Tag: oratorio

Impressive semi-staged Elijah from Orpheus Choir, Orchestra Wellington and superb soloists

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington and Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor); Frances Moore (staging director)

Mendelssohn: Elijah

Martin Snell (Elijah), Lisa-Harper-Brown (widow), Maaike Christie-Beekman (Angel), Jamie Young (Obadiah), Archie Taylor (Boy); voice students of New Zealand School of Music,

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 23 May 2015, 7.30pm

I found this performance of Elijah entertaining, inspiring, and of a very high standard.  So did the large, attentive audience, who responded enthusiastically.  After the performance, I heard many favourable comments.

The first thing that struck one coming into the auditorium was the huge screen behind the choir seats.  However, it was not used for projecting images, but was simply suffused with colour.  The colour chosen varied with the mood or location of the various sections of the oratorio.

Martin Snell came on, in business suit but without a tie, and sang the words of the introductory oration, then while the orchestra played the Overture, the choir wandered in, wearing casual clothes in white or light colours, which I took to denote a Middle Eastern setting – but this made it curious that the soloists were dressed in modern garments.  It was good to see the choir appearing to have personalities, rather than being in their usual dour black, which makes the members fade into the background. Bright lighting enhanced the visual effect.

The orchestra members were placed on low platforms, to be above the action on the front of the stage.

Martin Snell immediately impressed; he was in fine voice.  In a radio interview he had said that he had sung the oratorio numbers of times in its language of writing: German, presumably in Germany and Switzerland, where he is based.  (This rather gives the lie to Roger Wilson’s assertion in his excellent programme note, that it ‘is seldom performed in Germany’.)  Snell therefore found it quite difficult, he said, to fit the English words to the notes.  However, that was not apparent.  Except that he sang entirely from the score.  In their much smaller roles, Harper-Brown used it some of the time, but Maaike Christie-Beekman not at all.

After performances in the 1950s and 1960s, the Orpheus Choir sang the work in 1971, and then not again until 1999, when there was a semi-staged performance, when Rodney Macann, dressed in sackcloth, sang the title role entirely from memory, moving round the stage in dramatic fashion.  However, apart from several other soloists being in costume, that version bore little relation to this semi-staged version.

Some of the choir were initially disposed at the front of the stage as a semi-chorus (where they could not see the conductor), before later taking their places in the main chorus.  The orchestra set the atmosphere well.

Brent Stewart conducted clearly and decisively, although it seemed to me that in the first half he was conducting with his hand, the baton being merely an extension.  However, in the second half he found his baton technique.

Almost throughout the performance, the projection of words by both soloists and choir was good – but I was sitting fairly near the front.  All the soloists sang as the real professionals most of them are; this applied also to a couple of the NZSM students who had minor roles of some significance: Katherine McIndoe and William McElwee.  It was most impressive to observe the resonance Martin Snell obtains by using the resonators of the face to assist in delivering the goods.

The orchestra’s every note, rhythm and dynamic seemed to be in place.  This was true of the choir also; I only observed one false, stumbling entry in the whole work in which, after Elijah, the choir has most to do.

I was tempted to say that this was Martin Snell’s night, such is the size of his role and the quality of his performance.  That would be unfair – it was also the choir’s and the orchestra’s night.  Snell handled the high tessitura of most of his role with aplomb – and got an opportunity to use his low notes in the quartet ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord’, one of the most beautiful moments, with its solo quartet sections and intervening orchestral passages.

There were a few judicious cuts in the work, to bring the length down, but the only number I really missed was the felicitous ‘He that shall endure to the end’.  It would have been another demonstration of the huge variety of Mendelssohn’s writing; his ability to move from rousing to contemplative, to delicate, from chorale-like harmony to fugue.  In the delicate category was the lovely trio ‘Lift thine eyes’, sung by a women’s semi-chorus – in this case, the NZSM students, as angels, sited in the left gallery.  Here, I felt there was insufficient lightness, blend, or ethereal textures.

Elsewhere, they produced lovely tone, balance and blend, although I found them insufficiently impassioned as the priests of Baal (re-costumed in black) compared with the following chorus from
the full choir.  One feature of the choir’s singing was that fortissimo passages were sung with lively tone that was still pleasant on the ear, for example, in ‘Woe to him!  He shall perish’.  In contrast was the delicious ‘He, watching over Israel’, all calm and dignity.

