Tag: choral

Supertonic conjures up arcadian realms for an evocatively-sung “Rest” presentation

Posted on by Anne French

Supertonic Choir presents:
REST: – Faure’s Requiem and Songs of Remembrance

Supertonic Choir
Music Director Isaac Stone
Soprano Nicola Holt, Baritone William McElwee,
Organist Michael Fletcher

Music by Herbert Howells, Elizabeth Alexander, John Taverner, Kurt Bestor, U2 (arr. Bob Chilcott), Gabriel Faure

Cathedral of St Paul, Molesworth St. Wellington

Saturday 19 June 2021

It was a drear Wellington night. A cold drizzle was falling. I expected to see a tiny dedicated audience huddling in the cavernous cathedral. I was wrong.

The church was a good two-thirds full, and the enthusiastic audience seemed pretty familiar with Supertonic. The choir was founded in 2014, and by my estimation is one of the youngest choirs in Wellington, as well as one of the larger choirs, with 64 singers. The average age seems to be under 30. The sound they make is zingy with youth.

The Music Director, Isaac Stone, is a well trained singer and choir director with a deep background in barbershop and consequently he has an exquisite sense of pitch. For a large choir, Supertonic is gloriously in tune; precise and clean. Isaac Stone is a confident but not ostentatious conductor. He gets exactly what he wants, because all eyes are on him.

The programme was built around the Fauré Requiem and comprised six smaller a capella elegiac works, with the Fauré placed second to last. (More of this later.)

The concert opened with a beautiful and well known work by the English composer Herbert Howells, ‘Take him, earth, for cherishing’. Written in memory of John F. Kennedy, it has the fresh lyrical beauty typical of Howells. The text is from a poem by a fourth-century poet, translated by Helen Waddell, beginning:

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
to thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
noble even in its ruin.

All of that is sung by the three lower parts, piano, in a beautiful legato, until the soprano entry on the second page. The soprano sound had a passionate quality over more complex rhythms in the lower parts. The divisi sopranos produced a beautiful bell-like sound in the con anima section. The semi-chorus a little later sounded a tad untidy, as though the dotted rhythms were under-rehearsed; but the next divisi section was confident and together.

It is the sound of Supertonic that is so delightful: the freshness of youth plus the smoothness that is achieved with 60 singers. This was evident in the next work, ‘Y Comienzo a Bailar’, by Elizabeth Alexander, with piano accompaniment. The Spanish text is a soliloquoy of a woman preparing for La Dia de los Muertos, and includes a ravishing soprano solo, sung by Karishma Thanawala, one of the sopranos, with the choir sotto voce underneath.

Tavener’s ‘Song for Athene’ is also well known. Typical Tavener, using minimal material, and requiring utterly precise tuning over a bass drone. The work was most famously performed for the funeral of Princess Diana, sung as her coffin was carried out. Supertonic sang it splendidly; the dissonances were not labored, and the sustained singing built steadily to the crescendo, an outpouring of grief.

This was followed by a work called ‘Prayer of the Children’ by Kurt Bestor, an American composer of new age music and film scores. This is his best-known work, written in response to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and intended to be used to commemorate tragedies involving children. The words are banal, and the music not to my taste, but the choir sang it as though such thoughts had not occurred to them.

Yet the next work, MLK by the Irish band U2, arranged by Bob Chilcott (a former King’s College chorister), was the exact opposite: simple, direct, moving. It opens with a tenor solo (sung by Joel Miller, one of the tenors) with the choir backing him, and takes on a gospel feel, with a terrific low bass part. Coming after a lot of truly excellent singing, it was the stand-out piece of the first half of the concert.

The stage was reset during a short interval, with five string players and two soloists, soprano Nicola Holt and baritone William McElwee. The Cathedral organ is currently out of commission, so Michael Fletcher played the digital organ, which proved to be a mixed blessing (though the sight lines were good). The organ sound was too dominant in the first two movements, and overpowered the first baritone solo (‘Hostias’). But the choir! Such beautiful singing, with purity of tone and precise intonation.

The Sanctus was almost ruined before it began with an unscheduled ugly blurt of sound from the organ, but the choir’s entry was perfect. The entry of the men at the Hosanna was exciting, but the organ couldn’t match the choir’s volume at the first diminuendo and spoiled the effect.

Soprano Nicola Holt had to do only one thing, to sing the Pie Jesu, and she did it beautifully. She gave it the glorious full Aled Jones treatment and filled the cathedral.

The Agnus Dei had some splendidly sensitive accompaniment from the strings, but too much organ volume both there and in the Lux Aeterna. William McElwee’s Libera Me was assured and sat well in his voice. The organ’s Last Trump was almost too much, but the choir’s crescendo was magnificent, full and urgent. The women’s tone in the In Paradisum was light and ethereal, exactly as required –but once again the organ was just too dominant.

All in all, a gorgeous performance of a very well known and much loved work from choir and soloists with lovely string accompaniment.

And then… one last work. In this case it was an arrangement of a traditional South African song, and it is a pleasing work, well sung. But not well placed after the Fauré, which is after all a sublime piece of choral writing, and next to the plainchant Missa Pro Defunctis, the most perfect setting of the Requiem Mass text.

Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir adventurous in Bartok, irresistible in Orff

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
VIRTUOSO VOICES

BARTOK – Cantata Profana
ORFF – Carmina Burana

Amelia Berry (soprano), Amitai Pati (tenor), Christian Thurston (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Brent Stewart, director)
Wellington Young Voices (Mark Stamper, director)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 22nd May, 2021

Encountering a work in concert every now and then that has somehow “slipped through the net” of my musical experience sometimes results in a bit of a “juggle” of contrasting feelings, and especially when one is a reviewer – I get enormous pleasure in the discovery of something new, but also feel a degree of guilt at not having come across the “something” earlier, and especially if it’s a work by a well-known composer! Bartok’s “Cantata Profana” fell into this category – a work that was new to me, and one which needed some familiarising on my part via recordings before I felt better prepared for the “Virtuoso Voices” concert, so as to get at least some of it already playing in my head.

I confess I didn’t really know what to expect, though having seen and heard Bartok’s opera “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” I was familiar with something of the composer’s vocal writing style, one which reflected his preoccupation with Hungarian and Roumanian folk-tunes and their idioms, a process akin to what Musorgsky had attempted to do a few years earlier in Russia, by reproducing idioms and accents of native speech in his music in search of something “Russian”. Bartok had collected the two poems in the form of Roumanian colinde or carols, on which he based his cantata’s story, in 1914, at first assigning the Roumanian texts to a Hungarian poet for translation, but eventually using his own Hungarian translation. He then entrusted a German translation to Bence Szabolcsi, a Hungarian musicologist, and an English translation to the polygot Michel-Dmitri Calvocoressi (whose translation, ironically, was used at the work’s premiere performance in London, in 1934, the first printed edition of the score using the German and English texts!). Fascinating!

As I’d heard only Hungarian texts in the recordings I’d listened to, I couldn’t help registering the difference made at the concert itself by the relative “softness” (almost to the point of “blandness” in places) of the English works, which presented for myself and people who sat nearby to me at the concert the performance’s only drawback – the unintelligibility of most of what was being sung. For all the Michael Fowler Centre’s qualities as a musical venue it tends to blunt and blur word-detail – vowel sounds and tonal colour do well, as here, but consonants and sharper detail get lost in the spaces without extra emphasis given their articulation – even when words are in English! Had we not had the general outlines of the cantata’s story written in the programme notes we would have been completely lost! – I wondered whether the cantata’s English text might have been somehow projected for all to see?

A good thing it was that the performance was so very atmospheric in an overall sense, its sequences so convincingly characterised, with the musicians conveying to us the different moods of the action and the feelings of the characters, albeit in a somewhat generalised way. From the beginning the story’s mystery and magic was conjured up by the dark sounds, the swirling mists and eerie lines preparing us for the strangeness of the events about to unfold, singers and players held in firm dynamic control by Marc Taddei’s direction, the lines replete with the composer’s characteristic rhythms and folkish figurations, then bursting into action as the hunt was portrayed by the fugal writing, with the story’s “nine sons, splendid offspring” whom their father had brought up and trained “for the savage mountains, with hunting skills”. As the sons pursued their quarry, the music underwent a wondrous change – “….they found “a graceful bridge showing magic deertracks” –  in crossing the bridge, the sons were changed by this same magic into stags – “the splendid hunters thus became the hunted”.

When the father, searching for his lost sons, found the stags, he raised his rifle to shoot one of them, the music agitating as the choir cried out repeated warnings, prompting the stag to speak with the voice of the son to his father, cautioning him not to shoot – such splendid singing, here, from tenor Amitai Pati, fully equal to the demands of the writing, with the ringing, heroic tones required from the character. The choir introduced the bass soloist Christian Thurston’s softer-grained voice as the father, pleading for his sons to return home to their mother, to “lanterns lit”, and to “goblets of wine” – but the son replied that they could never return home to these things, as their antlers “are wider than your doorway” and that now “they can drink their fill only from clean mountain streams”.

The text then reverted to the story’s beginning for the choir to tell the narrative once again, the voices producing some beautifully-modulated phrases, conveying such longing, and (as on every occasion I listened to a recording) bringing tears to the eyes of this listener as the fate of both the nine stags and their bereft parents were so very movingly reiterated. Though Bartok described this music as embodying “his most profound credo”, he left others to wonder at what he might have meant to convey through the story……he was evidently very much at home with nature, spending a good deal of his time out of doors, avowing nature’s freedoms as opposed to the different kinds of cruelties of civilisation – in this respect the story was a kind of “cautionary tale”, the sons becoming the hapless victims rather than the perpetrators of crimes against living things, and against nature in general, and the father reaping the pitiless price of his own exploitative attitude towards creatures in the wild.

Despite the difficulties concerning the text, the overall impression conveyed by the performance to this listener gave the experience of hearing the work a lasting value beyond words. And it was a perfect foil for what followed in the concert’s second half – nothing less than Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, the composer’s marvellously uninhibited settings of a hedonistic paean to life’s pleasures and sorrows in the form of a collection of anonymous medieval verses which have survived the ravages of time and circumstance in order to delight present-day sensibilities and (in places) console vissicitudes alike!

Having reviewed an Orpheus performance of this work as recently as September 2019 –

https://middle-c.org/2019/09/percussion-driven-carmina-burana-with-the-orpheus-choir-a-triumph/

I’m finding it hard to escape the feeling (from memory) that there could be a lot of repetition in my comments regarding the singing, though as the previous performance involved the Orchestra Wellington Percussion Ensemble rather than the full orchestra, there will be “tweaks” of different emphasis here and there. One detail I had forgotten until I accessed the earlier review was that a SCREEN was used on that occasion to “project” the English translations of the words during the Orff! – I rest my case regarding the Bartok (see paragraph 3 above), this time round!

