Category: Reviews

Saturday, 29 June 2002, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

Saint Peter, Prince of Apostles and first Bishop of Rome, has been well celebrated in music. The highlight of this program is Palestrina’s sonorous six-voice Mass based on his own popular motet Tu es Petrus. The performance will become an Anglo-Italian feast, movements of the Mass being interspersed with Byrd’s Propers for the occasion.

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert Surge Petre
Clemens non Papa Tu es Petrus
Cristóbal de Morales Tu es Petrus
Costanzo Festa Petrus beatus catenarum laqueos
Tomás Luis de Victoria Tu es Petrus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina  Tu es Petrus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Missa Tu es Petrus
William Byrd Propers for the Feast of SS Peter & Paul

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REVIEWS

Tuesday, 2 July 2002, The Age [Melbourne], page 4, The Culture.
A divine evening as choir reaches for the heavens
Clive O’Connell

On the liturgical feast day of St Peter, the Ensemble Gombert under John O’Donnell honoured the saint with a
representative selection from the large store of Renaissance music written in his honour, chiefly reinforcing
his status as the first Pope.
Of course, the Biblical sentence that has come in for most attention over the centuries has been the ringing Tu es Petrus proclamation in which Christ passed on his responsibilities to the Galilee fisherman and thereby set up the colossal edifice of the Roman church.
The ensemble began with one of their patron’s works, Surge, Petre, energetically concerned with getting the
apostle on the move after a stint in prison. Then followed four settings of Tu es Petrus by four Renaissance
master-composers – Clemens non Papa, Morales, Victoria and Palestrina. The last of these in particular
created a spectacularly jubilant sound when the text came to the passing on of `the keys of the kingdom of
heaven’. Here, the six lines of the Gomberts’ complex gave life to the musical power and assurance expected
at this point from the leading composer of the Counter-Reformation.
In the evening’s second part, O’Donnell took his forces through the Mass that Palestrina based on his motet,
adding a continuous contrast to the Italian composer’s seamless fabric by interposing William Byrd’s settings
of the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion verses. This made a splendid chance to compare
the music of the two great contemporaries, Byrd’s fanciful stolidity and use of intervallic leaps serving as a
leavening to the Palestrina work’s imperturbable elegance and deliberately lavish chord spacings.
But the vital pleasure of the night came in the choir’s high standard of delivery which, faltering only for a
second or two, wove its magic with majesty and deliberation. Even when the tenors or basses were
subdivided, the strands could be perceived easily and the surging linear interplay of this night’s singing once
again served notice that the Gomberts are back at their high-powered best.
[…]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Tuesday, 2 July 2002, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 52.
Feast day supplies musical menu
Xenia Hanusiak

ENSEMBLE Gombert brought a religious focus to their third subscription concert of the year.
June 29, according to the ecclesiastical calendar, marks the Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. Paul seemed to have got sidelined, so on the day all the attention fell to Peter.
With Peter and the Mass of the day as its raison d’etre, Ensemble Gombert treated us to a day in the liturgical life of Renaissance Italy. The first part of the concert consisted of various motets in homage to
Peter.
There was great comfort and ease in this section of the concert, and most especially in the less challenging four and five-voice settings. The choir could indulge confidently in the pleasure.
Now in its second decade, Ensemble Gombert is well versed in the Renaissance harmonic template. While the membership has altered, this unique chamber ensemble is in peak form.
The Mass settings gave us the opportunity to hear contemporaries Englishman William Byrd and the Italian Palestrina in tandem. On the one hand, Palestrina’s counterpoint is so consistent it is possible to codify. On the other, Byrd’s releases a sense of freedom. In both cases, purity of expression and harmony remain potent agents, and with this Ensemble Gombert excelled.

Saturday, 2 March 2002, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel,  Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1

The Sistine Chapel, private chapel of the Pope, has attracted some of the finest composers of liturgical music over the ages, especially during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Renaissance choirbooks of the chapel have been well preserved: scholars regularly peruse these grand tomes in an ongoing searchfor further knowledge of the music and its performance. All four composers represented in this program were at various times employed in the chapel as both singers and composers. Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli remains one of the golden favourites of the era.

