Category: Concerts

Saturday, 10 December, 2005, 8pm
St Ambrose Church, Woodend
Saturday, 17 December 2005, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 5

For over four centuries Palestrina’s music has been singled out by the Roman Catholic Church as the polyphonic ideal. Between works for Christmas and Candlemas are motets for the feasts of the three days following Christmas— St Stephen, St John and the Holy Innocents—as well as the Circumcision (1 January), Epiphany (6 January) and Conversion of St Paul (25 January). The major work is the joyful Missa Hodie Christus natus est for double choir.

PROGRAM

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina O magnum mysterium
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Lapidabant Stephanum
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Hic est discipulus ille
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Laudate pueri
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina O admirabile commercium
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Videntes stellam Magi
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Magnus sanctus Paulus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Senex puerum portabat
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Nunc dimittis
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Hodie Christus natus est (à 8)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina  Missa Hodie Christus natus est (à 8)

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Rebecca Woods	Tim Van Nooten	Philip Nicholls
Fiona Seers	Niki Ebacioni	Frank Prain	Tom Reid
Maria Pisani	Jennifer Mathers	Stuart Tennant	Tim Daly
Claerwen Jones
Kathryn Pisani

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REVIEWS

Wednesday, 21 December 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 18
Gomberts balanced; RMP voices convincing
Clive O’Connell

ENDING the year with their usual Christmas to Candlemas recital, John O’Donnell and his Ensemble Gombert concentrated on one composer: the prolific Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. In a neatly devised sequence, the group sang music that the composer wrote for major feasts in the post-Christmas calendar, then performed Palestrina’s motet Hodie Christus natus est and the substantial mass in eight parts that he wrote using that specific piece as source material.
Not one to aim for startling harmonic slides or dramatic word-paintings, the composer’s works move with an inevitability and majesty that comes as close as church music can to expressing the impermeable monolithic nature of the Renaissance Catholic Church. As the Gomberts present motets like Laudate pueri, the glowing Videntes stellam for the Epiphany and Palestrina’s massive, grand Nunc dimittis, you get some inkling of the composer’s significance in the Counter-Reformation art world.
In line with the works themselves, O’Donnell and his singers pursued a carefully balanced mode of operations, the group’s individuals rarely heard except in the 12-part song of Simeon and the Mass, which reached some magnificent moments when small groups were set off against the rolling power of a larger body. Not exactly God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen as a quartet of young things in front of me obviously expected, but a splendid sonorous bath of rich and secure a cappella performances.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Wednesday, 21 December 2005, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 56.
ENSEMBLE GOMBERT
Xenia Hanusiak

ENSEMBLE Gombert had its finest hour at its last offering of the year. Focusing on 16th-century Italian
composer Palestrina, this festive concert performed his religious music from Christmas to Candlemas via a
narration of the Christmas story.
The 18-member chamber choir began with a golden rendition of a six-part motet, O magnum mysterium, a
celebration of Christ’s birth.
Within a few bars director John O’Donnell set up the joyous occasion, skilfully guiding his choristers with
smoothly flowing counterpoint and harmonic buoyancy.
Cohesion and master control were the order of the day, with a consistently beautiful choral texture overriding
the considerable musical challenges.
By the final motet, Senex puerum portabat, the singers regrouped into 12 parts. The motet was secure and
robust. Each melodic line was clear in articulation. The basses were consistently strong, the sopranos rang
with their trademark clarity and the tenors and altos were a sympathetic consort.
This Gombert roll call has been together for some time and their attention to the Renaissance repertoire is
paying handsome dividends. Melbourne has a world-class ensemble.

Saturday, 10 September 2005, 8 pm.
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

Parody was a major sixteenth-century compositional technique, especially in the setting of the Mass. The composer would take as a model a chanson or motet and re-work the material as Kyrie, Gloria, etc. Certain pieces were repeatedly re-worked by a variety of composers: Richafort’s Quem dicunt homines, for example, served as the model for at least eight Masses, including settings by Mouton, Morales and Palestrina.

