different performers opportunities to give of their best. The first bracket of songs featured the Choir itself, the singing testifying to both the arranging and conducting skills of the director, Julian Raphael, who unerringly guided his wholly-amateur voices through pieces featuring rich-toned unisons and complex contrapuntal lines alike. His arrangement, for example, of the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” featured the unadorned tune as a prelude to increasingly complex and interesting variations; while the traditional (though not the commonly heard version of the song) “Amazing Grace” was launched by men’s voices in parts, and joined by women’s voices, the arrangement featuring haunting fourths and lovely, tightly-wrought harmonies.

I also liked the choir’s singing of the “traditional Sotho songs of struggle”, registering the voices’ change of timbre to a striking “ethnic” quality, as well as the muscularity and confidence of their rhythmic syncopations. The final song in the bracket was “Come by Here” from Liberia, performed in this case in memory of the well-known and much-respected Wellington ethnomusicologist Allan Thomas, who had died during the week.

A brief but entertaining trio of items featuring the instrumentalists of “Club Ukulele” featured two Lennon-McCartney songs, one of which prompted some startlingly-focused deliveries from the women’s voices of the phrase “I Wanna Hold Your Hand!”, the climactic interval as resonant as any period ensemble’s singing of a fourteenth-century motet! The Nota Bene Choir were then introduced; and the group rang the changes with a bracket of songs, including an arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda” (by Ruth McCall) that seemed to fuse traditional Aboriginal chant-ambiences with fragments of the well-known tune, concluding with echo effects and “overtone” resonances, the whole creating a properly haunting impression at the end.

I liked also Carol Shortis’s arrangement of “Khutso”, which was described as “a song for Soweto”, one which combined a native African dialect with the Latin words “Agnus Dei”, setting the rhythmic native chant against the more flowing Latin phrase, then alternating fragments of both at the end – extremely haunting and effective. Carol Shortis was both composer and conductor for “People Come and Sing”, written especially for the choir, with this evening’s performance of course a world premiere! A resonant opening, with overlapping lines of declamation led to a unison imperative to “Come and Sing”, the rhythm developing a swinging trajectory whose fervour evoked Gospel-like singing in places, the voices of the choir responding with proper “ownership” to the music.

After the interval the Djansa Djembe Drummers got things away to a stirring restart with rhythms and resonances that reminded me of the last Phoenix football game I attended at the Westpac Stadium (it might well have been the same group performing on that occasion!). Changes of stage lighting added plenty of atmosphere and colour, ambiences that continued throughout the bracket of African songs, with their rhythmic pulsings, in places having a pronounced “protest movement” feel, especially Julian Raphael’s arrangement of “Woyaya”, a song from Ghana.

As colourful and ear-catching was the work of the group Marimba Mojo, whose instruments, besides looking fantastic, produced a great sound, the players performing dance music from Zimbabwe, and inviting audience participation in the dance (a number obliged,and were then invited onto the stage!). Of course the nature of marimba performance itself suggests a specific gestural choreography, with which the group delighted us throughout its bracket of items.

The other major commission for the concert, beside that of Carol Shortis’, came from Scottish composer and jazz drummer John Rae, in this country of late as composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music. His work Ricky, a setting of words by a choir member, Sarah Hughes, was a tribute to his father-in-law, and featured a lovely, leaping choral melody line, the tune’s trajectories mingling a second time round with instrumental colourings creating folkish ambiences, strings, guitar and marimbas contributing to the resonant glowing of the whole, the chorale punctuated with drumming rhythms, and coloured by what sounded like Gaelic chanting. I loved the rhythmic ambiguities of the voices’ interactions with the instruments, creating a “Music from the Spheres” kind of effect, an endless paean of life’s celebration.

To conclude, Nota Bene’s voices took the stage again for an entertaining “dialogue” song from Mexico (arranged by Mike Brewer), the choir establishing the music’s infectious rhythmic carriage, and with soloists from the choir interlacing their conversational/confrontational singing lines with wonderful elan. Some heartfelt tributes paid by choir members to Julian Raphael, and a couple of audience-participation songs later, the Choir’s Fifth Birthday Gala Concert was over – on the face of things quite a haul, but with energies from performers and enthusiasm from the audience seemingly undimmed to the end, a tribute to all concerned!

The Bach Choir conducted by Stephen Rowley

Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir; Cherubini: Requiem Mass in C minor (1815)

St Mark’s Church, Basin Reserve

Sunday 29 August, 2pm

The Bach Choir has a distinguished history in Wellington since 1968, when it was founded by the gifted organist and musical scholar Anthony Jennings. Like all choirs, its fortunes have fluctuated: for the past two years it has regained its position, directed by Stephen Rowley; its recent achievements have included the B Minor Mass, Elijah, a concert of Handel and Purcell, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

It was an adventurous concert. In Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir the two choirs of about 20 singers each, were placed diagonally, at right angles to each other, facing the conductor.

