Category: Reviews

Saturday, 9 September 2006, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

Michael Praetorius was of the opinion that music had reached its perfection in his day amongst Protestant German composers (presumably himself included). This program allows us to consider his claim as we experience one of his most brilliant double-choir chorales along with settings of Psalm 116 by two of his contemporaries. These works are followed by two undisputed masterpieces, Schütz’s remarkable Musicalische Exequien, a German Requiem pre-dating Brahms’ by over two centuries, and Bach’s much-loved motet Jesu, meine Freude.

Program
Johann Hermann Schein	Das ist mir lieb
Christoph Demantius	Das ist mir lieb
Michael Praetorius	Jesaia dem Propheten das geschah
Heinrich Schütz	Musicalische Exequien
Johann Sebastian Bach	Jesu, meine Freude

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

 

REVIEWS

Tuesday, 15 September 2006, The Age [Melbourne], page 15.
German Baroque goes a cappella as Mozart continues to please
Clive O’Connell

THIS week, the Ensemble Gombert leaves on its second tour of Europe and Saturday night’s recital served as
a fair illustration of the a cappella ensemble’s current state of practice. In a program of German Baroque
music, the singers were put through some difficult paces by director John O’Donnell, really extended in the
Musicalishe Exequien by Schutz: a far-ranging compendium of texts about death, set with imaginative
freedom and breadth.
These exequies conclude with a chordal motet and a short fusing of the Song of Simeon with verses from the
Apocalypse and the Book of Wisdom. The main part is a lengthy concerto alternating full choir and solo
voices, which showed off some of the Gomberts as individuals. Not all were uniformly successful in exposed
roles but these interpolated sentences for small groups achieved the composer’s aim of using the concerto
format – opposing small groups with large mass – and O’Donnell kept the work moving rapidly and sustained
the high standards of vocal colour, balance and security that distinguish this body.
The program began with a psalm setting by Schein, an idiosyncratic Sanctus by Praetorius, and ended with
Bach’s famous five-voice motet, Jesu, meine Freude, notable for a crystal-clear account of the central fugue,
here handled with telling sprightliness. […]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 4 March 2006, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1
ABC Classic FM Direct Broadcast

In recent years Ensemble Gombert has presented several of the major a cappella works of the 20th century, notably the Australian première of Pärt’s Canon of Repentance in 2005. We open our 2006 season with an exploration of a cappella music from a variety of traditions. The program includes miniatures by Stravinsky, Holst, Duruflé and Messiaen as well as works of larger dimensions, including Rubbra’s double-choir Te Deum, of which we gave the first Australian performance in 1992. We believe that Distler’s Totentanz will be receiving its Australian première in this concert.

PROGRAM

Igor Stravinsky Pater noster
Olivier Messiaen O sacrum convivium
Francis Poulenc Messe en Sol Majeur
Maurice Duruflé Quatre motets sur des thèmes grégoriens
Hugo Distler Totentanz
Arvo Pärt Magnificat
Gustav Holst Nunc dimittis
Herbert Howells Take him, earth, for cherishing
Edmund Rubbra Te Deum

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

For the Distler
Der Tod (Death): John O’Donnell
Der Kaiser (The Emperor): Alexander Roose
Der Bischof (The Bishop): Tim Daly
Der Edelmann (The Nobleman): Philip Nicholls
Der Arzt (The Physician): Jennifer Mathers
Der Kaufmann (The Merchant): Tim van Nooten
Der Landsknecht (The Mercenary): Niki Ebacioni
Der Schiffer (The Sailor): Belinda Wong
Der Klausner (The Hermit): Vaughan McAlley
Der Bauer (The Farmer): Tom Reid
Die Jungfrau (The Young Woman): Claerwen Jones
Der Greis (The Old Man): Stuart Tennant
Das Kind (The Child): Carol Veldhoven

REVIEWS

Tuesday, 7 March 2006, The Age [Melbourne], page 20.
Janson shows passion; Distler haunted by death
Clive O’Connell