The full choruses were splendid, as was Lisa Harper-Brown, in her roles as widow and soprano soloist.  Jamie Young, the tenor, was a little uneven.  In his first solo, ‘If with all your hearts’ he was fine, apart from a couple of strained higher notes.

Action there was, but it seldom distracted from the music, and in fact added drama and interest.  The inherent drama in the music and words was demonstrated, in a naturalistic way.

Elijah’s solo ‘It is enough!’ featured a solo cello that both precedes the sung aria and continues through it.  This was exquisitely played by Brenton Veitch.  Another delightful instrumental solo was for oboe, in Elijah’s aria ‘For the mountains shall depart’.

Archie Taylor performed his role as the boy more than satisfactorily.  He had to act as well as sing; his voice was clear and true.

The famous solo ‘O rest in the Lord’ was beautifully sung by Christie-Beekman, without being made too sentimental.  The orchestral accompaniment was a marvel of delicacy and subtlety.  I was horrified to see in the printed programme (but not in Roger Wilson’s note) ‘Oh rest in the Lord’ – using the feeble exclamation instead of the ‘O’ of invocation.

The chorus, appropriately, have the last word, singing ‘And then shall your light break forth’.  Who said Mendelssohn was not a genius?  In my book he was, and this triumph of a performance was another proof; the opera he never wrote.

The production involved movement for the choir as well as for the semi-chorus and soloists; all this was a lot of work for a one-off performance.

 

A brave Kapiti Chamber Choir gives good account of Bach’s Mass in B minor

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kapiti Chamber Choir conducted by Eric Sidoti

Bach: Mass in B minor

Soloists: Katherine McIndoe – soprano, Elizabeth Harris – soprano, Ruth Reid – contralto, John Beaglehole – tenor, Roger Wilson – bass
And Orchestra

Paraparaumu College Auditorium

Sunday 26 April, 2:30 pm

The Kapiti Chamber Choir is the smaller of the two choirs in the district (the other, larger, choir is the Kapiti Chorale) established or taken over by Peter Godfrey after he came to Kapiti.

Some might have felt that it was singularly ambitious for an amateur choir to tackle one of the biggest and most demanding choral works. In their defence, however, their conductor Eric Sidoti reported that this was the runaway favourite when, after taking it over in 2013, he surveyed the choir on its wish-list. He minimised the challenge by suggesting that his main task had been to ensure that he had the forces to cope with the varying orchestral, choral and soloists requirements.

Middle C finds itself a bit stretched at present in terms of the availability of its small team of reviewers, and it fell to me (by no means reluctant) to make a southward trip from a retreat at Waikawa Beach, miscalculating travel times and traffic. I arrived about 15 minutes late as the reprise of the Kyrie began.

I sat on the nearest seat, right under the noses of the soloists, which gave me a feeling of intimacy and almost participation, but a somewhat unbalanced impression of the chorus, as well as having certain parts of the orchestra, for example, trumpets in the Gloria, and the soloists too close. Perhaps it allowed me to enjoy a certain amount of slightly disorganised playing occasionally, iffy intonation and approximate ensemble, such as the start of the ‘Laudamus te’. But it gave an unjust overall impression, as I found when I moved to the back of the hall after the interval.

I’m sure that the orchestral skills had not suddenly improved by the Credo, after the interval; and that whatever blemishes I heard at close quarters simply became rather unimportant when one heard the whole in proper, fairer perspective.

One thing that struck me throughout was the general strength of the men’s parts of the choir, and the curious impression that there were more weaknesses in sopranos and altos, though they too never amounted to real shortcomings.

Soloists were very able, ranging from experienced singers like alto Ruth Reid, tenor John Beaglehole and bass Roger Wilson (his solo in ‘Et in spiritum’ lay quite high, but there seemed no strain; his solo in ‘Quoniam’ on the other hand was lower), to new graduates who took the two soprano parts, Katherine McIndoe and Elizabeth Harris both of whom displayed bright, attractive voices that filled their roles with intelligence and accuracy.