PROGRAM

Josquin Desprez  Ave Maria
Josquin Desprez Inviolata, integra, et casta es Maria
Josquin Desprez Benedicta es, caelorum Regina
Costanzo Festa Magnificat septimi toni
Costanzo Festa  Ave Regina caelorum
Cristóbal de Morales O sacrum convivium
Cristóbal de Morales Lamentabatur Jacob
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli
Note: Morales ‘Emendemus in melius’ was advertised in the subscription brochure but not performed.

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REVIEW

Tuesday, 6 March 2002, The Age [Melbourne], page 4, The Culture.
Uplifting portrait of the spiritual in art
Clive O’Connell

What strikes you afresh each time Ensemble Gombert begins its yearly round is not just how good the group
is but how it maintains such a high standard despite changes in personnel, albeit slight ones.
The body’s impeccably contoured and carefully mixed timbres returned to Melbourne on Saturday night, once
again sweeping all before them, staking Gombert’s claim to being the finest interpreter in the country of a
cappella Renaissance music.
Once again, you are left wondering if we are likely to hear singing of this quality from visiting choirs. In fact,
guest organisations that used to visit Australia to exhibit their choral wares are becoming thinner on the
ground, possibly because quite a few rely heavily on advance publicity built on historical reputation rather
than current ability. Another reason is that their demonstrations of expertise often fall flat when local bodies
like Ensemble Gombert sing just as well, if not better.
This is not simple-minded jingoism, the my-choir-right-or-wrong argument. Certainly, there are glitches in
the Gombert fabric every so often and the group’s performances are not always recording-studio perfect. But
then, the choir treats audience members as fellow discoverers, moving off a path all too well beaten by
others, taking on many of the most challenging early and late Renaissance pieces.
The group does not stick, year-in, year-out, with the familiar stock-in-trade that you can hear from many
British (or Australian) cathedral choirs with entrenched musical traditions.
On Saturday, director John O’Donnell led his 18 singers in works written by former members of or composers
for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel choir, progressing over roughly an 80-year period from Josquin’s four-voice
Ave Maria to the sunburst clarity of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, the composer’s object lesson in
making sense of the mass without sacrificing that breathtaking amplitude of timbral fabric achieved by the
great masters of the High Renaissance.
O’Donnell and his collaborators presented an even reading of this music, maintaining a sensitivity to the ebb
and flow of linear interplay, that dazzling polyphonic extroversion typical of Mediterranean church music in
the 16th century.
Nobody pushed the pace or “pointed” notes for cheap dramatic effect and the choir’s treatment of dynamics
moved in direct relationship to the texts and the composer’s disposition of parts.
There are always difficulties in these transparent works, problems that singers manage in various styles. For instance, the Palestrina Mass pushes both sets of tenor parts pretty high; with only four singers at his disposal,
O’Donnell asked for a light and floating attack, rather than the customary bellow employed to make the notes
“count” at exposed moments. Yet, beyond the technical craft and welding of the available vocal possibilities,
where Ensemble Gombert takes precedence is in its communication of this music’s transcendental beauty.
In the slow-moving majesty of Lamentabatur Jacob by Morales or Josquin’s ardent Benedicta es, caelorum
Regina, the choir offers a sonorous realisation of the spiritual in art, a physical depiction of the insights that
visited mystics like St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila.
This is far from a superficial exercise, the kind of thing others achieve by playing around with timbres for
effect.
For one thing, the Xavier Chapel offers the audience pretty close quarters for observation and what strikes
you time and again about this ensemble is its focus on the task at hand; there is simply no time for anything
but producing the best possible sound. Indeed, performed properly, this style of music moves too quickly for
anything like self-indulgence.
Which may point to the exceptional quality of Ensemble Gombert. Even with a limited number of voices,
there are few moments when you can detect the sound of an individual singer; each member is subsumed in
the totality of the choir’s output.
That is probably the strongest testament to O’Donnell’s realised vision of how this music should sound, as
well as proof of the group’s strong collaborative character and its members’ superlative musicianship.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 15 December 2001, 8pm
Sunday, 16 December 2001, 2.30pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