[…]
CONFINING themselves to 20th-century music, the Ensemble Gombert put in a mighty effort on Saturday evening, beginning with the emotionally static Pater noster by Stravinsky and concluding two hours later by revisiting Rubbra’s stately Te Deum, which the group premiered here in 1992.
John O’Donnell took his singers through a Messiaen motet, an uneven reading of Poulenc’s Mass in G, then finished the night’s French section with the Four Motets on Gregorian Themes by Durufle, pages that speak
of a warm Christian devotion and contrasting neatly with Arvo Part’s frieze-panel setting of the Magnificat -one of the night’s simply expressed successes.
The program’s interest came in the Totentanz by Hugo Distler, a German composer who was unable to cope with the pressures of life in Berlin under the Nazi regime. This work alternates choral sections with spoken
dialogue in which Death commands various figures to enter into his dance.
While Distler’s music mines a number of veins, including medieval and Renaissance/Baroque techniques and passages of unexpected harmonic novelty, his language sings in a clear and not over-adventurous voice,
nearly all the sung aphorisms concluding in a rich, well-spaced common chord.
With the Gombert singers taking on the lines of the work’s characters and O’Donnell reading Death, alongside some persuasive and atmospheric singing we also heard some uneasy spoken German.
Still, the occasion gave a welcome Australian exposure to Distler’s masterwork – the moving relic of an honest artist living through an awful time.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Friday, 10 March 2006, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 90.
ENSEMBLE GOMBERT
Xenia Hanusiak

MELBOURNE’S Ensemble Gombert is noted for its mastery of early music repertoire.
The choir has built its reputation on being able to conjugate the flowing nuances of plainsong on the one hand and the complexities of polyphonic music on the other.
No wonder that when it comes to 20th-century repertoire, they have a headstart.
Recent popular composers such as Part, Gorecki and other minimalists have taken up plainsong and in turn drawn attention.
Plainsong has a humble religious attachment to austerity, and the seemingly unending musical phrase arouses a feeling of timelessness — a simplicity attractive to the overloaded modern listener.
On the other side of the scale, Gombert’s polyphonic practice keeps the choir ready for the heady chromaticism of composers such as Messiaen.
So, with this armoury in position, Gombert traversed the stylistic gamut in their opening concert this year, Sacred Gems of the 20th Century.
The repertoire was not only diverse but also exhausting for the listener. Stravinsky, Messiaen, Poulenc, Duruflé, Distler, Part, Holst, Howells and Rubbra were a lot to take in on one sitting.
Of particular interest was a theatrical gem by little-known composer Hugo Distler, who took his own life at age 34. One of these is the Totentanz (Dance of Death). In this work, 14 musical sayings interpolate conversations with Death.
Death (recited by John O’Donnell) knocks at the door of an emperor, a bishop, a nobleman, a physician, a merchant, a farmer, a mercenary, a sailor, a virgin, an old man and a child (recited by Gombert members).
With exemplary German pronunciation, this beautifully executed work was a revelation.
Elsewhere, Gombert reached dynamic ecstasy in the climaxes of Part’s Magnificat and Rubbra’s Te Deum, created eerie, glassy textures in Messiaen’s O Sacrum convivium and removed austerity in Stravinsky’s Pater noster.
Though I was aurally overloaded, the concert created an interesting journey into this repertoire.

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

–
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

–
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

–
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

Sunday, 14 November 2004, 2.30pm
Hawthorn Town Hall, Burwood Road, Hawthorn

The Mozart Collection 2004
presented by The Academy of Melbourne

PROGRAM

Johannes Brahms Motets Op. 74, No.1 & Op. 109 [performed by Ensemble Gombert]
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 [performed by The Melbourne Symphonic Chorus]

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jenny George	Peter Campbell	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Belinda Wong	Tim Van Nooten	Thomas Drent
Kathryn Pisani	Niki Ebacioni	Vaughan McAlley	Tom Reid
Helen Gagliano	Barbara Tattam	Stuart Tennant
Maria Pisani
Claerwen Jones

–
Additional singers for Beethoven (to comprise the Melbourne Symphonic Chorus):
SOPRANO: Michèle de Courcy, Cecilia Harkin, Jacqueline James, Nina Pereira, Andrea Reichert, Sally Watt
ALTO: Barbara Beer, Sophie Chapman, Alice O’Kane, Leonie Tonkin
TENOR: Tim Bell, Joel Gladman, Robert Parbs, Frank Prain, Louise Tunbridge
BASS: Richard Bolitho, Nicholas Carter, Mark Dulfer, Ken Falconer, Geoff Millar, Peter Neustupny, Julien Robinson, Martin Strauss, Roderick Vance

The Academy of Melbourne
Brett Kelly – artistic director & conductor
Michael Kisin – leader