Another repetitive refrain from yours truly concerns the tempo taken by Marc Taddei for the opening “O Fortuna” on this occasion, something about which I find myself seemingly pushing a fairly lonely critical furrow in opinionating that most conductors take the sequence excessively quickly, given the out-and-out “lamenting” nature of the text! – however, the sheer energy of Taddei’s and the orchestra’s performance on this occasion was admittedly breath-catching, and impressive in its way! Still, the real enjoyment of the performance for me began with “Primo vere” (In Springtime), the bright, piping percussion and silvery winds framing the singing so fetchingly, and the ambience wonderfully spacious in the wake of the work’s almost “blitzkrieg” opening! I liked, too, Christian Thurston’s world-weary baritone solo “Omnia Sol temperat “, the character perhaps seeming a little tired of excessive drinking and whoring, and looking to the spring for renewal!

After the bell had resoundingly lingered at the conclusion of “Ecce gratum”, great percussive crashes heralded the “Dance”, played with a rhythmic verve that almost lifted us out of our seats with the energy of it all. Following the imposing beginning to “Floret Silva” the charm of the subsequent exchanges sounded well-nigh irresistible, as was the women’s plaintive singing in the “Shopkeeper, give me the colour” plea for an “aid” with which to capture a younger lover. The “Slow Dance” wove its spell of sensuous languidity, complete with nostalgically-sounding brass, which left us, like the hapless Faust, about to exclaim “How fair this spot” and looking to remain in damnation! – however the strumming strings woke us from the dream (the men’s voices, too, were a bit slow on the uptake at first with their “Swaz hie gat umbe” at the start of the Round Dance!) But what balm for the senses were the women’s voices in the interlude, before the strings took up the strumming once again! And what brilliant brass playing with which to conclude the sequence, as befitted the “surprise appearance” of the Queen of England, which concluded the first part!

Christian Thurston’s soft-grained voice did its best with “Estuans interius”, and “Ego sum abbas”, both sections calling for fiercer declamations, though he did better with the Abbot of Clucany’s piteous cries of “Wafna!”, accompanied by earth-shattering percussion outbursts! In between came the heart-rending “Song of the Roasted Swan”, with tenor Amitai Pati reappearing, and straightaway “nailing” the unfortunate bird’s anguish, though I thought the men’s voices a tad reticent in their ”Miser, miser!” rejoiners at the end of each verse.  Fortunately they moved their throttle up several notches for the incredibly vigorous “In taberna quando sumus” – the drinking song to end all drinking songs! Especially telling, I thought, was the darkness of it all, with the more sinister utterances as compelling as the clangorous ones!

What a change, as the scene shifted to “The Court of Love”, with everything cool and fresh once more – a superb evocation! The Wellington Young Voices sounded as they looked – bright, eager and innocent, followed by Amelia Berry’s silver-toned “Siqua sine socio”, beautifully supported by the winds. Christian Thurston’s soulful “Dies nos et omnia” came over well, with a properly pathetic-sounding  falsetto and a po-faced descent at the end, the self-communing aspect ruefully conveyed.

As for Amelia Berry’s “Stetit puella”, with those melismatic “Eias’ at the end of each verse, well who would not have fallen in love with her by the time she had finished floating the second one towards and all around our helpless sensibilities? Marc Taddei then took “Circa mea pectora” at a tremendous lick, the repeated Mandaliets almost whizzing into orbit at the end of each verse! The men-only chorus “Si puer cum puella” got a terrific response from the voices here, vigorous and clear-toned, with baritone Christian Thurston characterfully spurring them on, the succeeding “Veni, veni venias” giving the sequence even more visceral excitement, the conflagration spreading from the voices to the orchestra with what seemed like animal energy!

We needed settling down for a moment after that, Amelia Berry’s “In trutina” giving us a precious sequence of gorgeously-shaped singing, the top notes perhaps not as free as in the previous solo, but the descents as graceful and seductive as could be. “Tempus est locundum” then burst in, the children’s choirs (in two parts on either side of the platform) bobbing up and down to sing their refrains by turns with the baritone, the final time all together! This time, at “Dulcissime”, Amelia Berry’s ascent was breath-taking, the line positively snow-capped! – and her final phrase, dream-like and enraptured, immediately put me in mind of soprano Emma Fraser here in the same hall in 2014 who had at that time put me in mind of the incomparable Lucia Popp! What more can one say?

The penultimate “Blanchefleur and Helen” from choir and orchestra made an overwhelming impact straight afterwards (but I forgot to listen for the ringing bell, of which I’m terribly fond!). Whether there or no, we were summarily returned to the mercies of the Empress of the world, “Luck”, with the same massive percussive chords and driving energies as the work had begun with, what now seemed an age ago! Naughtily, but forgiveably. Marc Taddei “held onto” the work’s final chord, asking for more from his singers and players, and, excitingly, getting what he wanted! – a resplendent ending to a remarkable performance and a wonderfully adventurous concert!

 

 

 

 

Cantoris Choir celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with the help of Te Kōkī NZSM Orchestra and Mozart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSM and Cantoris Choir present:
MOZART –  Symphony No. 35 in D K.385 “Haffner”
– Mass in C Minor K.427 “The Great”
– Motet “Ave Verum Corpus” K.618

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
Reuben Brown (conductor – “Haffner” Symphony)

Cantoris Choir
Georgia Jamieson Emms, Michaela Cadwgan (sopranos)
Jamie Young (tenor), William King (bass)
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
Thomas Nikora (Music Director, Cantoris Choir – “The Great” Mass)

St.Peter’s-on-Willis, Wellington

Saturday, 24th April, 2021

“The devil take organisations that programme concerts for Saturday nights” I muttered repeatedly to myself, driving around Wellington’s busy streets, and looking for a car-park with mounting desperation as the Cantoris/NZSM concert’s starting time drew nearer and nearer! Eventually, after hurriedly walking to the church from a circuitously discovered parking space several blocks away, I arrived to find the front door closed and everybody else seated! I was, however, admitted, and, thanks to some introductory preamble from the concert’s organisers, actually got to my seat before a note had been played, as a result admitting to myself grudgingly that my near-lateness was really my own fault!

Such a good thing that I’d “made it” though, despite my organisational misjudgements – because the concert’s opening item, Mozart’s joyous and celebratory “Haffner” Symphony was given a totally invigorating performance by the student musicians under the direction of their conductor, Reuben Brown, one whose every note I thought tingled with life in the playing! – nowhere could I sense a mechanical or a “going through the motions” impulse, be it those opening shouts of octave-spanning exuberance or the murmured exchanges that contrasted with the enthusiastic outbursts.

Throughout, the dynamics constantly made us prick up our ears to exhilarating effect, as did the balancing of winds and strings in the upward flourishes, the winds elsewhere making the most of their expressive passages, conductor and players together shaping the themes with real feeling, but without ever letting the life-pulses of the music slacken.

The exquisite slow movement was given the space its themes needed to work their magic, the string passages having a delicacy that charmed our senses, as did the bassoon’s droll accompaniments, the lyrical lines singing their hearts out, with strings, then winds taking the lead, the oboes’ partnership a pleasure,  and the horns discreetly colouring the ambiences.

I thought the Minuet needed a touch more rustic bravado for the opening to make the most of its “swagger set against elegance” exchange, but the point was made, and the trio allowed the winds, led by the oboes, to emphasise the “grace” of the sequence.

The finale I thought terrific, the control by conductor and players over the accented dynamics of the contrasting phrases was so very ear-catching, done with a feeling of spontaneity that gave it all an edge and an excitement that I thought captured the composer’s youthful genius – a most enjoyable performance that was enthusiastically received at the end, and justly so!

And so, after an interval, it was Cantoris Choir’s turn, this evening celebrating its fiftieth anniversary year by showing what it could do with a work reckoned to be one of Mozart’s finest, his Mass in C Minor K.427, often called the “Great Mass”. Mozart was no stranger to settings of the liturgy, having produced at least fifteen settings of what was known as the “Ordinary” (the Latin text) of the Mass during his early Salzburg years, besides various other “sacred” works for different forms of worship, However, once he had left Salzburg for Vienna, he concentrated almost exclusively on secular works, apart from this “Great Mass”, and the later Requiem (1791), both works being left unfinished. The Great Mass was actually written for the occasion of his first return visit to Salzburg with his new wife, Constanza, in 1783 – in fact Constanza sang the “Et incarnatus est” section from the “Credo” at the work’s premiere in Salzburg. Interestingly, Mozart never attempted to finish the mass’s uncompleted parts (such as in the “Credo”), or add the missing “Agnus Dei”.

Beginning with a great archway of sounds growing out of a sombre instrumental beginning, the work’s opening Kyrie here sang out splendidly, the textures rich and full, thanks to adroit balancing of the forces, with perhaps the brasses being accorded slightly more ear-catching prominence than we needed, exciting though the sounds were. Thomas Nikora and his singers brought out plenty of sonorous tones and dynamic variations leading up to soprano Michaela Cadwgan’s serene entry at Christe Eleison, her soaring lines confidently rising to meet the tessitura, as well as relishing the interactive moments with the choir.

A solo voice intoned the opening line of the “Gloria”, to which the choir burst out in response, everything festive and joyous, with the music quickly and adroitly switching moods between the opening joyfulness and the serenity of “Et in terra pax hominibus”. The following “Laudamus Te” sparkled both instrumentally and vocally, Michaela Cadwgan’s firm, focused singing putting one in mind in places of the vocal energies generated by the composer’s “Queen of the Night” arias from “The Magic Flute” without the latter character’s angst and malevolence, the “Glorificamus Te” sections being particularly florid.

A sudden dramatic shift at “Gratias agimus tibi” from the chorus became more fraught with the words  “Propter magnam Gloriam Tuam”,  this somewhat awe-struck reverence happily leavened by the music for the two sopranos at “Domine Deus”, Georgia Jamieson Emms and Michaela Cadwgan teaming up beautifully, and making a virtue of their different vocal timbres in the exchanges at “Agnus Dei”, thrilling us in places with their stratospheric note-swapping. The dotted Handelian rhythms of “Qui tollis peccata mundi” brought forth an amazingly incisive sound from both choir and orchestra, the rawness of the louring brass in places either (depending on one’s tastes as a listener!) overbearing or excitingly “present”, but dramatically telling in the contrast with the hushed pleas of “Miserere nobis” which followed, before building again towards further waves of cataclysmic energy! – what an amazing build-up of intensity was got here at “Qui sedes a dextram Patris!”, with by turns, haunting, then full-throated cries of “Miserere nobis!” – astonishing!

