Category: Concerts

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

Saturday, 8 September 2007, 8pm.
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

The Baroque, by and large, was not a period of a cappella writing: most choral works involved at least a continuo accompaniment. And it is possible that all works on this program were also performed in such a manner, at least on occasion. Taking our departure from the splendid six-voice Lassus motet upon which Praetorius based his Magnificat, we subsequently explore four little-known works of Schütz before revelling in a selection of Bach motets.

PROGRAM

Orlande de Lassus In te, Domine, speravi
Michael Praetorius Magnificat super In te Domine speravi
Heinrich Schütz Ich bin eine rufende Stimme
Heinrich Schütz Das Wort ward Fleisch und wohnet unter uns
Heinrich Schütz Das ist je gewißlich wahr
Heinrich Schütz Selig sing die Toten, die in dem Herren sterben
Johann Sebastian Bach Fürchte dich nicht
Johann Sebastian Bach Ich lasse dich nicht
Johann Sebastian Bach Komm, Jesu, komm

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jennifer Mathers	Peter Campbell	Julien Robinson
Carol Veldhoven	Belinda Wong	Tim Van Nooten	Peter Tregear
Fiona Seers	Niki Ebacioni	Vaughan McAlley	Tom Reid
Kathryn Pisani	Jenny George	Stuart Tennant	Tim Daly
Maria Pisani
Claerwen Jones

REVIEWS

Tuesday, 11 September 2007, The Age [Melbourne], page 14.
Honeyed singing from city’s choirs
Clive O’Connell

TWO of the city’s premier choirs moved further into their annual subscription series at the weekend, both
showing their singers in fine, if not exactly flawless, order.
On Saturday night, the Ensemble Gombert began easily, moving through congenial Baroque choral music
before finishing with three a cappella challenges from J. S Bach; on Sunday, the Melbourne Chorale give a
lightly sprung account of the Mozart Requiem, helped in great part by sharply etched support from the
Australian National Academy of Music Orchestra.
At the Gombert event, the first part ran twice as long as the following Bach motets sequence, the prefatory
material coming from Orlando di Lasso, whose In te Domine speravi served as a springboard for the
following Magnificat by Praetorius.
This pairing yielded the night’s most honeyed singing, rich chords and full-spectrum harmonies flattering the
choir, which was put to slightly sterner work in four pieces by Schutz, where the development of material
becomes more organised and dense.
But the Bach works displayed the Gomberts’ dynamic powers, the opening Furchte dich nicht erupting onto
the scene with heightened effect and urgency after the sombre steadiness of the preceding program items.
The newly attributed Ich lasse dich nicht operates in a smaller field but gave clear definition to the
differences in texture between the double choirs, while the final Komm, Jesu, komm emphasised the linear
complexity and strength of the composer’s vocal writing.
Every choir finds Bach’s more tangled contrapuntal segments difficult to articulate with absolute ease, but
this group of experts gives as close to an ideal realisation of the composer’s hefty vocal concertato sequences
as we are likely to hear in this country. […]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Wednesday, 12 September 2007, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 62.
ENSEMBLE GOMBERT
Anna McAlister

ENSEMBLE Gombert is all about academia and unashamedly high art: authentic a cappella performances
with no risk of dumbing down in the name of accessibility.
Gombert sings very much to the converted — an audience of 100 or so, mostly friends and choral cognoscenti.
Though groups like this are essential to the survival of the music they perform, it would be wonderful to hear
more variety of textures and repertoire. It’s a shame Gombert doesn’t appeal to a wider audience because it is
a spectacularly fine choir that everyone should hear.
Gombert’s German baroque a cappella concert was a series of motets from the 16th to 18th centuries.
In the first half, comprising works by Lassus, Praetorius and Schutz, both music and performance epitomised
restraint. There was minimal rubato and dynamic contrast, each line undulating slightly to assume a greater or
lesser share of an unchanging volume.
The 18-voice group sang with superb timbre, pitch and ensemble.
All the works culminated in a perfectly balanced chord, each voice audible yet blended.
In Praetorius’ Magnificat super In te Domine speravi the chant sections of unison male voices moved as a
single, warm-hued entity. But, by the standards of later musical periods, this repertoire is emotionally
impenetrable. It became the level of skill, rather than art, that impressed.
J.S. Bach’s Furchte dich nicht; ich lasse dich nicht and Komm, Jesu, komm brought a welcome touch of
warmth and humanity, perhaps because they are set to non-biblical texts.

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.