But ideally it needed more singers to give a more homogeneous sound to each section; among other things, there were too few altos and tenors to provide a uniform carpet of sound. Whether that realisation was what caused the evident shakiness at the beginning, and which recurred quite often, I cannot say; another blemish, quite early, was a worrying abrasive sound from one or more male singer, perhaps pushing too hard and high at fortissimo. However I was told that the dress rehearsal had gone very well.

One of the most rewarding books on music of the past few years is Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise. He remarks that Martin’s Mass has been “entrancing audiences with the archaic majesty of its language. Martin had a gift for immersing himself in styles of the past without seeming to imitate them.” That is nicely put. It is not to say the music is easy to sing or to ingest. The Kyrie begins with an indeterminate plainsong-like prelude that may not be hard to sing, but seems hard to place before the bolder polyphonic entry by the full choir. The sound might be Palestrina or Victoria.

The antiphonal possibilities of writing for two choirs were notable, using, say, sopranos on one side and basses on the other, or using entrances of various sections, aurally spaced, with striking effect. The contrasts between somber passages in the Gloria such as ‘Domine fili unigenite’ and the more excited ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’ were examples of the composer’s detailed conception of the mass, which the choir dealt with scrupulously. Later, in the Credo, I enjoyed the onomatopoeic rising and falling scales that illustrated ‘Et ascendit in coelum’.

Stephen Rowley succeeded very well, given the music’s difficulties, in expressing the varied emotions and religious sentiments, the sense of the words and the contexts of Martin’s very meticulous, intricate scoring that so rewards careful study and rehearsal.

Martin’s view of religion was nowhere more clear than in his setting of the Sanctus: reverent and sober; compare with the almost ecstatic Bach, heard only a week earlier.

It was only when I looked into the music itself that I realized why Douglas Mews’s organ accompaniment was so tentative: it was simply to support the choir in an otherwise a cappella work.

I was looking forward even more to hearing live for the first time, Cherubini’s Requiem for mixed choir; he has always interested me for his place in music history, bridging the classic and romantic eras, and the Italian, the German and the French, as well as for the real strength of his own music.

He was commissioned to write this one to commemorate the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, when Louis XVIII returned to Paris in July, evidently to Cherubini’s relief. Later, the forces of conservatism throughout society, unleashed in the backlash to the ‘radicalism’ of the Napoleonic era, brought back a ban on women singing the liturgy, and Cherubini wrote a second requiem in 1836 in preparation for his own funeral, for men’s voices only.

On the whole, this was easier for the choir to sing. Though the electronic organ hardly offered the supporting grandeur of a pipe organ, let alone the original orchestral accompaniment, Douglas Mews supplied valuable sonorities.

The Requiem is a remarkably strong work without being adorned with particularly memorable melodies. It has the character of the quintessential requiem, having absorbed that of Mozart and probably the liturgical music of Zelenka, Haydn and Salieri, but before Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the requiem’s secularization by Berlioz and Verdi. It sounds rather like what Beethoven might have written if he had decided to (and he admired Cherubini, especially this work).

The dramatic character of the work, to be expected of a composer whose career till he was over 40 had been dedicated mainly to opera, though only occasionally with great success (particularly Lodoïska, Médée and Les deux journées), is part of its strength.

It pays close attention to the sense of the text, starting the Introit in a very subdued manner, allowing a subtle crescendo with the words’Exaudi orationem meam’ which the choir handled carefully. But soon, in the tutti sections, one rather longed for the richness and sustained body of voices in a bigger choir.

A more sanguine tone flourished in the Graduale however, but the ferocity of the start of the Dies Irae was a little subdued, though there was more venom towards the end in ‘Confutatis maledictus’. However, other parts of the Dies Irae where Cherubini typically overlaps phrases and divides words between sections of the choir for narrative purpose, and  through the more emphatic ‘Mors stupebit’, were effective. The change of style in the ‘Recordare’ hinted at Cherubini’s opera habits, to handle the tripping trochee meter of the liturgy in this section, and it might have benefited from greater rhythmic vitality.

The long Offertorium was kept alert with a quasi-marching, open-air, staccato tread, here conspicuously supported by the organ.  After the gentle Pie Jesu faded away, the final, momentarily forceful Agnus Dei and ‘Lux aeterna’ (left out of the programme), lent renewed vitality that ended with the prayer for eternal rest. Again, a smallish choir fell a shade short in creating a profound sense of peace through the music’s long-sustained harmonies.

Given that ideally both works would have gained so much from a rather larger body of singers, I was very glad to have heard these admirable live performances, a real credit to conductor Stephen Rowley.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.