Both sopranos with tenor Jamie Young then made a remarkable trio of voices for the amazing “Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus” the writing as florid as could be imagined, partly canonical, and partly fugal, the singers hanging onto the precarious solo lines with terrific elan! A great orchestral chord announced the words “Jesu Christe”, majestically delivered by the combined forces, before the men’s voices began a fugue with “Cum Sancto Spiritu”, spreading like wildfire and as excitingly through the voices before introducing the “Amens”, combining these with both fugue and inversion in a ferment of exhilaration before hurling the final “Amens” heavenwards with great surety and gusto!

The Credo, such as it was, began with a solo voice, answered by rumbustious orchestral figures over which the choir vigorously proclaimed the prayer’s basic tenets of faith and belief, breaking into decorative contrapuntal lines at the words “Ante omnia saecula “(before all time began), and giving the words rapid canonic treatment from men’s and women’s voices ( some briefly blurred lines here entirely forgiveable) from “Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine” (God from God, Light from Light), as far as Descendit de Caelis (Descended from Heaven), the voices suggesting similar trajectories.

This was followed by the heavenly “Et incarnatus est”, soft strings, organ and celestial winds introducing the soprano voice of Georgia Jamieson Emms, the voice here beautifully “floated”, negotiating both the high notes and the torturous coloratura which follows with great aplomb, and given sterling support by the various wind instruments. In fact her voice seemed to grow in surety and confidence as she approached the cadenza-like sequence again accompanied by the winds, both singer and players drawing on some kind of alchemic quality of loveliness throughout – a memorable performance!

There was little time to reflect on what we had been denied through the rest of the Credo’s absence – for here was the “Sanctus”, grand and imposing, with the brasses echoing the choir’s shouts, and a beautifully deep organ pedal accompanying the words “Domine Deus Sabaoth”, the atmosphere joyous and celebratory! Conversely, the fugal “Hosanna” was excitable and energetic, but with Thomas Nikora’s direction allowing the girth and “swagger” of the music to cone through, up to the great shouts of “In excelsis” at the end, though the strings continued, leading on to the “Benedictus”, featuring all four soloists for the first time,  bass William King making his long-awaited entrance! All the soloists acquitted themselves beautifully, the individual voices resounding like church bells with their repeated “Benedictuses” and blended lines, all coping with some particularly demanding concerted writing towards the end with great credit, their final “In Nomine Domini” as vigorous and incisive as any of the evening’s utterances.

It remained for the choir to deliver the final moments of the Sanctus’s return,  and the work’s journey was completed – well, actually, not quite, as we had been promised at the beginning that, to make up for the parts that the composer DIDN’T write, we would be given a kind of “bonus”, one that would “finish” the Mass in a more appropriately closing kind of manner. For this reason the work and the evening were both “rounded off” by another of Mozart’s works, the motet “Ave Verum Corpus” K.618, written in 1791 for a choirmaster friend in Baden, Anton Stoll, who had helped the Mozarts find lodgings in the town for Wolfgang’s wife Constanze, who was pregnant and needed the relief given by the local mineral springs.

Lasting only two-and-a-half minutes, this astonishing piece captures a tranquility that would have been entirely absent from Mozart’s life at that time  – he was currently working on the opera “The Magic Flute”, and still to come that year (the year of his death) were the opera “La Clemenza di Tito” the Clarinet Concerto and the unfinished Requiem. Perhaps the inner peace of this work expressed an outward longing for the same, freed from the difficulties he was at that time embroiled with. Its performance here, one infused with light and warmth, made an entirely appropriate conclusion to a concert whose undertaking and execution Cantoris Choir and its Musical Director, Thomas Nikora, could be justly proud of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater” given sweet and resounding treatment by Wellington’s Bach Choir

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents –
DVOŘÁK – Stabat Mater Op.58

Michaela Cadwgan (soprano)
Linden Loader (contralto)
Jamie Young (tenor)
Simon Christie (bass)

Douglas Mews (piano)

Shawn Michael Condon (conductor)

Queen Margaret College, Thorndon, Wellington

Saturday, 17th April, 2021

I had momentarily forgotten that my Middle C colleague of the time, Lindis Taylor, had reviewed a performance of this work in Paraparaumu as recently as 2018, a circumstance which effectively stymied any thoughts I might have had of extravagantly proclaiming it a “neglected masterpiece”! However, as I didn’t attend this earlier performance and thus came new to the work as a “live” experience on Saturday at Queen Margaret College, I still felt very much imbued with the feeling of “discovery” as a concert-goer (I do own a recording of the music, so was familiar with its general outlines and ebb and flow of emotion, though without having enjoyed that thrill of immediacy that a live concert gives….).

An extra “edge” was given my experience here, quite unintentionally – though I’ve never considered myself dyslexic, I somehow got it into my head that the venue for the concert was Marsden College in Karori! (Well, both “Marsden” and “Margaret” begin with “M”, so surely it was a mistake anybody could have made…….yes? Er, no! – as I found myself to be the ONLY ONE wandering around the grounds and buildings of Marsden after I’d arrived in Karori with only ten minutes to go before starting time!) Thanks to some nifty driving, a reasonably handy car-park in Thorndon, and two kindly people associated with the event who “took care” of me upon my out-of-breath arrival at the Queen Margaret College Hall, I was able to hear most of the opening “Stabat Mater Dolorosa” from the hall doorway, and then squirrel myself into a seat near the door for the rest! My relief at feeling I’d navigated the obstacles, and grateful pleasure at receiving the kind assistance that I did, was then somewhat mitigated by my dropping the car key noisily on the floor of the hall midway through the vocal quartet’s Quis est homo qui non fleret – but afterwards I found myself gradually settling into the atmosphere cast by the music’s spell and its committed-sounding performance.

Though I wasn’t ideally placed to clearly hear parts of the opening movement , from where I was standing it nevertheless sounded as if all sections of the choir were blending their tones beautifully, differentiating the music’s flowing dynamic levels with telling intent, and seeming to give their all in conveying the dramatic building-up of sounds and emotions which took over the music towards the movement’s end in its truly inexorable way – largely a recapitulation of the introductory section, which I was glad to “catch”. The tenor, Jamie Young, also repeated his dramatic entry, which introduced the other vocal soloists’ participation in the ebb and flow of piteous emotion expressed by the words and their settings. At the beginning of the following Quis est homo qui non fleret  (Who is the person who would not weep) contralto Linden Loader’s tremulous but focused tones brought out the words’ desolation, before being joined by the tenor, Jamie Young’s rather more urgently histrionic delivery. Bass Simon Christie contributed a sonorous Quis est homo, sparking a ferment of exchange, before soprano Micaela Cadwgan pinned our ears back with an arresting Pro peccatis suae gentis (for the sins of his people), and then duetted beautifully with Linden Loader, repeating the same phrase, Dvořák here repeatedly giving his singers the movement’s most striking music when delivering these same words, Simon Christie delivering a particularly sonorous solo line at one point. With exemplary pianistic support from the wonderful Douglas Mews, conductor Shawn Michael Condon brought his singers through the torturous ways of their exchanges to a place of suitable contemplation with the words Vidit sum dulcem natum moriendo (She saw her sweet offspring dying) to appropriately moving effect.

The grim, Schubert-like Eja mater, fons amoris (Mother, fountain of love), was given appropriately sombre treatment, the cries of “fac!” properly rending the air, contrasting tellingly with the hushed Ut tecum lugeam (that I may grieve with you).  And in the following Fac, ut ardeat cor meum (Grant that my heart may burn), Simon Christie’s baritonal timbres enabled a moving cantabile line at Un sibi complaceam (to please My Lord), sweetly backed by angelic voices invoking the Mother of God at Sancta mater, istud agas (Grant, Holy Mother) with beatific tones ostensibly at odds with the words’ conjuring up of images suggesting suffering and agony! Though the lack of numbers in the tenor section of the choir were evident, the choir ‘s intensification of delivery made its effect, as did Christie’s more lyrical passages.

Some of Dvořák’s most beautiful writing in the work was for the opening of the chorus Tui nati vulnerate (Let me share with thee his pain), before an anguished and agitated middle section which soon dispersed, the music returning to its lullabic character, here, most winningly realised. Tenor Jamie Young’s delivery of the following Fac me vere tecum flere (Let me sincerely weep with you)  for me came across more successfully in its forthright than in its more lyrical sequences, the singer seeming to find it difficult to relax his voice, and more at home when pumping out the intensities, given that anguish seemed the order of the day, here. The male voices of the choir provided sweet-toned support, echoing the singer’s phrases (very Schubertian, here!), with Young revelling in the “sturm und drang” of Juxta crucem tecum stare (To stand beside the cross with you).

Another lovely choral sequence was provided by Virgo Virginum (VIrgin of Virgins), conductor Shawn Michael Condon getting his voices to sweetly “own” the soaring tessituras, blending the whole-choir strands most beautifully, with Douglas Mews contributing, according to my notes , a “mean accompaniment” here!  If the “piano” version allowed less of the “Slavic” colour of the work to catch the ear, the music’s melodic charm and rhythmic charge was well served by Mews’ idiomatic-sounding playing. The soprano and tenor duet Fac ut portem Christi mortem (Grant that I may bear the death of Christ) came off excitingly, due to their give-and-take combination, and their shared fearlessness at risking rawness when tackling the high-lying passages in each of their parts. The final solo section was given the contralto, a piece which seemed positively Handelian at the start, and certainly very baroque-like! The sentiments also seemed Handelian, calling for trenchant tones! – Inflammatus et accencus (Inflame and set on fire). The central, more lyrical section of the movement brought out the lyric quality of Linden Loader’s voice, returning to forthrightness at the opening’s reprise, and including touches of theatrical darkness at the end, with Confoveri gratia (Let His grace cherish me).

And so, we were brought to the final movement of the work, Quando Corpus Morietur (When my body dies).  The contralto and bass began in beseeching mode, drawing in the soprano and tenor and eventually the choir, building towards a climax in the manner of the first movement, except that this one peaked more positively! As the soloists rhapsodised, in the expectation of the prospect of Paradise, the “Amens” suddenly burst out, soloists and choir exchanging these impulses of affirmation with a wondrous ferment, conductor Shaun Michael Condon steering everything expertly forwards towards a great peroration. The final  Quando corpus morietur , slow, grand and solemn, left Douglas Mews’ piano rhapsodising, and the voices repeating all kinds of ecstatic “Amens” – at the conclusion of it all, the musicians were happily spent, and the audience exhilarated, and appreciative, with a real “buzz” of excitement in the foyer afterwards! Certainly, I thought, a concert well worth desperately scrambling to get to the right venue on the day, for!