Our annual carol-free Christmas concert is a Renaissance feast spanning Europe and the sixteenth century. Cipriano de Rore’s powerful seven-voice Mass on Josquin’s great motet Praeter rerum seriem, featured in our 1997 Christmas to Candlemas, is returning in response to a number of requests, as are some of the favourite Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas motets of the past few years.

PROGRAM

Andreas de Silva Puer natus est nobis
Nicolas Gombert Hodie nobis caelorum Rex
Clemens non Papa O magnum mysterium
John Sheppard Regis Tharsis et insulae
Orlande de LassusVidentes stallam magi
Jacob Handl Omnes de Saba venient
William Byrd Hodie beata virgo
Tomás Luis de Victoria Senex puerum portabat
Thomas TallisVidete miraculum
Josquin Desprez Praeter rerum seriem
Cipriano de Rore Missa Praeter rerum seriem (à 7)

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REVIEW

Tuesday, 18 December 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 4, Today.
Sumptuos banquet
Joel Crotty

MELBOURNE’S premiere early music choir, Ensemble Gombert, returned to the performance arena after a
seven-month hiatus. As one has come to expect from a Gombert concert, Saturday’s program thoughtfully
expressed the nature of Christmas, the Epiphany and Candlemas. And the 18 choristers produced a
sumptuous banquet of honed intonation.
The first half of the concert consisted of short pieces from a who’s who of Renaissance composition – Silva,
Gombert, Clemens non Papa, Sheppard, Lassus, Handl, Byrd, Victoria and Tallis. And with this collection we
journeyed through English, Flemish, and Italian music influences.
At no stage during the first half did any section of the choir sound uncomfortable to the point of fragility. In
Tallis’ Videte miraculum, the first sopranos soared magnificently and lingered in the stratosphere to make the
work one of the stand-out items of the night.
Other pieces that sat above the others included Clemens non Papa’s beautiful O magnum mysterium and
Lassus’ Videntes stellam.
The real test for the singers came after the interval when they performed Josquin’s Praeter rerum seriem and
Rore’s Missa Praeter rerum seriem. Rore’s mass is quite intense musically and its seven-part division certainly
creates its fair share of ensemble problems. Yet, Ensemble Gombert was able to keep their presentation afloat
and rarely did the challenges overwhelm them. And when difficulties were encountered, the group quickly
regained composure. […]
Joel Crotty/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 19 May 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

Binchois would not have had an inkling that his chanson Comme femme desconfortée was destined for greatness. But once one Renaissance composer decided to borrow a certain melodic line as the basis of a new work others tended to follow, and this is what happened to the tenor line of Binchois’ beautiful but otherwise not particularly significant chanson. This program features four Marian motets and a Mass based on this melody. The peroration of the major work (viz. the final Agnus Dei of the Isaac Mass) features some of the most extreme false relations of the High Renaissance.

PROGRAM

Gilles de Bins dit Binchois Comme femme desconfortée
Josquin Desprez Stabat mater
Johannes Ghiselin Inviolata, integra et casta
Johannes Ghiselin Regina caeli laetare
Ludwig Senfl Ave rosa sine spinis
Heinrich Isaac  Missa Comme femme desconfortée

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REVIEW

Tuesday, 22 May 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 5, Today.
The gamut of musical talent
Clive O’Connell

