Saturday 12 March at 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel Barkers Rd, Kew
Subscription Concert 1
The discovery, in 1571, of the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, led to a royal determination to observe Lent in 1572 with the utmost piety. This program present the finest Lenten music of the period, all of which, on grounds of provenance and style, could have been composed specifically for this special Lenten observance.
PROGRAM
William Byrd Emendemus in melius
William Byrd Memento homo
Thomas Tallis Miserere nostri
Thomas Tallis In ieiunio et fletu
Thomas Tallis Derelinquat impius
Thomas Tallis Lamentations
Robert White Lamentations
Osbert Parsley Lamentations
William Byrd Lamentations
Robert White Miserere mei, Deus
| SOPRANO | ALTOS | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Belinda Wong | Peter Campbell | Kieran Rowe |
| Carol Veldhoven | Jenny Mathers | Tim van Nooten | Samuel Allchurch |
| Katherine Norman | Yi Wen Chin | Vaughan McAlley | Alistair Clark |
| Kathryn Pisani | Niki Ebacioni | Stuart Tennant | Jeremy Bottomley |
| Claerwen Jones | Gowri Rajendran | ||
| Maria Pisani | Rebecca Woods | ||
REVIEW
Monday, 14 March 2011, The Age [Melbourne], page 21.
Pious evening of majestic control
Clive O’Connell
JOHN O’Donnell and the Ensemble Gombert gave a remarkable musical picture of what Lent might have been like at the court of Elizabeth I where the season was observed with thankful piety.
The Gomberts met the challenge of delivering some of the finest and emotionally charged Tudor works with customary control.
The 20-strong body began with five motets by Byrd and Tallis, three of them completely new to this listener’s live experience. Following this majestic sequence, O’Donnell took his forces through four Lamentations settings, none of which replicated the others in textual material but showed a collegiality of emotional and intellectual response.
The Tallis setting was the most well known, followed by others by Robert White, the obscure Norwich composer Osbert Parsley, and a youthful treatment by Byrd, with White’s setting of Psalm 50 rounding off the night as it does each Tenebrae service in Holy Week.
Expert as the singers’ sustained accomplishment was, the most memorable moments came in Tallis’s seven-voice Miserere nostri, a marvel of canonic construction and here splendidly carried off with an enviable plasticity of texture.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age
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