Tuesday 20 December 1994, 8pm
Xavier College, Barkers Road, Kew
PROGRAM
Program details taken from newspaper review (below)
Robert Fayrfax Magnificat
Walter Lambe Nesciens Mater
Jean Mouton Nesciens Mater
Andreas de Silva Puer natus est nobis
Nicolas Gombert O magnum mysterium
William Byrd Senex puerum
William Byrd Hodie beata Virgo
Jacob Handl Omnes de Saba venient
G.P. da Palestrina Hodie Christus natus est
G.P. da Palestrina Missa Hodie Christus natus est
SINGERS
| SOPRANO | ALTO | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Katherine Wells | Grantley McDonald | Andrew Fysh |
| Carol Veldhoven | Margaret Arnold | Calvin Bowman | Adrian Phillips |
| Vivian Hamilton | Jennifer Mathers | Siro Battaglin | Jerzy Kozlowski |
| Deborah Kayser | Lynette Richardson | Nicholas Tolhurst | Richard Nicholls |
REVIEW
Friday 23 December 1994, The Age [Melbourne], p.13
New ensemble simply superb
Clive O’Connell
THIS GROUP of 16 singers is a fairly recent addition to the set of choirs that give public concerts, such as
the Melbourne Chorale, the Astra Society, the Tudor Choristers, and the Ormond College Choir.
They have taken their name from a Flemish Renaissance composer whose stature has been overshadowed by
his contemporaries and followers Palestrina, Tallis, Lassus and Byrd. Nevertheless, certain commentators
rank Gombert very highly for his church music’s mysticism and the fluency of his secular chansons.
The ensemble is, in a word, superb. This quality of music-making is so fine that you could kick yourself for
missing the Gombert’s previous concerts.
There are, I think, two factors of some weight that give them an edge over other choral bodies that attempt
similar works: the quality of each member, and the distinction of their director.
The soprano line, for example, boasts Deborah Summerbell, Vivien Hamilton and Deborah Kayser; Margaret
Arnold and Jennifer Mathers are two of the altos; two of the city’s finest young musical talents Calvin
Bowman and Siro Battaglin can be heard in
the tenor quartet; and the powerful bass section has Adrian Phillips and Jerzy Kozlowski.
In fact, most of the faces in the Ensemble Gombert are familiar from other choirs. So they have a great deal
of experience between them; at least half have been solo singers. More to the point, each is a thorough
musician, which is just as well because there is clearly no room in this group for passengers, particularly
when they produced a program like Tuesday’s, where the major work was Palestrina’s eight- part Missa Hodie
Christus natus est.
John O’Donnell has had ups and downs as a choral conductor, but this set of singers must give him great
satisfaction. Their phrasing is finely polished; their realisation of massive block chords thrills with its
controlled power; and as far as I could judge, their pitch did not falter. In the concert’s first half, it was hard to
find a flaw as they moved from Fayrfax’s Magnificat Regale and two settings of Nesciens Mater, through
Gombert’s rich and euphonious O magnum mysterium, to the more familiar reaches of a pair of Byrd motets
and the near-Baroque splendour of Handel’s Omnes de Sabe venient.
It seems as if the director and his singers are making a speciality of Renaissance choral music, and the more
polyphonically complex, the better. There appears to be no other choir occupied in this field; not surprising,
because this night’s work would scare off any competition.
The Ensemble Gombert, most fortunate in its talented personnel, is an outstanding body that demonstrates
one of the most rewarding facets to music of any type: how gifted individuals work together to achieve
gratifyingly high standards.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age