*   *           *   *           *   *           *   *

P.S. on a more sombre note, I read the kindly and appreciative note in the programme concerning the recent death of a former director of the Bach Choir, Stephen Rowley, whom I also well remember. I would like to add the condolences of Middle C reviewers past and present to those expressed, to  Stephen’s family.

“Gloria” from Nota Bene and The Queen’s Closet gladdens hearts and minds at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Nota Bene and The Queen’s Closet presents
GLORIA – Music by VIVALDI and JS BACH

JS BACH – Cantata BWV 12 “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen”
Motet – “Jesu, meine Freude”
VIVALDI – Gloria RV 589

Nicola Holt, Jenny Gould – sopranos
Maaike Christie-Beekman – mezzo-soprano
John Beaglehole – tenor
David Morriss – bass

Nota Bene Choir  (director, Maaike Christie-Beekman)
The Queen’s Closet  (director, Gordon Lehany)
Solo oboe – Sharon Lehany / Solo baroque trumpet – Gordon Lehany

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday 28th March, 2021

As it has happened the three concerts I have reviewed so far this year have taken place in various splendid Wellington churches, each contributing to the atmosphere, ambience and impact of the music and its making, spectacularly so in the case of the third occasion at St Mary of the Angels Church in Boulcott St., where a programme entitled “Gloria” was given by the Nota Bene Choir with the Queen’s Closet ensemble. There’s certainly a case for, wherever possible, presenting music such as on the latter programme in an ecclesiastical setting –it all seems to, in a generic sense, “go with the territory”, even if the purist might call to question the idea of music with such Lutheran austerities as Bach’s “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” Cantata being performed in a lavishly-appointed Roman Catholic Church such as St.Mary’s!

None of this seemed at all to matter as conductor Peter Walls set the music on its course, the plangent oboe tones of Sharon Lehany’s period instrument joining forces with the strings and continuo of the Queen’s Closet ensemble, immediately wrapping all about us the music’s inherent sorrow and depth of feeling, reflecting the idea that the way to Heaven for the Christian is a path of suffering and sorrow (an idea given voice in the work’s only recitative which follows). Here it is the Christian’s “bread of tears”, the Tränenbrot referred to by the chorus. From the choir’s finely-judged singing of the four opening words of the work, resounding across the soundstage, we were taken affectingly through the music’s “weeping” aspect and solemn processional mode, to the energising of the music at the words Die das Zeichen Jesu tragen (”These that bear the marks of Jesus”), before returning to the sorrowing cortege of feeling at the end.

The aforementioned recitative then brought mezzo-soprano Maaike Christie-Beekman to the platform, her aria which followed, Kreuz und Krone sind verbunden (“Cross and Crown are bound together”), involvingly delivered, both strongly-focused and  sensitively nuanced, the oboist most capable, by turns subtle and forthright, and the ‘cellist extremely attentive, binding the whole together with winning melodic shapes and phrasings. Bass David Morriss was next, with the lighter-toned Ich folge Christo nach (“I follow after Christ”), relishing the words, registering the almost visceral character of the phrase Ich kusse Christi Schmach (“I kiss Christ’s shame”) and unequivocal in his faith at the end. The same could be said for the tenor John Beaglehole’s performance, his voice rising to the challenge of the long, sinuous lines with great credit, managing elegantly in places, even if the crueller of a couple of sequences sounded a shade raw now and then. Here, the almost spectral trumpet tones, for the most part steadily and vibrantly delivering the chorale tune Jesu, meine Freude as a kind of counterpoint, seemed to “haunt” the tenor’s “stricken” phrases, such as  Alle Pein wird doch nu rein kleines sein (“All pain will yet be only a little thing”). Both trumpet and oboe join with the chorus for the final chorale, helping to make a more festively optimistic conclusion to the work.

Next on the programme was Bach’s motet Jesu, meine Freude, a work I can’t remember either hearing or seeking out previously in concert (a mis-spent youth listening to nothing but orchestral and piano music is partly to blame!) – having talked at length about the cantata, Peter Walls explained several points concerning this work as well. Talking can be a somewhat risky thing for musicians to do at concerts, as I know many people who can’t abide talk when they have come to an event to hear music! – however I was grateful to Professor Walls for his explanation concerning a work I didn’t know well, and particularly in the light of its singular structure.

Jesu, meine Freude was written in 1723, while the composer was cantor at St.Thomas’s Church, Leipzig. Its structure involves a combination of settings of Johann Franck’s verses for a 1653 Chorale of the same name with those of excerpts from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, eleven movements in all. There’s a kind of symmetrical “scheme” for the work – for example, the first two and last two movements are similar harmonizations of the chorale (based on a melody by one Johann Crüger, a well-known hymn composer and editor), and there are two groups of three (Nos. 3-5 and 7-9) which follow an identical pattern of chorale, trio and aria.

So, to the opening of the motet, warm, poignant-sounding phrases, shaped by heart-swelling sequences as the singers’ expression ebbed and flowed, with phrase following ingratiating phrase – Gottes Lamm, mein Bräutigam (God’s lamb, my bridegroom) being an example. A livelier sequence, beginning with Es ist nun nichts Verdammliches (There is nothing damnable) became energetically contrapuntal in its central section, the choir splendidly holding the lines throughout die nicht nach dem Fleische wandein (who do not walk after the way of the flesh), and triumphantly reaching the words sondern nach dem Geist (but after the way of the Spirit).

A sterner mood accompanied Unter deinen Schirmen (Under your protection), with the voices firmly withstanding “kracht und blitzt” and “Sünd and Hölle”, and finding peace in Jesus will mich decken (Jesus will protect me). And the following Den das Gesetz des Geistes (For the law of the spirit) was beautifully rendered by the three women soloists, sopranos, Nicola Holt and Jenny Gould, with Maaike Christie-Beekman, the lines by turns soaring and intertwining, reflecting the text’s life and freedom. Our sensibilities were arrested by the animated cries of “Trotz” (Defiance) and “Trobe” (Rage) from the chorus, Walls’s energetic direction bringing out the pictorial aspects of the text, the men’s voices enjoying themselves hugely in places such as Erd und Abgrund muss verstummen (Earth and Abyss must fall silent).

The men’s voices were to the fore at the beginning of the fugal Ihr aber seid nicht fleischlich (You are, however, not of the flesh) as well, music whose “unfolding” quality was here “danced” to its grateful, more majestic conclusion. And both a dancing and lyrical spirit engagingly informed the lively choral presentation of the following Weg mit allen Schätzen (Away with all treasures), combined with the “Jesu , meine Freude” hymn-tune.  Two combinations of soloists followed, firstly mezzo, tenor and bass, who gave us a nicely contrasting So aber Christus in euch ist (But if Christ is in you), comparing the death of the body with the life of the spirit, the music at der Geist aber is das Leben (but the Spirit is life) again dancing, the combination of voices beautifully realised. And the succeeding Gute Nacht, o Wesen das die Welt erlesen (Good Night, existence that cherishes the world) again featured some mellifluous teamwork, with soaring lines steadily and atmospherically supported by lower voices. Having dispensed with the world and its sins, the music turned to its beginning, with the chorale Weicht, ihr Trauergeister (Away, you spirits of sadness) leading to a reaffirmation of the opening Jesu meine Freud – a fulfilling and heart-warming conclusion to the performance of this demanding work.

Slightly more familiar ground for me was the programme’s concluding work, Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589. Written at around 1715, the work was probably intended by the composer for performance by female voices, those of the members of the female orphanage, the Ospedale della Pieta, where Vivaldi himself was a teacher – whether he adapted an originally SATB work for female voices, or vice-versa, nobody seems to be sure. It’s definitely more often heard, as here, in this mixed-voices form, though I know of at least two female-voices only versions on record.

The opening “Gloria” with its distinctive octave-leap figure was here energised by spot-on ensemble playing and beguilingly coloured by oboe and trumpet, the occasional “rogue” note adding to the excitement! The voices relished the music’s dynamic range to exhilarating effect, contrasting dramatically with the following Et in terra pax  (and peace on earth) , stately and serene, with lines and waves of deep, minor-key feeling (a wonderfully, intensely drawn-out melismatic figure at “bonae voluntatis”, for instance). Laudamus te went with a swing, thanks to some exuberant singing from Nicola Holt and Maaike Christie Beekman; and the sterner Gratias agimus tibi bent our ears back with the severity of the opening, before suddenly unfurling to great effect in a burst of fugal activity.

Oboist Sharon Lehany joined forces resplendently with Nicola Hunt for Domine Deus, the oboe having a lovely plangency, and Holt a winning command of the longer line at Deus Pater Omnipotens.  Vivaldi’s relish of contrast in this work then gave us a rumbustious Domine Fili unigenite, the textures building excitingly and effectively towards a climax, before again bringing time almost to a standstill with a sobering Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Maaike Christie-Beekman resplendently interacting with the choir to moving effect, aided and abetted by some empathetic ‘cello-playing, leading to the heartfelt plea to heaven of Qui tollis peccata mundi, the voices seeming to resound upwards through the firmament at Suscipe deprecationem meam (receive our prayer). And I liked the energy of the near-Brucknerian trajectories of Qui sedes dexteram Patris, and mezzo Christie-Beekman’s floating of the lines above the insistent instrumental energies.

With “Quonian tu solu sanctus” the work suddenly came full circle, via the return of the opening music, followed, just as exuberantly, by a fugue, Cum Sancto Spiritu which took us to the final joyous “Amens”. Again, oboe and trumpet added colour and festive excitement to the spacious ambiences, the work’s full-blooded conclusion giving rise to scenes of well-deserved acclaim and appreciation from the body of the church, for much of that evening a receptacle of festive and heartfelt sounds.

Acclaim at Wellington’s MFC for Handel, the “Messiah”, the NZSO, the Tudor Consort, the soloists, and conductor extraordinaire, Gemma New

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
HANDEL:  Messiah – an Oratorio, HWV 56

Anna Leese  – Soprano
Sarah Court – Alto
Frederick Jones – Tenor
Robert Tucker – Bass

The Tudor Consort (Music Director – Michael Stewart)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (Concertmaster – Donald Armstrong)

Gemma New (conductor)

MIchael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 12th December, 2020

I can’t remember a Wellington audience leaping to its collective feet at the conclusion of a recent “Messiah” with quite such unbridled enthusiasm as we all found ourselves doing this evening, caught up in what suddenly felt like, from where I had been sitting, a near-tsunami of acclamation for the musicians and the music at the end of the performance’s final “Amen” chorus.  Certainly, our sensibilities had been “stoked” by conductor Gemma New’s ear-bending exhortation to us at the concert’s beginning to rise from our seats and “join in with” the magnificence of the renowned “Halleluia” chorus! – oo-er! – wot larks! – a daring break with protocol which “came off” as intended, heightening our involvement with the performance that conductor, singers and players had steadily built up throughout the work, and which seemed to break over us all at the end.

