Tag: contemporary music

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Requiem
CHRISTOPHER TIN – To Shiver the Sky

Emma Pearson (soprano), Charlotte Secker (mezzo-soprano),
Ridge Ponini (tenor), Robert Tucker (bass)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington
Children’s Choir (Samuel Marsden  Collegiate School, Wellington Girls’ College,
Wellington East Girls’ College)
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, April 18^th, 2026

Music can readily speak to us from across the ages, especially with word-settings of frequently-performed choral works, from Renaissance and Baroque times, throughout the classical and romantic eras and into and including works up to the present day. Tonight’s presentation featured music from, firstly, the classical world of Mozart, his poignantly unfinished but still resounding Requiem, and from the present day, a work by American-born composer of Chinese descent, Christopher Tin –  his choral work “To Shiver the Sky” an epic, time-traversing tribute to human flight in various aspirations and forms.

Firstly came the Mozart – a work that’s grown partly out of legend wrought by confused, incomplete documentations and by the transcendence of the work itself (its genesis was a request from a dilettante nobleman wanting to pass the work off as his own, though Mozart’s health had declined to the point where he became convinced he was writing his own Requiem). He died with parts of it unfinished, leaving his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to finish the uncompleted sections so that the promised fee would be paid to Mozart’s widow, Constanze. What Süssmayr did has since been hotly debated by scholars in regard to its extent, with even further revised versions appearing that reduce the latter’s contributions and reconstruct certain parts based on the composer’s own structural and harmonic style  – which, to be fair, is what the much-maligned Süssmayr reconstructions themselves partly succeeded in doing anyway!

Some performances have presented what Mozart wrote and no more, though the outcomes have come across as more pedantic than musical – so the tradition of an unfinished piece of music completed by one or more helping hands has become firmly entrenched, probably to the relief of the majority of listeners in this case!. Heard this evening in a brilliantly-wrought performance by conductor Brent Stewart with a nimbly sonorous Orpheus Choir and full-blooded responses complementing exquisite detailings from Orchestra Wellington, the results were eminently satisfying. Only the solo singing was variable in a couple of places –  the women’s voices, the ever-pleasing soprano of  Emma Pearson and that of her enthusiastic and capable mezzo counterpart Charlotte Secker, were a consistent joy throughout, but both men, tenor Ridge Ponini and bass Robert Tucker seemed, I thought, to have to work surprisingly hard in their delivery of some of the orchestra-accompanied text. The tenor was a new name to me but I had previously heard and enjoyed Robert Tucker in a number of roles (a wonderful Noye in Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde” for instance), so  I was, for instance, surprised at my difficulty in picking up some of his lower notes in passages such as his “Tuba Mirum” solo, admittedly treacherous that they are to sing.

Brent Stewart maintained a lucid balance between orchestra and choir throughout, with vocal lines and orchestral detailing alike maintaining a splendid clarity. The fugal “Kyrie Eleison” was well-sprung but not rushed, allowing us to revel in the delicious energies of the singing’s contrapuntal passagework. I liked the impetuousness  of the beginning of the “Dies Irae”, plunging into the ferment of terror and dread conjured up by text and music immediately at the end of the “Kyrie”, the different sections engaging a multitude of responses from solo and choral voices, with the “Tuba Mirum” sequence bringing all the soloists into play – bass Robert Tucker sounding splendid with his very opening declamation, while tenor Ridge Ponini stylishly delivered “Mors stupebit” (what wonderful poetry these words make!). Charlotte Secker’s mezzo was suitably awe-struck at the judge’s entrance (“Judex ergo cum sedebit”), bringing into relief soprano Emma Pearson’s heartfelt “Quid sum miser”, the voices harmonising beautifully for the verse’s final “Cum vix justus sit securus” plea for justice and mercy.

