Category: Concerts

Saturday, 12 September 2009, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

With Barber, Carter and Lauridsen we make our first foray into American music. Barber’s wonderful 1938 setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ God’s Grandeur naturally invites comparison with Kenneth Leighton’s 1957 setting of the same poem, while Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia has been a long-standing request. The second half of the program features works by members of Ensemble Gombert, past and present.

PROGRAM

Elliott Carter Musicians Wrestle Everywhere
Morten Lauridsen O magnum mysterium
Samuel Barber God’s Grandeur
Kenneth Leighton God’s Grandeur
Benjamin Britten Hymn to St Cecilia
Peter Campbell Sunrise on the Coast [World première]
Vaughan McAlley In principio erat verbum [World première]
Vaughan McAlley Veritas de terra orta est [World première]
Calvin Bowman Missa Vexilla regis [World première] *

* Writing of this work was assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council.

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Julien Robinson
Carol Veldhoven	Jenny George	Tim van Nooten	Kieran Rowe
Fiona Seers	Niki Ebacioni	Vaughan McAlley	Chris Potter
Maria Pisani	Rebecca Woods	Stuart Tennant	Alistair Clark
Claerwen Jones
Kathryn Pisani

 

REVIEW

Monday, 14 September 2009, The Age [Melbourne], page 14.
New is old as exemplary choir sings premieres
Clive O’Connell

It all depends on what you mean by “our time”, but the most recently written segments of the Ensemble
Gombert’s latest subscription recital sounded noticeably old-fashioned, if not antique.
After offering a small selection of American and British works, John O’Donnell and his exemplary choir sang
world premieres of short pieces by two of the Gombert tenor personnel.
First was Peter Campbell’s staid, only slightly adventurous Sunrise on the Coast, a setting of an A. B.
Paterson lyric; then came Vaughan McAlley’s responses to two Latin liturgical texts written in a vocabulary
recalling Renaissance masters and the Gabrielis’ Venice.
Calvin Bowman’s new Missa Vexilla regis uses parts of the eponymous plainchant and moves rapidly
through the familiar texts with a pleasure in candid sonorities, spiced by unexpected sideways harmonic
moves. Like his Australian colleagues on this night, Bowman avoids grinding dissonances, making this new
mass easy to assimilate.
The most contemporary-sounding music came in centenarian Elliott Carter’s Musicians Wrestle Everywhere,
a bristling 1945 mesh of polyphonic devices, against which Britten’s almost contemporary Hymn to St Cecilia
sounded tame, if rather rushed in this performance.
But the most affecting music-making emerged during two juxtaposed settings of the Hopkins sonnet God’s
Grandeur by Samuel Barber and Kenneth Leighton: similar but individual, sung with evenly spread
accomplishment right through to their spell-binding final bars.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

 

Saturday, 7 March 2009, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1

This concert commemorates the French composer Jean Mouton some 550 years after his birth. The first part of the program is a succession of motets composed for auspicious occasions in the life of the French court, to which Mouton was attached for the last two decades of his life. The second part is devoted to a single Marian motet followed by a Mass based upon it by the Spaniard Cristóbal de Morales.

PROGRAM

Jean Mouton O Christe redemptor, O rex omnipotens
Jean Mouton Caeleste beneficium
Jean Mouton Non nobis Domine, non nobis
Jean Mouton Quis dabit oculis nostris
Jean Mouton Missus est angelus Gabriel
Jean Mouton Domine salvum fac regem
Jean Mouton Exalta Regina Galliae
Jean Mouton Benedicta es caelorum regina
Cristóbal de Morales Missa Benedicta es caelorum regina

SOPRANO	ALTOS	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Kieran Rowe
Carol Veldhoven	Jennifer Mathers	Tim van Nooten	Julien Robinson
Fiona Seers	Jenny George	Vaughan McAlley	Chris Potter
Maria Pisani	Niki Ebacioni	Stuart Tennant	Tim Daly
Claerwen Jones
Kathryn Pisani

 

REVIEW
Tuesday, 10 March 2009, The Age [Melbourne], page 14.
Vocal display of grace and balance
Clive O’Connell

Under director John O’Donnell, the Ensemble Gombert opened its five-concert annual series with a
program consisting largely of motets by one of France’s greatest composers during the middle Renaissance.
Unusually for this expert choral group, much of Saturday night’s music-making required only four lines, the
effect in the recital’s first half one of piercing clarity, particularly in the sequence of apostrophes that occupy
much of the length in O Christe redemptor: one of several addresses to the Almighty to increase the
child-production rate of that unfortunate lady Anne of Brittany, who married three times without producing
the requisite son.
Not that Mouton’s music turns to the lugubrious when referring to the daughter-cursed queen; the fluency of
the eight motets sung by the Gomberts demonstrated the composer’s grace of utterance, sense of dynamic
balance, proportionate weighting of vocal layers, and interesting if unadventurous textures. Mouton had an
eye for textual highlighting, shown by his rare repetition of focal lines and employment of homophonic
movement when words held high significance, as during the deploration on Anne’s death, Quis dabit oculis
nostris.
Probably the most striking music of the night sounded the most atypical. The solid Missus est angelus Gabriel
tells the annunciation story pretty close to St Luke’s version but in a polyphonic five-line onslaught that
prefigures the sonorous grandeur of the Gabrielis’ Venice. The Gomberts produced a powerful sound, as
impervious to disruption as a waterfall, an engrossing display of vocal consonance in action.
Later, the ensemble sang another Marian motet, Benedicta es caelorum regina, and the Mass based on its
content by Morales. Apart from some coarseness from the tenors at the motet’s opening, this half of the night
generated the same impression of mastery, with the added benefit of the Spanish composer’s longer-breathed
melodic lines, his Mass ending in a moving Agnus Dei that started in the orthodox four parts, moved to
plainchant, then concluded in a full-bodied six-line texture displaying the female voices in this fine group.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 13 December 2008, 8 pm
Xavier College Chape, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 5

This is not the celebrated Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, but a selection of vespers music from his large 1640 compilation. While the earlier collection is often associated with St Mark’s, Venice, it was actually composed in Mantua, before Monteverdi’s Venetian years. The music of the 1640 publication, however, is true Venetian music, perhaps composed over a period of a quarter of a century, yet all of these pieces demonstrate Monteverdi’s undiminished creative powers.