[…]
MELBOURNE’S premier choir, Ensemble Gombert, gave the second in its annual series of recitals on
Saturday – an under-advertised affair given to a smaller audience than usual. However, the program was short
enough to be given in one 75-minute sweep: four Marian motets and an Isaac Mass, all based on a Binchois rondeau, Comme femme desconfortee.
There has been some reshuffling among the singers – 16 for this recital. In the secure and gently contoured
reading of Desprez’s Stabat mater, one of the tenors moved in with the altos; Jerzy Kozlowski was absent
from the basses, Carol Veldhoven from the sopranos. But the ensemble’s combination and its balance shifts in
five-part works is one of the great delights of this city’s musical life.
The night’s highpoint, the Isaac work, shows the composer’s constructional powers at their least challenging,
particularly as the Binchois melody is enunciated in long penetrating notes by the tenors at various stages.
The Gomberts emphasised the work’s sprightliness, its lightness relative to many of the composer’s other
works in the form. Isaac’s final Agnus Dei, where the sopranos repeat the same pattern and words above a
gently uncoiling set of lower lines, punctuated by harmonic clashes, brought this short night to a particularly
bracing end.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 7 April 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 2

The compositional output of the prolific Lassus includes many cycles: for example, the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, 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’. In our program this work is complemented by five of Byrd’s so-called ‘Babylonian exile’ motets; works apparently written for the comfort of Catholics in Protestant England.

PROGRAM

Orlande de Lassus Lagrime di San Pietro
William Byrd Ne irascaris, Domine
William Byrd Deus, venerunt gentes
William Byrd Quomodo cantabimus

Note: Additional Byrd motets ‘Tribulationes civitatus’ and ‘Vide, Domine, afflictionen nostram’ advertised in subscription brochure but not sung.

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REVIEW

Wednesday, 11 April 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 6, Today.
Moveable feast
Clive O’Connell

TAKING major position on Ensemble Gombert’s latest recital, the Tears of StPeter by Orlando di Lasso, is an
hour-long series of 21 spiritual madrigals that outline the throes of repentance suffered by the first Pope after
his renunciation of any connection with Christ before the later stages of the Way of the Cross and the Crucifixion.
The sequence makes a heavy demand on any choir, and one can think of few in this country that would have
borne up under the strain, apart from John O’Donnell’s group.
Their work in this substantial exercise remained rhythmically precise, the division of lines evenly
accomplished, and the realisation of the composers’ penitential intentions given prime importance.
These Lagrime, written in the last months of Lassus’ life, act as a sort of summa, a treasury of the composer’s
expressive powers and style. While there are few moments of brazen originality, the whole comprises a kind
of emotional continuum that begins by setting the scene of Peter’s betrayal and concludes with Christ’s
bemoaning the ingratitude of man, albeit in muted, restrained language.
In a briefer second half, the ensemble sang three motets by Byrd: Ne irascaris, Deus venerunt gentes and a
masterpiece of invention, “Quomodo cantabimus?” The melodically felicitous paragraphs of Lassus had
progressed with undiminished grace through the night’s first part, but in these three laments by the English
composer for the falling of Jerusalem, the Gombert group moved into a realm of musical spirituality of high
order.
One might have questioned the neatness of several entries, including a few from the usually flawless
sopranos, but the total weave of this Elizabethan fabric – albeit of a cloth woven by a recusant – was intensely
moving; a further indication of the group’s integrity of performance, despite some changes in personnel.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 24 February 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1

Renaissance composers frequently re-fashioned the musical material of motets or chansons into settings of Mass or Magnificat. A composer might make such a parody of his own music, as is the case with Gombert’s eight-voice Credo, modelled on his motet Lugebat David Absalon, or that of another composer, as is the case with the works of Lassus and Monteverdi presented in this program, each based on a piece by Gombert. That these two later composers, each considered the outstanding master of his generation, should pay homage to Gombert in this way is an indication of the esteem in which our omposer was regarded during the fifty years after his death.