As for the choir, the voices responded as readily to their conductor’s encouragement of majestic tone from the men with “Rex, tremende majestatis”  as with beseeching and  piteous pleas at “Salve me fons pietatis” uttered by the women.from the women’s voices. Such a dramatic, almost theatrical contrast with adjoining passages was repeated with the men’s plunging into “Confutatis maledictis” with sterling orchestral support, and the women’s almost ethereal plea “Voca me cum Benedictus” in response. Even more ethereal and atmospheric was the wonderfully spooky “Oro supplex et acclinis” for the whole choir, sung sotto voce, with the trombones helping to colour the accompanying chords in the most downcast and submissive manner for the concluding “Gere curam mei finis” (Help me in my final condition!)

All Requiem roads lead, of course, into and through the “Lacrimosa” the pity of which was beautifully captured here, emphasised by the haltingly staccato-ish delivery of the rising notes of “Qua resurget ex favilla” – the “rising from the ashes”  of all humanity – a particularly heart-stopping moment bursting into full-blooded  feeling came with “Judicandus homo reus”  – when Man shall be judged! Such depth of feeling needed a stirring and well-focused end-point which was delivered with a splendidly rock-solid “Amen”.

No rest, however, was accorded the forces, the immediately following sequence a driving and exciting Offetorium,  “Domine Jesu Christe”, with music and texts urgently and agitatedly delivered, first by the choir and then by the soloists summonsing up the celestial standard-bearer St Michael to lead the way (“Sed signifier Sanctus Michael”). But even more thrilling were the exhortations for the redemption of Abraham and his descendants  – here, presented as and duly given exciting contrapuntal treatment from both voices and players (“Quam olim Abrahae”) to absolutely exhilarating effect!

The following “Hostias” wrought the changes most effectively – the music’s pacing was more meditative, though the voices varied their dynamics tellingly throughout alternating both complete lines and short phrases of text with dramatic “loud-soft” changes. But the sudden, theatrical return of “Quam olim Abrahae” as before was brilliantly handled, with the contrapuntal lines tossed exhilaratingly back and forth until the music cried “enough!” with a final, hushed “et semini ejus!”.

Then came the grandly-voiced “Sanctus”, here an outpouring of glorious acclamation, though with a surprisingly abrupt fugal treatment of “Hosanna in excelsis”. However, the “Benedictus” which followed was here so exquisite one could forgive the composer the seeming rush to immerse everybody in such beauteous strains – again the women’s voices had a “presence” which the men couldn’t quite match, though both bass and tenor had solo moments allowing their voices space in which to “sound” – and, together with some noble brass playing, the general effect gave considerable pleasure to all.

More scalp-prickling contrasts were afforded by the “Agnus Dei”, with emotionally astringent opening chorus tones heightened in retrospect by hushed responses of “Dona eis requiem, the third beautifully elongated with the word “sempiternam”. Back came the music of “Te decet hymnus”  from the Introitus, again sung by the soprano – “Lux Aeterna lucceat eis” (Let eternal light shine”), leading to a reprise of the “Kyrie” fugal music for the work’s concluding “Cum Sanctus tuis in aeternum” – vigorous, confident and fulfilling, as befitted the final moments of such a work.

Whatever criticism might be levelled at the much-maligned Sussmayr for his “completions”  Brent Stewart and his forces gave the kind of performance that disarmed any thoughts of inadequacy or inappropriateness relating to the overall effect of the work – one was reminded of that great Mozartean Sir Thomas Beecham who once caustically remarked upon certain freshly discovered “edits” relating to Haydn’s music with the words “Are they scholarly or musical?” At the conclusion of this performance I felt more than readily inclined to credit Mozart’s posthumous Requiem’s editor with a  completed task worthy of Beecham’s approval!

A different world awaited us in the concert’s second half, enthusiastically introduced by conductor Brent Stewart, and featuring American composer Christopher Tin’s work “To Shiver the Sky”. The composer himself describes the work as “an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind’s quest to conquer the heavens”. Tin used texts from eleven sources and in different languages, the writings of astronomers, inventors, visionaries and aviators themselves – the work’s title was taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, one whose subject was actually the ill-fated “Tower of Babel” which the poet describes as built “to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart”. Significantly, some of these efforts included in the work described disastrous failures and/or destructive rather than life-enhancing purposes, though the over-riding theme is one of adventure, progress and outward-looking aspiration.