PROGRAM

Monteverdi’s Christmas Vespers (from his 1640 publication)

Claudio Monteverdi Versiculus et responsorium
Paulo Quagliati [organ] Toccata dell’ottavo tuono
Claudio Monteverdi Dixit Dominus
Andrea Gabrieli [organ] Intonatione del secundo tono
Claudio Monteverdi Confitebor
Andrea Gabrieli [organ] Intonatione del quinto tono
Claudio Monteverdi Beatus vir
Andrea Gabrieli [organ] Intonatione del ottavo tono
Claudio Monteverdi Laudate pueri
Andrea Gabrieli [organ] Intonatione del settimo tono
Claudio Monteverdi Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
Paulo Quagliati [organ] Canzona
Claudio Monteverdi Christe, Redemptor omnium
Andrea Gabrieli [organ] Intonatione del primo tono
Claudio Monteverdi Magnificat primi toni

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jennifer Mathers	Peter Campbell	Kieran Rowe
Carol Veldhoven	Belinda Wong	Tim Van Nooten	Tom Henry
Fiona Seers	Niki Ebacioni	Daniel Thomson	Chris Potter
Kathryn Pisani	Jenny George	Matthew Thomson	Tim Daly
Maria Pisani
Claerwen Jones

Instrumental ensemble
John O’Donnell – chamber organ

REVIEW

Monday, 15 December 2008, The Age [Melbourne], page 16.
Spirit soars in simple hymn of repemption
Clive O’Connell

FOLLOWING a pattern set in last year’s Christmas-to-Candlemas recital, the Ensemble Gombert presented
interleaving Venetian works: psalm-settings, a hymn and Magnificat from Monteverdi’s so-called Christmas
Vespers, interspersed with organ intonations and toccatas by Andrea Gabrieli and Quagliati supplied by the
conductor John O’Donnell.
Pairs of violins and bass viols, one violone, a sackbut and Samantha Cohen’s theorbo supplied a solid
instrumental support for the voices that offered added interest.
The tenor line now enjoys two more high-flying voices in Daniel and Matthew Thomson, while Peter
Campbell’s stalwart efforts have a worthy foil in Tim van Nooten whose timbre has broadened in colour and
confidence. A similar invigorating experience emerged hearing sopranos Fiona Seers and Claerwen Jones
take on heavy responsibilities, notably in the Magnificat.
But the evening’s surprise came through a simple hymn, Christe, redemptor omnium. No clever detail here;
just a shapely melody treated with sensitivity and a crisp sparkle, spot-on for this season’s celebrations.

Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 24 May 2008, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

The compositional output of the prolific Lassus includes many cycles — for example, the Sacrae lectiones novem ex propheta Iob, the Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales, and two sets of Hieremiae prophetae lamentationes. Just days before his death, Lassus completed a setting of the twenty-one ottava stanzas of Tansillo’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of Saint Peter), a work described by scholar James Haar as “one of the most remarkable artistic testaments in the history of music”. Earlier and shorter, but no less remarkable in their own way, are the Prophetiae Sibyllarum (Prophecies of the Sibyls), perhaps Lassus’s most significant essay in chromaticism.

PROGRAM

Orlande de Lassus Prophetiae Sibyllarum
Orlande de Lassus Lagrime di San Pietro

 

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jennifer Mathers	Peter Campbell	Kieran Rowe
Carol Veldhoven	Belinda Wong	Tim Van Nooten	Julien Robinson
Fiona Seers	Niki Ebacioni	Vaughan McAlley	Tim Daly
Kathryn Pisani	Gowri Rajendran	Stuart Tennant
Maria Pisani
Claerwen Jones

 

REVIEW

Tuesday, 27 May 2008, The Age [Melbourne], page 13.
Ensemble in assured rendition of Prophecies
Clive O’Connell

IN THE middle of its annual subscription series, the Ensemble Gombert concentrated on Renaissance protean
composer Orlande de Lassus, presenting two major works from either end of his career: the Prophecies of the
Sibyls and the Tears of St Peter. Because of the Messiaen festival in St Patrick’s Cathedral, I was able to hear
only the 12-section setting of the verses purporting to foretell the coming and life of Christ.
While much of the popular music of Lassus falls on the ear with bracing sweetness when placed in the
company of his contemporaries, the language of the Prophecies holds a startling amount of chromatic shifts, a
device prefigured in Lassus’ own introductory verses and that parts of the following segments live up to
vigorously. Not that these sideways slips held many challenges for the Gombert singers, who are well-versed
in much more arcane material.
Further, the work asks for four vocal lines only and so the full energy of the Gombert sopranos and tenors
reinforced the deliberation of Lassus’ word-setting, which rarely involves repetition but proceeds through
each stanza with a time-conserving rigour. Still, the uninterrupted flow of the work showed this admirable
body in fine voice, if nowhere near fully stretched technically or interpretively.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age