Tuesday 17 December 1996 at 8pm
Xavier College Chapel Barkers Rd, Kew
Subscription series concert 5
PROGRAM
Nicolas Gombert Hodie nobis caelorum Rex
Clemens non Papa O magnum mysterium
Heinrich Isaac Puer natus est nobis
Josquin Desprez O admirabile commercium
Jacob Handl Mirabile miraculum
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Hodie Christus natus est
Orlande de Lassus Omnes de Saba venient
Tomas Luis de Victoria Senex puerum portabat
Gregorian chant (Sarum version) Puer natus est nobis
Thomas Tallis Missa Puer natus est nobis
Gloria – Sanctus – Agnus Dei
| SOPRANO | ALTOS | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Katherine Wells | Philip Legge | Adrian Phillips |
| Carol Veldhoven | Margaret Arnold | Andrew Green | Andrew Fysh |
| Maria Pisani | Jennifer Mathers | Timothy O’Connor | Jerzy Kozlowski |
| Fiona Seers | Lynette Richardson | Matthew Flood | |
REVIEWS
Friday, 20 December 1996, The Age [Melbourne], page 4.
Ensemble takes the pre-Christmas honors
Clive O’Connell
BRINGING up the tail-end of serious Christmas music concerts, the Ensemble Gombert, under John
O’Donnell, presented the most scholarly and far-ranging of the year’s seasonal crop, featuring music for the
feastday – and night – as well as motets written for the following celebrations of the Circumcision, Epiphany
and the Purification or Candlemas (at the start of February).
In their night’s substantial first half, the Gombert group sang extracts from the massive repertoire of Middle
and High Renaissance works, beginning with their patron’s Hodie nobis caelorum, and taking in works from
before and after Gombert’s productive years: Clemens non Papa, Isaac (the era’s inspired
mathematician-in-music), Josquin’s five-verse O admirabile commercium and a dissonance-rich Mirabile
mysterium by Jacob Handl. Then pieces by the mellifluous and most well-known composers appeared:
Palestrina’s Noel motet Hodie Christus natus est, Omnes de Saba venient by Lassus, and Victoria’s lustrous
musical depiction of the child Jesus in Simeon’s arms, Senex puerum portabat.
This weighty set of eight motets saw the number of lines move from eight to the more comfortable four and
also emphasised the ensemble’s strong points. Even with only three basses – Adrian Phillips, Andrew Fysh
and Jerzy Koslowski – the underpinning for the group’s texture is its strength, generating an accurate and
polished sound even when the line is divided.
The altos also impress for their assured and capable penetration of the texture, each one a solid contributor to
the mix. What the soprano section has lost in power over the past year or so, it has gained in stark
incisiveness. The current four voices do not have the top line’s former dominance and overpowering
brilliance, but they are precise, disembodied in character, present, but not throwing their ensemble peers into
the shade (except in a piece such as the Victoria, where the sopranos are deliberately exposed).
It was not until the night’s second half, the Tallis fragment-Mass Puer natus est nobis (complete, except for
the Credo), that the usual problem attracted attention. The four tenors can manage the notes, even the often
wrenchingly high ones that the English composer requires, but their vocal color, the quality of the sound they
produced, was occasionally at odds with the cool, elegantly articulated work of the other three voice-types.
I suppose it comes down to a rasping sense of striving, of effort to get the music out that was not present in
this stratum of the ensemble two years ago. Not that the problem became prominent at every turn of the page;
phrase after phrase in the Mass captivated the listener through that combination of the ecstatic and the
dispassionate that is one of the Tudor school’s hallmarks.
But where you used to leave a Gombert night believing that the composers themselves would have cheered
their own music because of the group’s strikingly persuasive performances, this work impressed as a fabric in
which the weave occasionally showed seam flaws.
Nevertheless, the Gomberts produced the finest and most informed choral singing I heard over the
pre-Christmas period and their recital brought the year’s musical activity to a gratifying conclusion.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age
Wednesday, 25 December 1996, The Herald Sun [Melbourne], page 43.
A feast from Gombert
Keith Field
A CAPACITY audience assembled at Xavier College Chapel to hear Ensemble Gombert’s music for Christ’s
Mass.
The program was wonderfully imaginative in conception and delivered in exemplary style, again showing
Gombert to be pre-eminent in unaccompanied singing and 16th-Century repertoire.
Eight renaissance motets illustrated the traditional Church feast of 40 days embracing the nativity (December
25), circumcision on the eighth day, the manifestation of Christ’s divinity (Epiphany, January 6) and
purification of the Virgin (Candlemass, February 2).
Directing the choir, John O’Donnell retained total control while reflecting expressively on each text and
recreating the personality of each composer with unerring conviction.
Gombert’s rich harmonies and profound counterpoint depicted the army of angels rejoicing in the birth of the
King of Heaven. In simpler rhythm and textures, Clemens non Papa evoked the mystery of reincarnation.
Phrases of nasal plainsong alternated with austere points of imitation in Heinrich Isaac’s Unto us a Child is
Born, and Josquin surprised with moments of glittering movement, unexpected spacing and sweet, spiritual
harmonies.
This Day a Wonderful Mystery is Revealed inspired Jacob Handl to extraordinary harmonic shifts.
Clashes and microtones were nerve-tingling in a remarkable performance.
Palestrina savored the word, “Noel”, in a rich and ecstatic work for double chorus, while Lassus celebrated
the epiphany, expressing adoration of the Wise Men, gold and incense in tight knots of counterpoint and
faster harmonies.
Tomas Luis de Victoria’s ardent Spanish temperament and expressive clarity brought color to an antiphon for
Candlemass.
English composition was represented by the mass, Unto us a Child is Born by Thomas Tallis, reconstructed
in the 1960s from newly discovered voice parts. Its reserved dignity, technical perfection and sensitive
diction expressed spiritual beauty, concluding Gombert’s memorable season and promising rich variety next
year.