I felt I was suddenly in a “minority” in the concert-hall, as many of the audience audibly resonated with Brent Stewart’s description of the work as having connections with a video game, Civilization IV, one whose theme music was used in the opening section of tonight’s presentation, the “Sogno di Volare”. Though a conventional orchestra and choral forces were used, the music had a definite kind of “New Age” flavour and excitement, one to which my rather more old-fashioned sensibilities still managed to positively respond in all but one particular instance!

Beginning with the aforementioned Sogno di Volare (Dream of Flight), a setting of writings of Leonardo da Vinci, the orchestra launched into an excitable repeated rhythmic pattern to which the choir firstly contributed a recitative-like refrain describing the poet’s aspiration towards imitating what birds can do, and thus achieving the heart’s desire – to fly! Choir and orchestra then moved majestically towards imagining mankind’s great joy at achieving what the birds achieve, and “filling the universe with wonder and glory”.  The subtitles were difficult to read from where I was sitting, and the programme notes impossible due to the dim light in the auditorium – so following specific ideas from the text during the performance posed difficulties! However, the sheer energies of the singing and playing enabled one to be caught up in a kind of torrent of inspiration, even when reference-points were difficult to decipher!

The 11^th-Century mystic Hildegarde of Bingen was the next librettist, with “The Heavenly Kingdom”, the words describing how the birds in flight expressed devotion to heavenly things, and in doing so expressed heavenly love – a smaller group of women’s voices intoned timeless-sounding  melismatic phrases describing the seeming devotion of birds,  strings and winds gradually adding their supporting strains, then joined by  larger groups of voices, the effect almost canonical when intertwining their lines with the women’s voices, their interactions bedecked by shimmering percussion and excitable winds in places before allowing the smaller group of voices the final say.

The first truly dramatic sequence darkly followed, a setting of Ovid’s account in “Metamorphosis” of Daedalus and Icarus attempting to escape their imprisonment on the island of Crete by King Minos, through the use of bird’s feathers made and shaped into wings and held together by wax and flying to freedom. Daedalus warned his son Icarus to take a “middle course” when flying, neither too high nor too low, but Icarus disobeyed his father, exulting in his powers of flight and soaring upwards towards the sun – when the wax melted and the feathers were lost Icarus plunged into the sea and drowned. A darkly urgent and fearful orchestral opening  introduced Daedalus outlining his plan to his son – though tenor Ridge Ponini gave his all to the text the ever-mounting orchestral forces made it difficult for us to decipher his words, though we still got the sense of the father warning the son, and the excitement felt by the boy at being able to fly like a bird! – the sense, firstly of exhilaration, and then of impending danger, were ardently conveyed by orchestra and choir. The most heart-rending moment was Daedalus’s despairing cries of “Icare! Icare!” after the boy had fallen – the women’s voices continued the despairing lament for Icarus with a repeated percussion- accompanied sequence (which, though initially moving, I thought by the end somewhat too much of a good thing!)

It followed that the fourth poem “The Fall” from Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” eminently suited the sense of loss and failure which followed the fall of Icarus, equating it with the larger principle of success often being accompanied by failure. The words from both soloist and choir were unclear throughout, but a general sense of lamentation came across as paramount.

The fifth sequence, Astronomy, with lyrics by Nicolaus Copernicus, was given a passionately-delivered  performance by the choir, sparklingly punctuated with percussive scintillations, the words a paean of homage to the heavens, their beauties fully revealed through observation, as “the work of God”. A strikingly colourful contrast came with the setting which followed, that of Jules Verne’s “De la Terre a la Lune”  – I enjoyed the spaciousness of the orchestral textures and the lightness of the singing from the children’s choruses – the music had an engagingly innocent, almost naïve quality about its buoyancy and confidence, and made an even more telling variance with what then followed, harsh, aggressive tones introducing words attributed to German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin regarding the use of aircraft for peaceful human interaction between nations, and concluding with the despairing words “Oh, the Misfortune!” – a nightmarish sequence mercifully relieved without a pause by humming voices introducing (or transitioning) to the next sequence!