PROGRAM

Jean Richafort Quem dicunt homines
Jean Mouton Missa Quem dicunt homines
Jean Richafort Philomena praevia
Nicolas Gombert Missa Philomena praevia

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Niki Ebacioni	Tim Van Nooten	Tom Reid
Fiona Seers	Rebecca Woods	Vaughan McAlley	Jerzy Kozlowski
Claerwen Jones	Jenny George	Stuart Tennant
Maria Pisani
Kathryn Pisani

REVIEWS

Monday, 12 September 2005,The Age [Melbourne], page 16, Metro.
Ensemble handes Richafort with great poise
Joel Crotty

HISTORY is littered with composers whose fame appeared to be short-lived. Renaissance composer Jean
Richafort is a good example of a musician who was widely respected during his lifetime but quickly lapsed
into the footnotes. On Saturday, Ensemble Gombert revived Richafort’s music and gave a glimpse into the
world of a near-forgotten composer.
During the early 16th century, Richafort’s motet Quem dicunt homines was a Renaissance “hot hit”.
Composers from across Europe were attracted to the work’s rhythmic ebullience, and parodied it in their own
works. One such composer was Jean Mouton, who produced his Missa Quem dicunt homines . It is stark
work that demonstrates a composer more concerned with smooth-flowing transparency rather than deeply
configured polyphony.
While the choristers, under the direction of John O’Donnell, delivered both these works with their usual
degree of professionalism, the main musical focus occurred in the second half of the program. Richafort’s
beautifully expressive motet Philomena praevia was coupled with Gombert’s parody of it in the composer’s
Missa Philomena praevia. The performance revealed a choir that was able to handle the differing complexities of each work with poise.
The ensemble is heading to Europe next year for another tour, and from its performance of Gombert’s Mass
and Richafort’s Philomena motet, one hopes these works are being considered as repertoire items.
Joel Crotty/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 16 July 2005, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was not only a great monarch but also a great patron of music. Gombert, Crecquillon, Clemens non Papa, Canis and Payen were among his court musicians. It is no surprise that many of the major events of his life are documented in the motet and chanson literature. The major work of the program, Gombert’s Missa Sur tous regretz, is understood, on the basis of a source labelling it ‘for the coronation’, to have been composed for Charles’ coronation in Bologna in 1530.

PROGRAM

Josquin Desprez Mille regretz
Nicolas Gombert Felix Austriae domus
Nicolas Gombert Qui colis Ausoniam
Thomas Crecquillon Carole, magnus erat
Cristóbal de Morales Jubilate Deo
Thomas Crecquillon Quis te victorem dicat
Jacobus Clemens non Papa Carole, magnus eras
Orlande de Lassus Heroum soboles
Nicolas Gombert Missa Sur tous regretz (Missa A la Incoronation)

Note: Gombert ‘Dicite in magni’, Cornelius Canis ‘Tota vita peregrinamur homines’, Nicolas Payen ‘Carole cur defles’ and Fernando de las Infantas ‘Parce mihi Domine’ advertised in subscription brochure but not performed.

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Rebecca Woods	Frank Prain	Matthew Champion
Kathryn Pisani	Niki Ebacioni	Vaughan McAlley	Tom Reid
Claerwen Jones	Barbara Tattam	Stuart Tennant	Tim Daly
Maria Pisani
Fiona Seers

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REVIEWS

Tuesday, 19 July 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 6, Metro.
Tong Splendid; Gomberts Masterful
Clive O’Connell