Poet Dylan Thomas wrote of his memories of childhood Christmasses in Wales that “One Christmas was so much like another” – and the same could be said regarding the various performances  of “Messiah” that pile up in the memory-banks without reference to specifics outlined in reviews, diaries or letters. And even when certain particular strands of recollection resonate, it can be difficult to pinpoint them in time and context without help – I would have to go to the archives to make specific comparisons with the present, though memories of previous performers such as soprano Madeleine Pierard and bass James Clayton have persisted due to particular distinctions not easily forgotten.

What will, I think, stay with me for some time regarding this most recent performance is its quality of consistency across the strands that make up the music’s tapestry. Beginning with the orchestral playing, I was taken by the sheer focus of the instrumental sounds, both in terms of atmosphere and narrative, which certainly delivered conductor Gemma New’s promise made in a programme note, that the orchestra would realise “the mood, setting, inflections and characters as much as the soloists and choir do with the text”, through “constantly creating contrasts of colour, pacing and volume”. At every point this quality was in evidence, from the shaping of the opening Sinfony, through the manifold realisations of mood –  the solace of the introduction to “Comfort Ye”, the serenity of the Pifa or “Pastoral Sinfony”, the tingling excitement of “And suddenly there was with the angel”, contrasted with the sorrowing of “Behold the Lamb of God” and the brutality of the opening to “All they that see him”, to the confident warmth of the strings at “I know the my Redeemer Liveth” and the  triumphal strains of “The trumpet shall sound)” – coming full circle with the splendour of the “Worthy is the Lamb” and “Amen” choruses.

Just as telling were those orchestral moments whose textures were at once made manifest and held in check to allow the singers’ tones through – alto Sarah Court’s evocation of refiner’s fire  by turns flickered, glowed and sizzled most convincingly, while the jaggedly-bowed accents of “He gave his back” still allowed enough sound-space for the singer’s piteous commentary of “His cheeks to them that pluck’d off his hair” to make an impact, and a proper contrast with the   Bass Robert Tucker’s voice at “For behold” grew portentously but reassuringly out of the gloom towards the light; and later rolled splendidly and easefully around the ambiences in partnership with Michael Kirgan’s stellar “trumpet-sounding” calls.

Tenor Frederick Jones properly caught our attentions with his opening “Comfort ye”, the voice having a real “ring”, compelling our interest further with the growing urgency of his message, surviving a brief rhythmic glitch at one point of “Speak ye comfortably”, and properly energising the textures at “The voice of him”, before joining in with the joyous levity of “Ev’ry valley”, investing every phrase with meaning, declaiming, and then reassuring, as the text required. Later, in his series of vignettes depicting the anguish of Christ’s suffering at the hands of the Romans, he fully conveyed the piteous and brutal nature of the words, harsh and declamatory at “All they that see Him”, and beautifully weighing each sorrowing word of “Thy rebuke” and the succeeding “Behold and See”, then relishing the prospect of divine retribution with stinging force in “He that dwelleth in heaven” and ringing high notes in “Thou shalt break them”.

Mentioning Anna Leese’s performance  in conjunction with Madeleine Pierard as a previous soprano soloist in this work is perhaps the highest compliment I can give the former in terms of the pleasure her singing gave me – Leese has also appeared previously in this role in Wellington, but I thought she surpassed even her previous efforts on this occasion, bright and vibrant from the outset,  capturing the full gamut of serenity, fear, and wonderment of the shepherds in the fields, and following this with a vivaciously swinging 4/4 “Rejoice greatly” whose contrasting serenity for the middle section’s “He shall bring peace” was unexpectedly and thrillingly set dancing by conductor New’s adoption of the 12/8 version of the aria at the reprise – an inspired moment of scalp-tingling exhilaration!

Both alto and soprano by turns brought a distinctive strain of beauty to “He shall feed His flock”, each singer right “inside” the words, and contributing to the contrasting effect of different voices, the first gentle and comforting, the second radiant and persuasive. Of course the soprano’s most eagerly-awaited moment is “I know that my Redeemer liveth“, one that was here, to my ears, fully “owned” by Leese, as completely as any singer I’ve previously heard, the voice moving between the notes with complete confidence and the words with irrefutable “ownership” – and with an ascent at “For now is Christ risen” at the end which brought tears to the eyes of at least one person present!

We have heard the Tudor Consort perform these Messiah choruses before, with what I remember to be the utmost distinction – but surely not with more beauty, finesse, imagination, drama and intensity than as on this occasion! Despite what the authenticists would almost certainly say, I’m capable of enjoying the sound of a large choir thundering out the “Halleluiah!” chorus with gusto, given that the forces would have to be balanced with comparable instrumental numbers for the “give-and-take” to make sense! But here we had a choir of less than forty voices whose focus enabled a choral sound whose proportionality was overwhelming in terms of its intensity, variety of texture and dynamic range. To single out particular numbers for comment can only hint at the wholeness with which the character of each of the various sequences was realised, with its plethora of detailing and unifying sweep, be it intimacy or grandeur that was needed.

An enduring impression is the clarity of the singing lines, whatever the dynamic levels and textural densities, and achieved here without any self-consciously “mannered” or exaggerated effect of the kind that I recently experienced on a much-vaunted recording (and quickly grew tired of). A couple of examples must suffice: – “And He shall purify” became a veritable rivulet of tinkling, chattering sounds all in perfect accord with one another (and with the instrumental accompaniments), whereas in another part of the work the combatative “Let us break their bonds asunder” sounded like a veritable fusillade of stinging notes, precisely aimed for maximum impact!  Later, the darkly sinister undertones of  “Since by man came death” were given more-than-usually dramatic treatment, with certain of the opening notes scarily accented, heightening the unease and sorrow associated with the dying of light and life, giving the passage a “from fear to hope” slant additional to the usual “darkness to light” progression, culminating in the joyously energetic “by man came also the resurrection”, impactful and liberating!

All of this was presided over by Gemma New, whose New Zealand visit to make her NZSO conducting debut was extended by the privations of Covid-19 to be able to include two further concerts including this one, in which she substituted for British conductor Thomas Blunt, unable to travel to New Zealand to conduct “Messiah” as scheduled. It’s been our great good luck that the concert has been able to happen at all, but to have someone of the obvious talent of New, described as a “rising star in the conducting firmament”, to take over on such an occasion has been an extraordinary kind of “windfall”. And then, to have witnessed such a remarkable re-thinking of an established classic by an up-and-coming conductor (who just happens to be a New Zealander) is a circumstance that has, I suspect, the potential to enter the realm of legend for all present. Everything seemed to come together for the performance to make it distinctive – and I can forsee people in years to come discussing NZSO “Messiah” performances and hearkening back to 2020 with the words, “Ah, you should have been there when Gemma New took over at short notice for “Messiah” during that first “Covid” year, and brought us all to our feet, firstly to JOIN IN with the “Halleluiah” Chorus, and then at the end, OFF OUR OWN BAT we did, to acclaim her and the other musicians, for a performance for the ages! Cheering at the end? I can hear it yet!”

 

Orpheus Choir’s first ‘on their own’ concert in 2020 a Gloria triumph

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orpheus Choir of Wellington

Director: Brent Stewart
Barbara Paterson – soprano, Ruth Armishaw – mezzo
Nicholas Sutcliffe – organ
Instrumental ensemble (Olya Curtis – violin, Karen Batten – flute, Dominic Groom – horn, Toby Pringle – trumpet, Peter Maunder – trombone, Jeremy Fitzsimons – timpani, Thomas Nikora – piano)

Vivaldi: Gloria (RV 589)
Poulenc: Gloria. “reminiscent of a fresco by Bozzoli”
Michael McGlynn: Jerusalem
Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter, arr. Ola Gjeilo (poem by Christina Rosetti)
Rutter: Star Carol
Ēriks Ešenvalds: Stars (poem by Sara Teasdale; tuned wine glasses pitched in tonal clusters, painting the picture of a sparkling, starry night sky)
Handel: ‘Worthy in the Lamb’ and the ‘Amen’ from Messiah 

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Saturday 14 November, 7:30 pm

The introduction to the programme by the chairperson of the Choir, Frances Manwaring, remarks that this was the choir’s first ‘self-presented’ concert in 2020 – the only other public appearance was with Orchestra Wellington’s 3 October concert in Rachmaninov’s The Bells and Fauré’s Requiem.

And I might as well use her background notes to refer to the task of preparing for the concert under review. “Thanks to the tech-savvyness and innovative thinking of our Music Director Brent Stewart, we barely missed a beat. Rehearsals moved on line and choir members logged in from their living rooms or bedrooms. Physical warm-ups were attempted in unusual places and members of the choir displayed skill and flair as Brent found ways to showcase their talents.”

The delay in writing this review has induced me to modify certain earlier words about aspects of the performance, such as comments about the sound of the electronic organ, and the absence of orchestral parts that are somewhat intrinsic to the full sound of both Vivaldi’s and Poulenc’s Glorias.

Vivaldi’s Gloria
It all became unimportant as soon as the choir launched into Vivaldi’s choral masterpiece with the Gloria in excelsis Deo, making such mighty impact. Sitting fairly close, even the cathedral’s rather unmanageable acoustic didn’t interfere too much.

Each of the twelve sections might average about three minutes and they vary sharply in spirit and religious significance, but the genius of the music remained in full command of choir and audience for the full half hour. For example, the calm (the programme notes ‘introspective’ is a good word) second movement, ‘Et in terra pax’, revealed a lovely balance between men, occupying the centre of each of the half dozen rows of singers, and the twice as many women. But they were not at all unbalanced in their combined impact.

Soloists appeared in the third movement, ‘Laudamus Te’, Barbara Paterson and Ruth Armishaw, both making very striking impacts, contrasting comfortably. Part 6, ‘Domine Deus’ is for soprano, delightful, and a fairly limited orchestra, which again, one missed. Then followed mezzo Armishaw’s solo, singing the meditative ‘Domine Deus, Agnus dei’, punctuated by choir and organ; and she sang beautifully without choir in the tenth movement, ‘Qui sedes ad dexterum’.