There were some fine moments: Elizabeth Harris with Jay Hancox’s violin obbligato in the ‘Laudamus te’ of the Gloria; the duet between Katherine McIndoe and Ruth Reid, ‘Et in unum’, went well. John Beaglehole had fine moments in ‘Domine Deus’ (with Katherine McIndoe) and with flutist Malu Jonas in the Benedictus; the duetting of Roger Wilson and trumpeter Andrew Weir in ‘Quoniam’ made an impact, and trumpets were again brilliant in the ‘Et resurrexit’ in the Credo. One of the trumpets (Mark Carter’s?) looked and sounded like a piccolo trumpet, lending an authentic baroque character.

The conductor chose to use soloists in place of the chorus in certain places, as is done quite often, affording better clarity as well giving them more welcome exposure.

I was very glad that we had an orchestra accompanying, with some nice oboes (one came close to sounding like an oboe d’amore) and flutes; I enjoyed the capable timpani contribution too.

The Mass, much of it drawn from earlier music written for other contexts, is remarkable for its aesthetic coherence, but its various origins also afford it a variety of style and emotion that is not only appropriate to the subject of each section, but also maintains the audience’s interest. And even from a smallish choir of non-specialist singers, the long work did indeed hold the attention, and gave the almost full house a very satisfying two hours of great music.

 

Fine Israel in Egypt from Tudor Consort in challenging acoustic

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Handel’s Israel in Egypt

The Tudor Consort with The Chiesa Ensemble (comprising 25 members of the NZSO, with Douglas Mews  harpsichord), directed by Michael Stewart

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Saturday 6 September 2014

Israel in Egypt sets out to recount the Old Testament story of Israel’s final period in Egypt under a Pharaoh that withdrew all previous privileges and inflicted on the Israelites a physical bondage of the harshest kind. Handel set an entirely biblical libretto which dramatically depicts the Ten Plagues that Israel’s God visited on the Egyptians, the captives’ escape towards the Red Sea, the Egyptian pursuit with murderous intent, and the parting of the waters to provide safe passage for the Israelites. Unlike many other oratorios of the period, the chorus is here the central protagonist , with recitatives and arias sung by choristers, rather than by separate vocal soloists.

The opening orchestral prelude was beautifully balanced and sympathetic as were the first recitative and chorus, all of which set the brooding  background of Israel’s grief  and despair at their hopeless situation under the new Pharaoh. Michael Stewart judged the reverberant acoustic of St. Paul’s perfectly and used broad tempi that allowed the fugal entries and lines of both orchestra and chorus to be cleanly heard, and the story clearly heard.

As the narrative unfolds,  Handel uses the libretto to paint a succession of dramatic contrasts, offsetting the sombre elements of the tale against the more violent visitations  of  the plagues. Chorus and orchestra gave a wonderfully vigorous depiction of episodes such as the clouds of locusts, hailstorms mingled with fire, Jehovah’s ruthless elimination of  the Egyptian firstborn and the final fate of Israel’s pursuers as the waters of the Red Sea engulfed them.

Interspersed were evocative contrasts like the “thick darkness over the land, even darkness which might be felt”, and the lighthearted pastoral pipes and shepherds’ voices of  slaves released. Handel’s masterful orchestration and choral writing was given its fullest value by both singers and orchestra, with the impeccable technical and musical skill that one has come to expect from the Tudor Consort and NZSO players.

Yet I felt a deep sense of frustration with the performance because much of that talent and musicianship was, in the final analysis, defeated by the reverberant acoustic of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  The broad tempo sections worked well, but the high speed intricacies and fugal lines of the fast tempi became an overwhelming blur of sound, where there was no chance of verbal clarity. For me, the magic
of Handel’s oratorios is his stunning realization of the story – where he lifts an already absorbing literary drama onto quite another plane with his astonishing musical paintbrush. The music is created specifically to tell the story, and if that story cannot be heard, the point of the work is lost.

It saddened me that the obvious talent and commitment of the musicians could not be properly appreciated in the enormous space. Given the size of the audience, I suspect they might have fitted into Old St. Paul’s, where I think there would have been a greater chance of acoustic success.

Unfortunately I was not able to stay for Part Two of the work, but the format is very similar to Part One, and I doubt my impressions would have been very different.