Saturday, 4 August 2007, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew
Subscription Concert 3
The English choral repertory, it seems, is always in fashion. Representing the Golden Age is Mundy’s intricate Vox Patris caelestis, sandwiched between two of the era’s best-loved works by Taverner and Tye. From the past century we have a Bach-inspired Magnificat from Stanford, some wonderful settings of great English poetry by Vaughan Williams and Britten, and two remarkable Hymns by the modern Tavener.
PROGRAM
John Taverner Dum transisset Sabbatum
William MundyVox Patris caelestis
Christopher Tye Missa Euge bone
Charles Villiers Stanford Magnificat for Double Chorus
Ralph Vaughan Williams Three Shakespeare Songs
Benjamin Britten Five Flower Songs
John Tavener Two Hymns to the Mother of God
| SOPRANO | ALTO | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Jennifer Mathers | Peter Campbell | Julien Robison |
| Carol Veldhoven | Belinda Wong | Tim Van Nooten | Philip Nicholls |
| Fiona Seers | Niki Ebacioni | Frank Prain | Tom Reid |
| Kathryn Pisani | Heather Gaunt | Stuart Tennant | Jerzy Kozlowski |
| Maria Pisani | |||
| Claerwen Jones |
REVIEWS
Tuesday, 7 August 2007, The Age [Melbourne], page 14
Rare airing for Russian master’s revolutionary work
Clive O’Connell
[…MSO Review…]
AT THE latest Ensemble Gombert recital, director John O’Donnell divided his program into two discrete
halves, both consisting of English church music.
The first dealt with three Tudor composers, including William Mundy’s ornate motet Vox Patris caelestis and
the Euge bone mass by Christopher Tye. These works, with Taverner’s Dum transisset Sabbatum, exemplify
the Gomberts’ normal playing field and once again they showed the haunting gravity of their communal
timbre.
While the sopranos retain their penetrating clarity, this occasion demonstrated the high quality in the male
ranks, with Peter Campbell and Tim van Nooten’s confident tenors balancing the impressive stateliness of
Jerzy Kozlowski’s bass.
The group then took a 350-year leap forward to the 1919 Magnificat by Stanford for double choir, which
sounded most persuasive in its Bach-indebted opening and closing strophes, if somehow underpowered in the
central segments. O’Donnell also led his forces in Vaughan Williams’ Three Shakespeare Songs and the Five
Flower Songs by Benjamin Britten.
Concluding the night with a living composer, the ensemble sang Two Hymns to the Mother of God written in
1985 by John Tavener. This wound up a long journey from the assertive certainty of the first great school of
British music to the unexpected Orthodox strain assumed by the country’s leading religious music exponent.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age
Wednesday, 8 August 2007, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 57.
ENSEMBLE GOMBERT
Anna McAlister
ENSEMBLE Gombert’s Taverner to Tavener program explored British a cappella choral music from the 16th
and 20th centuries.
Interestingly, the composers John Taverner (born 1490-ish) and John Tavener (born 1944) are not just
namesakes with an R to differentiate; they are distantly related.
Taverner’s gorgeous Dum transisset Sabbatum began a concert of strikingly polished and controlled
performances. The 18-piece choir displayed consistently honed balance, the sopranos never unsubtle, the
basses tantalisingly present.
Under director John O’Donnell they moved flawlessly together and individual voices formed perfectly
blended sections. Though each vocal line ebbed and flowed dynamically, the volume range was compact
throughout. The result was pure, clear and warm, the soprano voices flatteringly airbrushed.
Vaughan-Williams’ Three Shakespeare Songs and Britten’s Five Flower Songs were the only secular works
on the program.
In the first Shakespeare song, Full Fathom Five, the close dissonances were spot-on for pitch and they
resonated and decayed, convincingly bell-like, at the end.
A personal favourite was Tavener’s Two Hymns to the Mother of God (1985). The texture felt
three-dimensional: continuous shimmering chords in the inner voices (again pitched to perfection) seemed
like a current of warm air suspending melodies in the soprano and bass lines.