Poulenc’s Gloria
Instead of an organ in the role of Poulenc’s orchestra, a small ensemble (eight players including the organ again) appeared after the interval to accompany his ‘Gloria’, which was a late product of his adoption, “in his fashion”, of religion in 1936, following the awful death in a car crash of a fellow composer and close friend.

In the opening phase the ensemble’s sound was somewhat heavy, the timpani particularly so and the three brass instruments were pretty audible, but that’s not too alien to Poulenc’s orchestral score. As for the singers, first impressions were of a soprano section that was strong, perhaps a little outweighing the rest. But the general impact of their performance was one of vigour and conviction.

In the ‘Laudamus Te’ the choir and the brass instruments that opened, in darting staccato rhythms, were well balanced from the beginning, and a quiet organ contributed nicely.

Soprano soloist Paterson emerged in the third section, ‘Domine Deus’, her part being to create a sense of peace, which was also the message the choir. The following ‘Dominus Fili unigente’ is a more lively movement, jocular and quite short. ‘Domine Deus, Agnus Dei’ is the protracted fifth movement, with Paterson taking lengthy solo episodes that could have been heard as mysterious rather than peaceful.

The sixth and last movement, ‘Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris’ opened with slow recitative statements from the sopranos singing without accompaniment, the orchestra joined with a motif that was just a little different from the opening of the ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’. The choir and the men followed, singing in a prosaic character, often emphatically untuneful. But Paterson didn’t enter till about halfway through the last movement, casting some light but mostly ambivalence on the solo soprano’s message. The basic theme was taken up for the ‘Amen’ at the end which hardly offers a particularly persuasive feeling of hope for mankind, in spite of positive episodes like the ‘Laudamus Te’.

The choir was most successful in handling the frequent changes of tone and spirit, and the ensemble provided as good a substitute for a full orchestra as was reasonable to expect.

Concert fillers
The concert filled the time that a concert could normally be expected to last, with five varied and quite fascinating pieces.

First, a duet by Irish composer Michael McGlynn, Jerusalem, pursuing a variety of harmonies created an authentic impression through the distribution of the female singers around the sides of the cathedral. Then a song by Holst, In the Bleak Midwinter, arranged by Ola Gjeilo for solo voice with the choir entering later. The solo part was sung most attractively by the young soprano Kitty Sneyd-Utting.

John Rutter’s Star Carol, a lively and attractive Christmas song, with men’s and women’s voices taking distinct sections between substantial episodes by the full choir.

Another unfamiliar name was that of Ēriks Ešenvalds, Latvian (born in 1977); look at his interesting biography on the Internet. (Excuse me: I spent a fascinating week in Riga in 1999, catching four opera performances, and lovely ‘Art Nouveau’ architecture, a bit before Ešenvalds got started).

His Stars, to a poem by Sara Teasdale, involved the playing of tuned wine glasses, not strictly a ‘glass harp’, that were played by a number of the women in the front row, “painting the picture of a sparkling, starry night sky”. My notes describe it as evocative and rather moving; I think some men stroked the glasses too. The star was projected on the wall of the Sanctuary.

Finally, another gesture towards Christmas was ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ and the ‘Amen’, with which Messiah ends: a bit unsynchronised at the start, but then it took off, with gusto till the calm lead-in to the Amen chorus which was full of energy.

If these fillers were a bit like that, they were individually worth singing and being heard, and brought a fine concert, splendidly inspired and led by Brent Stewart, to a very successful end.

Riveting performances by the Orpheus Choir and Orchestra Wellington of works by Faure and Rachmaninoff

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington present:
RACHMANINOFF – The Bells

FAURE – Requiem in D Minor Op.48
RACHMANINOFF – The Bells  Op.35

Margaret Medlyn (soprano), Jared Holt (tenor), Wade Kernot (bass)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Brent Stewart, director)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 3rd October, 2020

Under the circumstances of Covid-19 and its world-wide strictures, I’m truly grateful, along with so many others, to be living in a place where activities such as concerts of the quality of that which I attended in the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening could even happen, let alone be enjoyed so freely and readily. Given in the same week as the NZSO’s inspiring “Eroica” concert conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Orchestra Wellington’s equally uplifting collaboration with a sonorous and versatile Orpheus Choir made for a week’s fascinating and rewarding diversity of orchestral activity. I admit to being tempted into writing an all-out notice of lament that this particular concert in the Orchestra’s “Rachmaninoff season” didn’t “go for broke” here in presenting a couple more of the composer’s choral works instead of Gabriel Faure’s beautiful but oft-played Requiem – has Wellington ever heard the Russian composer’s achingly lovely “Spring” Cantata for baritone, choir and orchestra, or his enchanting “Three Russian Folksongs”?  What a programme, together with “The Bells” that would have made! But one must be grateful at the chance to hear “The Bells” in concert at all, and especially in such a vibrant and idiomatic performance as here. Perhaps on a future occasion………

Here was, in any case, a fascinating contrast of compositional styles and idioms presented via a pair of masterworks from composers whose music, though not exactly contemporary, emanated from the same late-Romantic Age (Faure’s Requiem in its final form dates from 1900, Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells“ from 1913), even though each couldn’t be more different in its expression! Though the Faure Requiem’s performance here was never going to give the impression of a church ambience in such surroundings as the Michael Fowler Centre and with a choir of the Orpheus’s size, there was in fact a historical precedent for the numbers involved, with the final, augmented version of the composer’s work receiving its premiere in 1900 at the famed Palais Trocadéro in Paris, fellow-composer Paul Taffenel conducting forces numbering 250 performers.

Conductor Marc Taddei most thrillingly took the course of utilising the choir’s tonal resources for intensely dramatic effect, with the group’s music director Brent Stewart’s expert training and leadership evident in the singing’s control of dynamics and overall shaping of the sounds throughout.  Right from the intensely focused opening Requiem aeternam we relished the controlled honing of the words’ purpose, the “et lux perpetua” thrilling in its outpouring of light and strength, the “luceat eis” a more prayerful supplication. Everything was here underpinned by finely-wrought orchestral playing, with the opening largo becoming andante, and the strings’ counterpointing the tenors’ fervent repetition of the words “Requiem aeternam” – I liked also the almost fiery cries of “exaudi” immediately after the loveliness of the sopranos’ “Te decet hymnus”, emphasising once again the drama of the text’s contrasts, which continued throughout the invocations of the Kyrie and Christe sequences.

A smaller number of voices in a more intimate setting would perhaps have found even more flavoursome nuances in the Offetoire with the repetitions of “O Domine Jesu Christe”, but the “terracing” of these supplications was finely placed, aided by the delicacy and sensitivity of the orchestral playing, the string harmonies reminding me in places (just before the “Hostias”) of some of Vaughan Williams music, Faure’s evocation of “the insubstantiality of lost souls wandering among the abysses”. After these exhortations, how beautiful was the entry of the bass with his “Hostias”, Wade Kernot a touch hesitant here and there, not inappropriate in such a context, but managing to convey enough of the music’s major-key optimism to ease the burden of suffering so tellingly engendered by the music.

A performance highlight for me was the Sanctus, for a number of familiar reasons at first, the celestial tones of the harp, the purity of the women’s and the sonority of the men’s voices, the ethereal playing of the orchestra, all contributed to a sense of ever-burgeoning bliss and radiance, but which then burst forth with unprecedented glory at the introduction to the words “Hosanna in excelsis”, the horns  here for once casting aside all inhibitions and filling the spaces with golden-toned exhortations and resonances, the like of which I’d never before experienced in a live performance, the voices matching the full-bloodedness of the exultation – this was always a moment I’d considered special, but on this occasion one that infused me with incredible joy and excitement at having experienced a kind of long-awaited fulfilment of the music’s promise! – unforgettable!

Normally the Pie Jesu which follows straight on works for me as a kind of corrective to such excess as I’ve described – a cleansing, even a purifying kind of experience which straightaway takes me elsewhere, far from any festive or revelric scenario. I was therefore not a little dismayed at hearing Margaret Medlyn’s voice making such heavy weather of the music’s stratospheric lines, though I had thought it odd that she would be performing it anyway, as her voice has always seemed to me more suited to dramatic roles far removed from the ethereal delicacies of Faure’s music in this instance – something of an evocation of, in William Blake’s words, “a world in a grain of sand”. As it proved she appeared far more at home in the Rachmaninoff which followed after the interval – she was obviously going to always be the choice for the soprano soloist in this work (I still remember a stunning recital featuring some Rachmaninoff songs she and pianist Bruce Greenfield gave on a celebrated occasion – https://middle-c.org/2010/07/from-garden-to-grave-margaret-medlyn-and-bruce-greenfield/) – but surely it’s a voice that would always have been unsuited to Faure’s Pie Jesu? I’m only sad to find myself less than enthusiastic about a performance by a singer whose work I’ve deeply admired in the past, but in vastly different music…..

The serene opening of the Agnus Dei was but the beginning of a journey which took us through contrasting episodes of lyrical beauty (orchestra and tenor voices at the beginning), rapt communion  (those “Wotan’s Farewell”-like chromatic soprano descents at “Lux aeterna”) and blazing fervour (the “quia pius est” pleading from choir and orchestra just before the reprise of the very opening of the work, the choir positively incendiary at “et lux perpetua”!). Then, with the dark, throbbing “Libera Me” we seemed back in the underworld, Wade Kernot’s suitably dark tones secure with the music’s gravitas and direct focus, and the choir creating real frisson with the cries of “Dies illa, dies irae” over throbbing timpani, pulsating organ and louring brass, the horns again superb! The bass’s awe-struck but tender return to the final moments of  the “Libera Me” beautifully signalled a “coming through”, with the organ pedal at the end suggesting something of the abyss over which we had just been taken.

In a sense, the journey’s end came with the “In Paradisum”, the organ positively seraphic at the outset (though nothing I’ve heard anywhere matches the instrument on Andre Cluytens’ EMI recording at this point for sheer beauty!), the voices similarly angelic, the overall atmosphere quietly ecstatic, as befits where we’d been taken to. And yes, I remembered finding myself thinking at this point that it would have been nice to have heard those other Rachmaninoff works I mentioned, but this in nearly all of its parts certainly “did it” for me, thanks to all concerned. Nevertheless, I was glad of the interval’s “quantum leap” therapy, in preparation for what we were about to hear.