[…] AT XAVIER Chapel on Saturday, the latest program from the Ensemble Gombert rotated around a cappella
choral music written for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He was well treated by composers, both those
in his employ and those commissioned from outside: conductor John O’Donnell led his excellent ensemble
through motets by Crecquillon, Morales, Clemens non Papa, Lassus and the group’s namesake.
After the stringent harmonic clashes of the older masters, in particular Gombert, the concluding Heroum
sobales by Lassus fell on the ear with unexpected sweetness.
For the evening’s second part, the musicians sang a solid Mass by Gombert, Sur tous regretz, which was
performed at the emperor’s coronation. The work exemplifies the composer’s individual combination of
orthodox vocal movement with striking harmonic clashes at cadential points and an unexpected treatment of
the text, in particular phrases that seem over-extended or end abruptly.
The singers presented an illuminating and masterful account of this Mass, the altos and basses muted in
volume, but giving the choral fabric a subtle yet formidable underpinning.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 28 May 2005, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 2

We are ignorant of the exact date of Thomas Tallis’s birth, but circa 1505 has long been accepted, and half a millenium after the event, the possibility that we are a year or two out is of little significance. Concert Two is a selection of pieces from the simplest (the four-voice anthem If ye love me) to the most complex (the celebrated forty-voice Spem in alium), and from the most luxuriant (the six-voice Marian motet Gaude gloriosa) to the most austere (the moving five-voice Lamentations).

PROGRAM

Thomas Tallis Third Mode Melody (Why fum’th in sight)
Thomas Tallis If ye Love me
Thomas Tallis I Call and Cry to thee
Thomas Tallis Jesu salvator saeculi
Thomas Tallis Loquebantur variis linguis
Thomas Tallis Gaude gloriosa
Thomas Tallis Lamentations
Thomas Tallis Spem in alium (à 40)

SOPRANO Deborah Summerbell Carol Veldhoven Kathryn Pisani Claerwen Jones Maria Pisani Helen Gagliano

ALTO Belinda Wong Jennifer Mathers Rebecca Woods Niki Ebacioni Leonie Tonkin Barbara Tattam

TENOR Peter Campbell Tim Van Nooten Vaughan McAlley Stuart Tennant

BASS Alexander Roose Philip Nicholls Tom Reid Tim Daly

Guest Singers for Spem in Alium:
Soprano: Larissa Cairns, Sally Watt
Alto: Barbara Johnson, Melissa Lee
Tenor: Tim Bell, Adrian Palmer, Robert Parbs, Frank Prain
Baritone: Barney Ellis, Joel Gladman, Tom Henry, Grantley McDonald, Peter Neustupny, Julien Robinson, John Weretka
Bass: Matthew Champion, Nicholas Cowall, Steven Hodgson, Julian Liberto, Martin Strauss

REVIEWS

Monday, 30 May 2005, The Australian [Sydney], page 16.
Sacred songs set the spirit soaring
Martin Ball

THIS year marks 500 years since the birth of Thomas Tallis, the greatest English composer of the Tudor
period. To mark the anniversary, Ensemble Gombert presented a “Quincentennial Celebration” of Tallis
covering a range of his sacred music for unaccompanied choir: from the simple four-part anthem If ye love me, keep my commandments, to the majestic 40-part motet, Spem in alium.

Ensemble Gombert is the perfect group to give such a concert. Formed in 1990 by respected organist and scholar John O’Donnell, the 20-member ensemble specialises not just in the music of the 16th century, but also in the details of period-performance practice.

The most significant aspect of this is intonation, with their preference for mean over equal temperament. But it also expresses itself in an emphasis on purity of tone rather than expressive colour or interpretation. At times one could imagine more vigour in performance, but this conservative rationale keeps the focus firmly on the music, rather than on the performers.

The program began with a setting of Psalm 2, Why fumeth in sight, perhaps best known to contemporary
audiences as the basis of Vaughan-Williams’s Fantasy on a theme of Thomas Tallis. Ensemble Gombert immediately established a beautiful tone, with perfectly balanced weight of treble and bass. O’Donnell’s decision to cut short the penultimate phrase in each stanza added some energy to the reading, but might have been better executed with fewer hasty breaths. Gaude gloriosa is a long, laudatory hymn to the Virgin Mary, with a lot of work for individual voices. Here the stamina of some of the singers, soprano in particular, seemed to flag, and the ensemble sound varied considerably in tone and colour.

