Friday, 8 January 2016, 7.30pm
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Ballarat
Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival
Celebrating the opening of the Twenty-first Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival
PROGRAM
Johann Sebastian Bach
Missa (BWV 232)
Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Sanctus
Osanna – Benedictus – Osanna
Agnus Dei
| SOPRANO | ALTOS | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Belinda Wong | Peter Campbell | Nicholas Tolhurst |
| Carol Veldhoven | Miranda Gronow | Vaughan McAlley | Michael Strasser |
| Katherine Lieschke | Jane Schleiger | Stuart Tennant | Andrew Fysh |
| Victoria Brown | Niki Ebacioni | Frank Prain | David Durance |
| Sally Watt | Christopher Mason | Michael Stephens | Thomas Bell |
| Katharina Hochheiser | Katie Richardson | Mike Ormerod | |
| Claerwen Jones | |||
| Kathryn Pisani | |||
| Sarah Harris | |||
| Alexandra Hughes | |||
| Naomi Hinks |
SOLOISTS
Michelle Clark, soprano
Sally Wilson, soprano
Sally-Anne Russell, alto
Christopher Roache, tenor
Michael Leighton Jones, bass
Accademia Arcadia – conducted by John O’Donnell.
REVIEW
Sunday, 10 January 2016, The Age [Melbourne], np
Music review: Bach’s Mass in B Minor delivers right note of grandeur
Clive O’Connell
BACH’S MASS IN B MINOR ★★★½
Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival No. 21
St Patrick’s Cathedral, January 8
This festival celebrated reaching its majority with a serious undertaking. Bach’s Mass made for an impressive opening gambit but a hard act to follow next year.
John O’Donnell and his Ensemble Gombert, expanded by about 10 voices, provided the backbone, supported by the Accademia Arcadia period instrumentalists, and a quintet of soloists with the usual mix of abilities and insights.
Bach’s substantial paragraphs are challenging; the choir’s preliminary strophes were followed by an orchestral discussion both engrossing and prolix.
The Accademia performed to fine effect from the outset. Lucinda Moon led the strings, working through the discursive lines with uniform articulation and supple phrasing. Just as impressive was the woodwind sextet: Simon Rickard and Brock Imison offered a vital, mobile pair of bassoons; Greg Dikmans’ flute was a flawless delight in the Domine Deus duet, and, later, Kirsten Barry’s oboe enriched alto Sally-Anne Russell’s resolute account of a Qui sedes solo.
O’Donnell’s speeds tended to the conservative, although the choir slowed things down in the big polyphonic meshes, like the Cum sancto spiritu finishing the Gloria and the measured affirmations that wind up the Creed. Moon and her players followed the beat with vigour while Ensemble Gombert moved with deliberation.
Matters were not helped with the tenors being recessed; one of the soprano bodies more emphatic than the other, and a bass sextet dominating the mix.
Still, Russell, bass Michael Leighton-Jones and soprano Sally Wilson gave good service. Leighton-Jones was a ringing presence in the Quoniam, partnered by an accurate baroque horn from Darryl Poulsen. The trumpet trio made fair work of their improbably high writing, enriching the performance where it mattered most, at the swirling Sanctus: pages of controlled ecstasy and grandeur.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age