A pity we couldn’t have somehow had texts and translations on hand for the Rachmaninoff work, delivered as it was in a Russian translation by symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont of Edgar Allan Poe’s original poem, more of a transliteration, really, which gave an unsurprisingly “Russian” view of Poe’s imagery, dispensing with some of the repetitions and adding peculiarly Russian contextual images and ambiences – Balmont himself called it “an adaptation, more an imitation than a translation”. Besides Rachmaninoff’s own native pessimism of outlook, it all reflected a kind of prophetic sense of impending doom at the failure of the ruling Romanov dynasty to address the life-threatening issues facing many of the Russian people at that time, a situation that was to catastrophically resolve itself in 1917 with the Revolution. Though I’m hardly conversant with the language, I found its peculiar version of Slavic exoticism certainly made a visceral effect, thanks to sterling efforts by the soloists and the chorus, the SOUNDS of the words mirroring the characteristic textures of Rachmaninoff’s music throughout.

The work as a whole could be characterised as a journey from light to darkness over the four movements, and also a life’s journey from carefree youth to impending death. Equally it’s a compendium of human experience refracted through several peoples’ creative processes, with the composer tying the threads together in his music. So the opening “Silver Sleigh Bells” was a kind of magical awakening to a bright, crystalline Russian winter’s day, an instrumental sequence depicting something of a “Jingle Bells” scenario, the music’s scintillating progress halted by the tenor’s arresting “Slyshish!” (Listen!) and then (in a moment which equalled the frisson of the horns’ playing in the “Sanctus” of Faure’s Requiem) the choir broke the poised silence with a tumultuous repetition of the tenor’s single word! – nothing could go wrong from that moment on in the performance, such was its brilliance, depth and resonance of conviction! Tenor soloist Jared Holt I thought did an absolutely splendid job, timing the delicacies of his word-painting with great skill, while conveying terrific energy in his more declamatory utterances.The celebratory mood gradually evolved to one of reflections of “sweet oblivion” as the chorus atmospherically hummed its lines, with string harmonics glistening and eerily whispering, until, roused by the tenor at “Sani mchatsya”, chorus and orchestra built the excitement and volume towards a veritable tsunami of sound which broadened magnificently into a peroration of utter splendour, and then gradually dying to the merest whisper.

Ironically the first few measures of the second movement “Mellow Wedding Bells” featured the first four notes of Rachmaninoff’s “signature motif” the medieval plainchat “Dies irae”, one that grew in intensity before being augmented by the yearning choral voices, counterpointed by a dying fall line from the strings, one which evolved into a romantic meditation upon a pair of eyes gazing at the moon. Margaret Medlyn plunged into her lush lines with total involvement as the orchestral strings and winds conjured up an “Isle of the Dead”-like web of intensities, together with different bells adding their voices to the panoply of interlocking lines and single notes that characterised this movement – the soprano line rose to ecstatic heights when describing the “fairy-tale joy” of the bells pouring their holy blessing on the future. The “Dies irae” chant returned to inform the choral lines with thoughts of “a future where sleeps a tender peace” as the bells continued their blessings, leaving the last word to a descending pair of clarinets.

Following this was the “Loud Alarum Bells” chorus-and-orchestra scherzo, here another performance tour de force, right from the beginning – instrumental warning signals came in a crescendo of panic, before the voices’ conflagration of terror and confusion raged and roared, a “tale of horror, hurling cries into the night” in a frenzy of fear. The music’s sudden downward plunge into a brief trough of despair seemed as frightening and harrowing as the confrontational ferment which reared up again, the Orpheus Choir members displaying incredible energy and committed engagement towards realising the volatility of the composer’s writing. The sheer clamour enlivened even the Michael Fowler Centre, normally not renowned for its immediacy of sound, building up towards the movement’s end to a visceral assault on our listening sensibilities, but one which we wouldn’t have missed for worlds! A gloomily introspective lull towards the end was savagely interrupted by a brief but abruptly decisive payoff, the ensuing bruised-and-battered silence as devastating as was the music itself!

Completing the life-cycle, the survey, the picture, was the final movement “Mournful Iron Bells”, characterised by the poet as “the sound of bitter sorrow, ending the dream of a bitter life”. Here, Rachmaninoff used the mournful strains of the cor anglais to characterise the opening mood, creating an incredibly “laden” sound-picture, the singer (Wade Kernot) intoning his solo supported by an overwhelmingly fatalistic orchestral backdrop, the detailing here almost unnervingly vivid and impactful. Together, singer, choir, conductor and players brought about a heartfelt climax with the words “Vyrastayet v dolgiy gul” (It grows into an endless cry!), before the brasses hinted once again at the “Dies Irae” chant then brutally helped energise the music at “Someone shrieks from the belfry!”, hammering home the bass’s words, allowing for no hope – only terror, pity and hopelessness. After the singer’s final bitter pronouncement of  “…i pratyazhno vazveshchayet a pakoye grabavom” (slowly proclaiming the stillness of the grave), the music suddenly lightened, drifting into the major key and offering a concluding glimmer of consolation.

Together with his “All Night Vigil” Op.37, written in 1915, “The Bells” can be said to be one of the composer’s self-avowed favourite works, worthy of a regular place in the choral repertoire. The work, heard “live” was a revelation for me, and must have been for many others who attended. Grateful thanks are due to both Marc Taddei and Brent Stewart, the respective Music Directors of Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, for enabling a performance that will, I’m certain, stay in the memory of those who heard it as marking a precious occasion.

Nota Bene Choir – an amalgam of mystery and illumination at St. Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Nota Bene presents;
WONDER AND LIGHT  (How to get ahead of yourself while the light still shines)

Nota Bene Choir / Heather Easting (organ)
Shawn Michael Condon (music director)

BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Rejoice in the Lamb  (Festival Cantata)
words by Christopher Smart
Jenny Gould (soprano), Viriginia Earle (alto), Patrick Geddes (tenor) Peter Barber (bass)
Nota Bene Choir
Heather Easting (organ)

MORTON LAURIDSEN – Lux Aeterna
Nota Bene Choir
Heather Easting (organ)

JOONAS KOKKONEN  – Lux Aeterna  (Organ Solo)
Heather Easting (organ)

ERIC WHITACRE – Lux Aurumque (translated by Edward Esch)
Nota Bene Choir

RIHARDS DUBRA – Stetit Angelus
Nota Bene Choir

GRAHAM PARSONS  (words by Jenny Bornholdt)
Instructions For How to Get Ahead of Yourself While the Light Still Shines
Nota Bene Choir

Also, music by GRAHAM KEITCH, KATE RUSBY and ANDREW STEFFENS

St Mary of the Angels Church,
Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday, 20th September, 2020

Surely the Church of St.Mary of the Angels in Wellington’s Boulcott St. is one of the city’s most spectacularly beautiful places in which one can make music, in addition to its acoustics being particularly suited to certain kinds of music for the human voice. In terms of sheer amplitude of sound the venue is surpassed by Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul, but in some music it’s at the expense of clarity at the larger church – here one seems to get the best of both worlds, along with an impressive visual manifestation of aspects of divine worship, irrespective of one’s own spiritual beliefs!

Nota Bene’s “Wonder and Light” programme, under the direction of guest conductor Shawn Michel Condon (music director of the Bach Choir of Wellington), seemed tailor-made for such an environment, being “supported” at almost every juncture of the presentation, the exceptions being items where the English-language texts needed more ambient clarity for their particular points to be conveyed “meaning-wise”. The concert organisers went as far as providing a screen at the front on which were projected Latin texts and translations where applicable, but it was the English-text items that could have done with “help” in this area – particularly those of the works by Britten and Graham Parsons. Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” is sufficiently well-known for the idiosyncratic texts of poet Christopher Smart to be gleaned more-or-less satisfactorily without the help of surtitiles, but I was at a loss to make sense of a good deal of poet Jenny Bornholdt’s text for the Graham Parsons work, despite my deriving a good deal of pleasure from its title alone!

This caveat apart, I derived a good deal of pleasure from the programme, being particularly “taken” by the power and beauty of Morton Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” which occupied most of the first half. Performed entirely in the choir-loft at the church’s rear, the sounds seemed to indeed come from heaven, encouraging one to suspend one’s “mortal coil” for the duration and abandon one’s senses to the music’s “soaring” quality and be suitably transported by it all – in fact, I didn’t even notice the aforementioned screen with its projected Latin words and translations until the concert’s opening item, English composer Graham Keitch’s brief but beautiful “O lux beatissima” , had nearly run its course!

Keitch’s work straightaway set the ambient tone for the concert, the opening bright and welcoming, and building to a glorious expansion of sound at the climax, Heather Easting’s brilliant organ-playing adding to the panoply of sound – I was reminded of comedian Michael Flanders’ explanation concerning his and pianist Donald Swann’s very “assertive” opening number in the pair’s “At the Drop of A Hat” revue presentation, Flanders drolly remarking that the song “helps us get the pitch of the hall!”. Morton Lauridsen’s more extended “Lux  Aeterna” which followed began less assertively with a quiet organ solo, the figurations gradually opening up the vistas for the voices, a sound characterised by resonance and warmth, bringing comfort via the gentle tones of the “Requiem”, and then resounding splendidly for “Exaudi Orationam Meam” (Hear my prayer), before coming back to earth.

The “Miserere” of the next section alternated some beautifully “floated” phrases in tandem with the organ, enlivening the discourse with the occasional angular note or phrase. The “O nata lux” (O born of light) section began with the organ, then some tender harmonies from the choir, rising in fervour at “Dignare clemens supplicum”, and even more so at “Nos membra confer effici” (We may become part). Joyous, celebratory strains filled the ambiences with “Veni Sanctus Spiritus”, a sequence which featured the voices repeatedly ascending, flinging their voices aloft in exultation. The “Agnus Dei” brought a more pensive mood became more pensive,  with each of the three supplications adding to the intensities of the previous one, the third and last adding the word “sempiternam’ to the phrase, which prompted some extended upward-thrusting expressions of redemptive desire. With the return to the words of the opening, “Requiem aeternam”, and “Lux Aeterna” the women’s voices soared over the men’s, leading to the piece’s final fervent “Alleluias”, introduced by the organ, but brought to fruition by the choir in splendid fashion, after which a quiet “Amen” sequence brought the music to a close.

Benjamin Britten’s piquantly delightful cantata “Rejoice in the Lamb” began the concert’s second half, the singers remaining in the choir loft for the work’s performance, which surprised me, as I thought the texts, written by sixteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, would require the singers to be closer to their audience for the words to properly “tell”. As it turned out, the diction and projection of all the singers, both solo and in ensemble, enabled more of the text to be heard and understood than I expected it would, apart from the most rapidly-delivered passages. Still, I thought it a pity that the words weren’t projected on the screen as were those of the Lauridsen “Lux Aeterna”.