This was a setting of aviatrix Amelia Earhart’s poem “Courage”, one which, though heartfelt, didn’t, in a sense, for me, convey sufficient real and palpable sense of the loneliness and solitude which would have been part-and-parcel of the explorer’s experience. It seemed intent, instead, upon morphing into a kind of show-stopping aria-like outpouring of emotion, almost a stock-in-trade moment which I thought missed some of the essence of what was Earhart’s achievement – however, others will (and seemed to at the time) feel differently! What however, garnered an undisputed unanimity of response was the following setting – an incredible evocation of implacable power, might and destruction far beyond ordinary human experience  – this was “Become Death” , J.Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita, upon witnessing the first nuclear bomb test in the United States in the 1940s, sung in the original language. Its effect was indescribable, remaining in my mind long after all other sounds from the work had ceased to resound – incredible in a kind of nihilistic way….the ghostly opening voices were followed by mournfully beseeching string tones, leading to sudden ghoulish reiterations of the voice representing Death the Destroyer, as the percussion incessantly roared and winds repeatedly shrieked, until all that was left was a piercing single note which died into nothingness…….

Just as impactful, but in an entirely different way was the composer’s treatment of the words of space’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, a soulful statement of humanity that transcended national boundaries and  spoke for all peoples. I liked Tin’s “growing” of the voices from the men’s very matter-of-fact beginnings and burgeoning into a whole-choir paean of love and respect for Planet Earth, and the desire to “preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!”, then finishing with an evocation of “the power of the spirit” in mankind. It was, I thought in retrospect,, one that might well have provided a fitting climax to the work! However…….

The final setting was of words drawn from President John F. Kennedy’s famous  “We choose to go to the moon” speech in relation to the United States space exploration programme. While it seemed like a great idea for a setting in theory,  I actually found parts of it somewhat uncomfortable to listen to – though the sentiments expressed may have been worthy ones in their original context many of the words seemed to me here to be forced into a hasty marriage with a kind of all-purpose Disney-like musical surface sheen. Parts of the text did for me work, responding to music-setting more readily than did others – the section ‘We set sail on this new sea…..” down to “….the progress of all people” shared with the words a rhythmic swing and a lyrical unanimity of purpose – as did some of the section leading up to “….a theatre of war”……with appropriately baleful orchestral accompaniments.  And the rhetoric associated with weapons and hostile flags was appropriately mitigated by mention of “the banner of freedom and peace”. But so much of the rest of it (even the Mallory story, for example, containing the mountaineer’s well known reasoning for climbing Mt.Everest – “Because it’s there!”) seemed to me like earnestly-delivered note-spinning – words simply out of kilter with their music!

Obviously my reaction will not be shared by many, judging by the ovation the work received at the end – I am even finding myself at odds with younger generation family members who also heard the work!! And I did think Tin’s work in general an astounding achievement in its range and scope, despite what I thought were the occasional longeurs, and the final setting’s “in-places intractability”. The sheer impact, and the underlying message of the “Become Death” sequence, for one, will haunt my sensibilities for a long time to come, and I would readily go back to many of the other evocations to enjoy, once again, the various librettists’ inspirational words and Christopher Tin’s insightful elaborations through his inspired settings of almost  (in my opinion) all of them!

Very great credit to conductor Brent Stewart for his unflagging energies and inspirational direction – and to his performers, vocalists and instrumentalists, who manifestly “gave it all” throughout the evening – the coupling of “established” with the “new” was a great success, truly inspired and engaging, and the results as performed and received were nothing short of tumultuous tumultuous!