There were no such problems in the two settings of the Lamentations, however, where the exquisite tone and rhythm were perfectly matched to the melancholic text. Finally Ensemble Gombert was joined by a further 20 singers for the marvel that is Spem in alium. O’Donnell arranged the choir in a horseshoe shape, as Tallis apparently intended, so that the music travels around the ine of singers, and is thrown back and forth between them in the large tuttis. There was a tremendous sense of a rolling sea of music, as the voices echoed around the soaring cupola of Xavier College Chapel. This is music that is worth all the celebrating it can get, even 500 years later.

Tuesday, 31 May 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 8, Metro.
Hunter-Bradley and Sky-Lucas bring Baroque to life
Clive O’Connell

TO CELEBRATE the possible 500th birthday of Thomas Tallis (born around 1505), the Ensemble Gombert
and director John O’Donnell presented A Quingentennial Celebration to a packed audience.
For the non-Tallis experts, O’Donnell and the Gomberts began easily with the setting of Psalm 2, Why
fumeth in sight, which Vaughan Williams employed for his famous Fantasia; the brief and always touching If ye love me; and some Latin settings showing the father of English choral music’s facility at pleasing both Catholic and Anglican heads of state.

The most substantial of these was Gaude gloriosa, a hymn of praise to the Virgin and also probably to Queen Mary I; a very substantial tribute for a lady about to cause havoc. As well, we heard the two Lamentations settings, which cast a long shadow over other settings, British-made or European.
Finally, the numbers were enlarged to perform the huge four-part motet Spem in alium, which is a mighty delight when everyone is in action, but which showed some creaking seams when the texture thinned out …
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 19 March 2005, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1
ABC Classic FM Direct Broadcast

This is the first Australian performance of Arvo Pärt’s most recent large-scale choral work, commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral in 1998. The work is a setting of the complete text of the Canon of Repentance, attributed to St Andrew of Crete (c. 660–740).

PROGRAM

Arvo Pärt Kanon pokajanen (Canon of Repentance) [Australian première]

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Adrian Phillips
Carol Veldhoven	Jenny Mathers	Tim Van Nooten	Alexander Roose
Kathryn Pisani	Niki Ebacioni	Adrian Palmer	Tom Henry
Claerwen Jones	Leonie Tonkin	Vaughan McAlley	Philip Nicholls
Maria Pisani	Margaret Arnold	Stuart Tennant	Tim Daly
Fiona Seers	Barbara Tattam	Frank Prain	Tom Reid

 

REVIEW

Tuesday, 22 March 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 8.
Gombert diligent; Kooyong ambitious
Clive O’Connell

GOING in for the Lenten spirit hoots and all, the Ensemble Gombert, directed by John O’Donnell, sang the
90-minute-long Canon of Repentance by Arvo Part, a setting of odes and shorter poems by St Andrew of
Crete, which is one of the penitential prayers of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Sung in Church Slavonic, the Canon moves slowly, but the prayer/poems are interwoven with doxologies and
repeated versicles that give the linguistically challenged listener some reference points.
Facing one of their largest audiences in recent years, the Gombert singers produced a remarkably clean
performance, especially the ensemble’s sopranos and tenors who were often exposed and whose accuracy was tested by sudden attacks on high notes.
Balancing the score’s wearing length, the work contains much repetition of musical material. This is not just
in the intervening versicles, which restore a kind of calm between the self-abasing verses, but also inside the
odes, where repeated verbal material brought in its train the same (or similar) vocal settings.
However, the group of 24 responded with professional diligence to Part’s demands, staying true to pitch and
producing page after page of steady declamation. A few early coarse notes from the tenors aside, the
full-textured choral mix maintained a steady balance, punctuated by passages for small groups, particularly in
Ode VIII, which had a remarkably affecting impact.
The work is something of an ordeal for the performers and listeners, with only a few outbursts of little drama
to break up the even hieratic flow of choral timbre.
Part’s Canon pursues its grave purpose with the same intense serenity and severity as Gregorian chant, its
harmonic structure both mobile and restrained. The Greek saint’s rich language of contrition and
self-abasement is given prime importance in this work of implacable devotion. […]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 18 December 2004, 8pm
Sunday, 19 December 2004, 2.30pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew
Also performed at St Ambrose, Woodend, Saturday 12 December