The lovely opening, like a day’s awakening, was a kind of morning prayer, intoned by the men’s voices and accompanied with adroit timing and great whimsicality on the part of organist, Heather Easting. And while the more forthright choral passage “Let Nimrod the Mighty Hunter” was noted more for its thrust and weight than its clarity, the music’s dancing energies made a joyful, almost abandoned impression – and the succeeding “Alleluias” were so very beautiful and moving. The first vocal solo, that depicting the poet’s cat, Jeffrey, was delivered with beautiful vocal tones by soprano Jenny Gould and great dancing charm from the organ, even though the words from a distance were well-nigh unintelligible. Just as charming in a more forthright manner was the Mouse, sung by Virginia Earle with some spirit, the creature’s “personal valour” defying the cat’s murderous intentions! A tenor solo elucidated the “great blessings” of flowers, quiet and dignified, but true toned, if showing a little strain in places; and supported sonorously by the organ’s ability to “colour” its notes.

Words and music took a sudden detour into darkness for the next section, the poet’s equating his sufferings with those of his “Saviour”, and describing his own fears and terrors, the choir and organist relishing the composer’s use of sharp, angular contrasts and chiaroscuro-like settings of light against darkness. The mood gradually lightene as the last soloist, bass Peter Barber proclaimed God in all things, putting across the words with increasing elan and conviction, and succeeding in rousing voices and organ to a dancing celebration of God’s creation in rhyme and rhythm. At this point the choir, by way of a series of hushed, absolutely delicious chordings, registered that, the day being almost done, serenity and contentment were at hand – the Alleluias of the work’s first part returned, bringing with them a lump-in-the-throat-inducing feeling of empathy with and for the poet, a disturbed but intermittently happy soul.

An organ solo by Joons Kokkonen, almost epilogue-like in relation to the Britten work, built like a great “flowering” from its muted beginnings, strangely echoing the cries of “Silly fellow!” in the Britten, but with each step-like sequence, moving to a higher realm of radiance, the bass notes near the end taking on an almost Fafner-like aspect of menace and magnificence! The climax almost combatatively “clustered” the notes before the music eased into a resolution, withdrawing to a distant, muted standpoint of serene stasis – beautiful!

From the Kokkonen work’s relative severity we were taken to what appeared from its title to be a form of profound drollery, in the form of a work by Palmerston North composer Graham Parsons, “Instructions for How to Get Ahead of Yourself While the Light Still Shines”, the words by poet Jenny Bornholdt, many of which, alas, the ample acoustic annoyingly blurred (with no help forthcoming from the screen). Tracking down the poem’s words later made me regret all the more that the performance couldn’t under such circumstances elucidate them more clearly – all delightfully childlike and sagacious at one and the same time! It seemed unfair that the Latin texts of the evening’s performances were invariably supported by “the word added to flesh”, whereas the English-text works were left to keep themselves afloat as best they could without any such help…..thus it was that the Eric Whitacre work “Lux Aurumque” which followed had the words and their translations on display, readily conveying a directness of focus for the piece in a certain way, aside from the mere visceral effect on the listener of voices beautifully teasing out the sound textures, creating luminous abstractions that could be relished as such on their own.

The remainder of the programme was “lighter” fare, though every item got the sort of treatment whose sounds brought out the essential character of the music – a traditional Finnish song, “Kaipaava”, for example (one comparing the beloved to fine grass, while the “self” remains as “lowly as the earth”) had the altos beginning with the song’s minor-key melody beneath a descant from the sopranos, the men joining in the third verse, and a soprano solo adding to the colour and folksiness of the presentation. Rihards Dubra’s work “Stetit Angelus” (An angel stood near the sanctuary of the Temple) was actually more substantial than its companions, opening with a remarkably vibrant oscillating chord from the women, over the top of the men’s deeper tones, the effect  one of ecstatic swaying figures – the whole was bound together in a hymn-like chant, the women holding a single line and the men interlacing its strands – a magical evocation. “Underneath the Stars” was a song by Kate Rusby, for SATB featuring a soprano solo with an echoed accompaniment, while the concert’s final item was “Spells of Herrick” by Andrew Steffens, accompanied on the piano by Heather Easting, the first part an “Incantation”, beautifully harmonised by men’s voices at the beginning (the words a mystery!), and the second, more assertive section “Charms” expressed an effect suggested by the eponymous title!

Altogether a feast for the senses, a concert well-named in its amalgam of mystery and illumination.

“May the earth not be made desolate …” – Invocations from The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Calvin Scott

Invocations – choral music that responds to pandemics and times of crisis

The Tudor Consort under the direction of Michael Stewart

St. Paul’s Cathedral, Saturday 29 August at 7pm

It is an eerie reminder of how little the human condition has changed over time when we consider that, in the 21st century, our approach to dealing with a global pandemic is essentially medieval: practices of social distancing and quarantine have their origins in the 14th century when European populations were trying to control outbreaks of the bubonic plague. While we now have an 0800 Healthline number that we can call at any time day or night to talk to someone about COVID-19, the equivalent for our medieval ancestors was to call upon, and invoke the powers of, divine heavyweights such as Mary, Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, or St. Sebastian (patron saint of plague and protection) who were similarly available at all hours (and in high demand at the time).

On Saturday evening Wellington’s a capella vocal ensemble The Tudor Consort – a group of twenty-two singers under the direction of Michael Stewart – presented a range of beautiful choral pieces, most of them lamentations on the state of the world during an epidemic. Given the name of the ensemble, it was fitting that a number of works on the programme were indeed composed during the Tudor era (between 1485 and 1603).

The highly informative programme notes provided excellent background material to the presented pieces and reading through the pieces’ Latin texts with their descriptions of some of the disease’s symptoms was enlightening: ‘posuit me desolatam tota die maerore confectam’ (‘it has left me stunned and faint all day long’); ‘mortis ulcere’ (wound of death); ‘a me enerva infirmitatem noxiam vocatem epidemiam’ (‘untie me from the cords of harmful weakness called the epidemic) etc.

The concert began with the original plainsong ‘Stella caeli extirpavit’ which is considered to have been composed by the Sisters of the Monastery of Santa Clara in Coimbra Portugal during the Black Death (between 1347 and 1351). It is a plea for divine clemency in the face of illness and the plague, invoking Mary as a healer whose motherhood of Christ cured the ‘plague’ of original sin, asking her intercession for those suffering from physical disease. Three polyphonic settings of the plainsong’s text followed: one by John Cook, a musician who was among the personnel who accompanied the entourage of Henry V in the Agincourt expedition of 1415; and two others by Walter Lambe and John Thorne, both drawn from the Eton Choirbook, a richly illuminated manuscript collection of English sacred music composed during the late 15th century for use at Eton College. This was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

While the melodic lines of these polyphonic settings all followed a clear intuition about which note or chord the piece would finish on, the tonal consciousness they reflected was very different. I found myself immersed in a past but beautiful tone world that existed before there was ever a concept of a Western tonal system. This was the aural sphere of (pretonal) modes of Gregorian chant, troubadour and trouvère music, and Minnesang. As demonstrated by the three presented settings of ‘Stella caeli extirpavit’, the focus of early polyphony is the horizontal movement of the individual voices (along the x-axis so to speak). As a result, there are moments where, in a vertical sense (i.e. on the y-axis), they chafe against each other momentarily to create striking and sometimes pungent dissonances.

The third of these settings by John Thorne consisted of a trio, performed by guest singer, Christopher Brewerton of the celebrated British men’s chorus The King’s Singers, alongside Tudor Consort members Philip Roderick and Andrea Cochrane. This exquisite performance gave us a glimpse of the divine.

Settings by English Renaissance composers William Byrd and Thomas Tallis followed, who, despite both being committed Catholics, found great favour with Queen Elizabeth I who was a Protestant (albeit a moderate one) with a weakness for elaborate Roman Catholic ritual. In 1575, she granted both Byrd and Tallis a twenty-one year monopoly for composing polyphonic music and a patent to print and publish music.

Byrd’s setting of the prayer ‘Recordare Domine’ demonstrated the composer’s liking for closely woven, imitative choral textures and the repeated dissonances on the syllables ‘desoletur terra’ were a lovely effect within the work’s smooth and lucid part writing. Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah is a striking and emotive work, taking its inspiration from the poetic laments for the destruction in 586BC of Jerusalem as collected in the Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations. Punctuated only by the meditative, static treatment of the Hebrew letters (Aleph, Beth), Tallis’s music mirrors the text, achieving heightened poignancy through the use of dissonance: the contrastingly untroubled major tonality of ‘plorans ploravit’ (‘she weeps bitterly’) had a strangely charged intensity.

After a brief interval the concert continued with a motet by the Spanish composer Francisco Guerrero (1529-1599) who would have no doubt had quite a different take on Philip II’s ill-fated Armada (the Grande y Felicísima Armada) than his English counterparts. His motet Beatus es is a setting of a devotional prayer to Saint Sebastian who (along with Saint Roch) was regarded as having a special ability to intercede to protect from the plague as noted above (he is also the patron saint of archers and pin-makers). Despite the profound beauty of this work (that could have only delighted the Saint to whom it was addressed), Guerrero nonetheless ended up dying of the plague.

A further supplication to Saint Sebastian was then presented, this time in the form of a motet by Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay (circa 1397 to 1474). A group of soprano voices along with Peter Maunder and Sarah Rathbun on sackbut (an early form of the modern trombone) reopened the window into a tantalising and distant aural world of late medieval polyphony. The programme notes provided an excellent guide for the listener, explaining the canonic and ‘isorhythmic’ design of the work.

After a beautifully sung prayer for mercy ‘contra pestem’ (‘against the plague’) by Frenchman Philippe Verdelot (circa 1480 to circa 1540), the singers presented further Lamentations of Jeremiah, this time by yet another Catholic Elizabethan composer, Robert White (circa 1538 to 1574). His setting follows the example of Tallis, displaying a mastery of large-scale form and showing new harmonic boldness. The Tudor Consort’s rendition was, again, angelic.

The concert ended with somewhat of an experiment: a setting of Psalm 130 by 20th century Italian composer, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) whom I for one had never heard of before. This was an example of sumptuous late Romantic choral writing which completely disoriented me: my ears had become so attuned to the crystalline beauty of sacred Renaissance vocal music, and my aural receptivity had adjusted so much to pretonal modal horizons, that I found Pizzetti’s setting, although wonderfully performed, quite unintelligible. Perhaps I will approach this composer and this work again one day (possibly after some prolonged listening to Scriabin beforehand).

We are so lucky in Wellington to have such a wonderful group of singers as the Tudor Consort and, assuming that their musical supplications have an impact and COVID-19 finally disappears, I look forward to their next concert on 7 November that will take a specific moment in Tudor history as its theme: The Field of the Cloth of Gold (Camp du Drap d’Or), a tournament held as part of the (geo-political) summit between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France five-hundred years ago in June 1520.