REVIEW

Tuesday, 16 November 2004, The Age [Melbourne], page 8, A3.
Kelly gang in raid on Beethoven
Clive O’Connell

BEETHOVEN’S Choral Symphony saw Academy of Melbourne artistic director Brett Kelly call on
members of Orchestra Victoria and well-known freelancers to assist his usual ensemble – itself made up of
many Melbourne Symphony Orchestra musicians.
For choral forces, we heard the excellent Ensemble Gombert and friends as the Melbourne Symphonic
Chorus – about 40 singers in all. And Kelly was well endowed with the four essential soloists: soprano
Merlyn Quaife, mezzo Lynlee Williams, tenor Adrian McEniery and bass Ian Cousins.
John O’Donnell conducted a brief first half, his Ensemble Gombert singing four choral works by Brahms,
beginning with the popular Warum ist das Licht gegeben, followed by the three Fest und Gedenkspruche –
works which the choir has sung recently in a program of Brahms’ a cappella religious music. The close
acoustics of this hall gave an insight into the group’s reliability and fearlessness, qualities that tend to be
forgotten in the flattering surrounds of its home base at Xavier Chapel.
Kelly took a bluff approach to the symphony’s first three movements, hammering out the first movement’s
craggy contours with little room for metaphysical musing. The following scherzo moved at startling speed,
timpani and strings hard pressed to get their notes out cleanly.
Opening the famous choral finale, Cousins made a wobbly start to the opening recitative, but soon recovered
for a firm outlining of the movement’s major theme. Kelly encouraged his orchestra during the opening
choral gambits, so the choristers’ impact was muted, not helped by the stage’s framing curtains. A better
balance came after the soloists entered in the second stanza and the often awkward Seid umschlungen
segment moved past less cumbersomely than in readings heard here during the past 15 years.
Next year, the Academy is taking a sabbatical, drawing breath to shore up their approach and support. Apart
from one major performance in November, the first we will hear from this estimable body comes after its
regrouping in a full 2006 season; a disappointment for Academy admirers but clearly a vital developmental
step.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 6 November 2004, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

Concert 4 consists of 21 items from the Cantiones sacrae published by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd in 1575. Each contributed 17 motets to the collection, presumably celebrating the seventeenth year of the reign of Elizabeth I, to whom it is dedicated.

PROGRAM

Thomas Tallis Te lucis ante terminum (2 settings)
Thomas Tallis Salvator mundi
Thomas Tallis Miserere nostri
Thomas Tallis In jejunio et fletu
Thomas Tallis Derelinquat impius
Thomas Tallis In manus tuas
Thomas Tallis Dum transisset Sabbatum
Thomas Tallis Candidi facti sunt Nazarei
Thomas Tallis O nata lux
Thomas Tallis Suscipe quaeso
William Byrd Attollite portas
William Byrd Miserere mihi, Domine
William Byrd Emendemus in melius
William Byrd Memento homo
William Byrd Tribue, Domine
William Byrd Siderum rector
William Byrd Laudate, pueri, Dominum
William Byrd O lux, beata Trinitas

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Belinda Wong	Peter Campbell	Alexander Roose
Carol Veldhoven	Jennifer Mathers	Tim Van Nooten	Thomas Drent
Kathryn Pisani	Jenny George	Frank Prain	Tom Reid
Fiona Seers	Barbara Tattam	Vaughan McAlley	Philip Nicholls
Maria Pisani
Helen Gagliano

–
REVIEW

Thursday, 11 November, The Age [Melbourne], page 6, A3.
Gombert’s Precision; ACO’s dash
Clive O’Connell

BACK from their first European tour, the Ensemble Gombert singers worked through two brackets of Tudor
motets by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Touring the composers’ ground-breaking joint publication,
Cantiones sacrae, the program comprised about two-thirds of that volume’s contents.
John O’Donnell and his gifted group presented both ends of the English Renaissance musical
spectrum – from the brief and plaintive Miserere nostri, Domine by Tallis, to the exhausting, imaginative
vaults in Byrd’s Tribue, Domine. Yet again, the group demonstrated its precision of pitch and enunciation, the
sinewy arches of this marvellous polyphony holding as firm as the flying buttresses they mimic.
The fiercely difficult Dum transisset Sabbatum by Tallis requires the first sopranos to sing continuously at the
top of their range. Despite some anxious moments, this gripping work swept to a secure conclusion.
[…]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age