Subscription Concert 5
ABC Classic FM Direct Broadcast

Finally, this year’s Christmas to Candlemas features, in addition to a selection of Renaissance works, Benjamin Britten’s youthful masterpiece, A Boy was Born. Composed when he was 19, the work made Britten a household name throughout Britain literally overnight, with the BBC’s broadcast on 23 February 1934.

PROGRAM

Josquin Desprez O admirabile commercium
Nicolas Gombert O magnum mysterium
Michael Praetorius Resonet in laudibus
Richard Dering Quem vidistis, pastores
Jacob Handl Mirabile mysterium
Orlande de Lassus Omnes de Saba venient
Tomás Luis de Victoria Senex puerum portabat
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Nunc dimittis
Benjamin Britten A Boy was Born

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell (Saturday)	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Jennifer Mathers	Vaughan McAlley (Sunday)	Adrian Phillips
Kathryn Pisani	Niki Ebacioni	Tim Van Nooten	Tom Reid
Fiona Seers	Barbara Tattam	Frank Prain	Philip Nicholls
Maria Pisani		Stuart Tennant
Claerwen Jones
Helen Gagliano

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Additional “Trebles” for A Boy was Born:
Michèle de Courcy, Nina Pereira, Sally Watt

REVIEW

Tuesday, 21 December 2004, The Age [Melbourne], page 8, A3.
Gomberts take the road less travelled, splendidly
Clive O’Connell

FAR removed from the Myer windows model of celebrating Christmas that focuses on fictional characters or
a recent children’s fad, the Ensemble Gombert follows a harder road.
No Silent Night or Good King Wenceslas for this group; rather, the singers go to the highest achievements of
Western polyphonic music, celebrations of the happy season, but couched in a musical vocabulary that asks
more of the listener than an easy surge of sentimentality.
The Gomberts opened their tour of the feastdays that run from Christmas Eve to the Presentation of Christ in
the Temple with Josquin’s complex motet O admirabile commercium, which hymns the extraordinary
exchange of Godhead for human form and manages to sum up the whole wonder of Christ’s birth with a calm
ecstasy in which the music’s dynamic hovers somewhere between the rhapsodic text and the ebb and flow of
the vocal interplay.
What followed this initial gambit was a kind of digest of Renaissance musical art, vaulting from the broadly
spread consonances of Praetorius in a jubilant Resonet in laudibus to the fierce chromaticisms found in Jacob
Handl’s Mirabile mysterium for the Feast of the Circumcision, a motet that juxtaposes chords in unexpected
contexts just as the words speak of the paradox of Christ’s position in the world both as child and master of
creation.
As well, the group expounded their namesake’s setting of O magnum mysterium, which deals with the images
of the stable in Bethlehem through a finely crafted expression of delight and stalwart confidence.
The opening section of the afternoon ended with the rich mastery of Lassus picturing the Magi adoring
Christ, Victoria’s tense Senex puerum portabat, the whole sequence climaxing in Palestrina’s opulent 12-part
Nunc dimittis – an overwhelming fabric that ended all too quickly.
Jumping abruptly to contemporary times, the Gomberts sang a full-bodied and generally confident account of
Britten’s A Boy was Born, written when the composer was 19 and serving as his calling-card on the British
musical establishment. The work’s difficulties – intense seconds and sevenths, gruff bass lines, layers of text
and linear disjunctions – are enough to tax any choir.
But these musicians met its challenges with their customary sangfroid, responding, with a will, to John
O’Donnell’s intense direction.
Clive O’Conell/Courtesy of The Age