Tag: Festivals

Sunday, 19 January 2014, 8 pm
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Ballarat

Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival
Closing recital

PROGRAM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Exultate Jubilate
Joseph Haydn Harmoniemesse

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Jacqueline Porter, soprano
Lotte Betts-Dean, alto
Daniel Thomson, tenor
Michael Leighton-Jones, bass

Accademia Arcadia – conducted by John O’Donnell.

REVIEW

Tuesday, 21 Januart 2014, The Age [Melbourne], n.p.
Music review: Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival
Clive O’Connell

Mozart and Haydn
Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival
St Patrick’s Cathedral
January 19

Held under more pleasant climatic conditions than the initial concert from Newman College’s Choir and La Compania, the Ballarat festival’s finale gained from its compact content – an early Mozart motet and Haydn’s last Mass – and the participation of several singers and instrumentalists of unquestionable talent.

John O’Donnell conducted both works, soprano Jacqueline Porter making inroads on the demands of Exsultate, jubilate, before heading a quartet of excellent soloists for the Harmoniemesse, O’Donnell’s Ensemble Gombert doing the work’s hard yards. For reasons of acoustic balance, I suppose, the orchestral forces were stationed well forward, all strings situated in front of the altar steps while the wind and brass choirs sat behind.

For the motet, Porter sang from the far side of the church from my seat so parts of her work were muffled. Porter made a more positive impact in the Mass, especially in partnership with alto Lotte Betts-Dean. One of the stars of the opening concert, Daniel Thomson brought his reliable tenor to the mix, bass Michael Leighton Jones a compelling presence as well. Sadly, the fine Gombert personnel were often eclipsed by the hefty wind corps in this work.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 30 November 2013, at 4.30pm
Newman College Chapel, 887 Swanston Street, Parkville

Newman College 2013 Advent Festival

Australia’s leading Renaissance choir, Ensemble Gombert, performs a Vespers service featuring polyphonic music from the cathedrals of Italy and Spain for the Feast of St Andrew.

Director, organ: John O’Donnell

SINGERS

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REVIEW

Wednesday, 4 December 2013, The Age [Melbourne], n.p.
2013 Advent Festival, Newman College
Clive O’Connell

2013 Advent Festival
Consort Of Melbourne,
Ensemble Gombert, Early Voices
Newman College
November 20 – December 1

For this pre-Christmas musical feast, artistic director Gary Ekkel and his Melbourne University college hosted many of Melbourne’s early music ensembles specialising in liturgical choral music.

Over two days, participants were invited to take up roles as the program observed the monastic offices – matins, terce, sext, none, vespers – interspersed with lectures on Gregorian chant singing and religious art alongside interludes from violinist Rachael Beesley and guitarist Slava Grigoryan.

For Catholics, the weekend’s content provided much gratification, Proustian recollections sparked by polyphonic choral music and enough sung Latin to make the Second Vatican Council seem like a bad dream. Each day, the fulcrum event came in a Mass: Saturday’s Feast of St Andrew bringing the Consort of Melbourne to centre-altar for Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Assumpta est Maria setting of the Common, while observation of the first Sunday in Advent found Vivien Hamilton’s Early Voices singing the luminous Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, the work that allegedly legitimised contrapuntal writing for church ceremonies.

Using spartan resources – six singers, a string quartet, an organ – Ekkel produced a lean-textured, accurate reading of the Charpentier work with well-honed upper voices although the bass line sounded strained, the Credo a congenial, if long-winded, episode in a sequence that included Gregorian chant and motets by the French composer.

Later, the Ensemble Gombert sang the vespers but, without a program, I was unable to work out which composers were involved, although the general character suggested a late-Renaissance/early Baroque provenance.

The Palestrina Mass was given a straightforward account, even in temper and metre, Hamilton’s forces well served by the two tenor lines the work asks for and exercises heftily throughout.

But the main delight came in the music’s fluent, innate mastery, a reflection of the transcendent in contrast to the prosaic stolidity of the modern-day ritual itself.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age