Saturday, 19 March 2005, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew
Subscription Concert 1
ABC Classic FM Direct Broadcast
This is the first Australian performance of Arvo Pärt’s most recent large-scale choral work, commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral in 1998. The work is a setting of the complete text of the Canon of Repentance, attributed to St Andrew of Crete (c. 660–740).
PROGRAM
Arvo Pärt Kanon pokajanen (Canon of Repentance) [Australian première]
| SOPRANO | ALTO | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Belinda Wong | Peter Campbell | Adrian Phillips |
| Carol Veldhoven | Jenny Mathers | Tim Van Nooten | Alexander Roose |
| Kathryn Pisani | Niki Ebacioni | Adrian Palmer | Tom Henry |
| Claerwen Jones | Leonie Tonkin | Vaughan McAlley | Philip Nicholls |
| Maria Pisani | Margaret Arnold | Stuart Tennant | Tim Daly |
| Fiona Seers | Barbara Tattam | Frank Prain | Tom Reid |
REVIEW
Tuesday, 22 March 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 8.
Gombert diligent; Kooyong ambitious
Clive O’Connell
GOING in for the Lenten spirit hoots and all, the Ensemble Gombert, directed by John O’Donnell, sang the
90-minute-long Canon of Repentance by Arvo Part, a setting of odes and shorter poems by St Andrew of
Crete, which is one of the penitential prayers of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Sung in Church Slavonic, the Canon moves slowly, but the prayer/poems are interwoven with doxologies and
repeated versicles that give the linguistically challenged listener some reference points.
Facing one of their largest audiences in recent years, the Gombert singers produced a remarkably clean
performance, especially the ensemble’s sopranos and tenors who were often exposed and whose accuracy was tested by sudden attacks on high notes.
Balancing the score’s wearing length, the work contains much repetition of musical material. This is not just
in the intervening versicles, which restore a kind of calm between the self-abasing verses, but also inside the
odes, where repeated verbal material brought in its train the same (or similar) vocal settings.
However, the group of 24 responded with professional diligence to Part’s demands, staying true to pitch and
producing page after page of steady declamation. A few early coarse notes from the tenors aside, the
full-textured choral mix maintained a steady balance, punctuated by passages for small groups, particularly in
Ode VIII, which had a remarkably affecting impact.
The work is something of an ordeal for the performers and listeners, with only a few outbursts of little drama
to break up the even hieratic flow of choral timbre.
Part’s Canon pursues its grave purpose with the same intense serenity and severity as Gregorian chant, its
harmonic structure both mobile and restrained. The Greek saint’s rich language of contrition and
self-abasement is given prime importance in this work of implacable devotion. […]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age