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert Regina caeli laetare (à 12)
Nicolas Gombert Lugebat David Absalon
Nicolas Gombert Credo
Nicolas Gombert Mort et fortune
Orlande de Lassus Magnificat tertii toni quinque vocum Mort et fortune
Nicolas Gombert In illo tempore
Claudio Monteverdi Missa da Capella a sei voci, fatta sopra il motetto In illo tempore del Gomberti

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REVIEWS

Tuesday, 27 February 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 5, Today.
The dreamy and the delightful
Clive O’Connell

ON SATURDAY, the Ensemble Gombert began its annual subscription series in the freshly painted Xavier
Chapel. The concert came upon us rather suddenly, which might explain the unusually light audience
numbers.
Director John O’Donnell, in another program notable for inner references, began with four works by the group’s namesake, starting with the ever-fresh, powerful Regina caeli in 12 parts and ending with the chanson
Mort et fortune, which provided the basis for the first half’s major offering, a Magnificat by Lassus.
Similarly, in the second part of the night, the ensemble opened with Gombert’s motet In illo tempore,
followed by Monteverdi’s Missa di Capella for six voices, based on that piece’s material.
The whole made for an extraordinary study in how two Renaissance masters used Gombert’s melodic patterns
as springboards for their own works, the references more easily apparent in the Lassus work, probably
because of the chanson’s easily assimilable melodic lines and harmonic movement.
Apart from the ingenuity of the night’s music, Saturday found the Gomberts in fine fettle. Some of the voices
– Deborah Summerbell, Carol Veldhoven, Margaret Arnold, Andrew Fysh and Jerzy Kozlowski – have been
with the ensemble since its beginnings. O’Donnell recruits wisely and the resulting textural clarity and polish
of delivery comprise one of this city’s musical delights.
You experience an extraordinary power and resonance in the work of these 17 singers, on Saturday best
illustrated in the Magnificat – a model of the composer’s mellifluous and intentionally rich combination of
timbres – the Mass coming a close second with its dramatic partitioning of voices and the energy of its inspiration.
The Ensemble Gombert is back with a vengeance, its music-making talents a high delight to such a degree
that the conclusion to this splendid recital left all of us wanting more.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Monday, 26 February 2001, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 87.
Group strikes with clarity
Johanna Selleck

ENSEMBLE Gombert opened its subscription series with a homage to its namesake.
The program consisted of works by Lassus and Monteverdi which were based upon Gombert, as well as the
genuine article.
For sheer beauty of sound this group is unmatched.
The first rippling “r” of Gombert’s Regina caeli laetare was like a thunderbolt, a testimony to the ability of
these individuals to work as one mind, attacking each entry with calculated accuracy and clarity.
The offerings from Gombert also included the motet Lugebat David Absalon and the eight-voice Credo — a
powerfully impressive work.
Gombert uses closely-knit points of imitation which impart a depth and uniformity to the texture, with
individual lines weaving like silky ribbons.
He deliberately avoids devices that interrupt the flow.
On Saturday the effect was of a living, breathing tapestry of sound.
The works by Lassus and Monteverdi were preceded by the relevant pieces by Gombert on which they were
based.
Lassus’ Magnificat terti toni Mort et fortune sets alternating verses in plainchant as was his usual practice.
This gave the tenors the chance to shine with a firm and unflustered delivery, contained beneath a veil of
serenity.
Monterverdi’s Missa In illo tempore pays tribute to his predecessor by reworking the main motives on which
Gombert constructed points of imitation.
It was pure joy to let these extraordinary emanations surround and wash over you, then drift heavenwards
where every sound seems to hang suspended before melting, imperceptibly, into the ether.

Saturday, 3 June 2000, 8 pm
Xavier College Chapel, Kew

Subscription Series Concert 3

Marian music accounts for a large percentage of the output of most Renaissance composers. Favourite texts are the Propers associated with the principal Marian feasts, the four great Compline antiphons (Alma Redemptoris mater, Ave regina caelorum, Regina caeli laetare and Salve regina) and various devotional pieces.

PROGRAM

Josquin Desprez Ave Maria
Josquin Desprez Inviolata, integra et casta es, Maria
Josquin Desprez Virgo salutiferi
Josquin Desprez Salve regina (à 4)
Josquin Desprez O virgo prudentissima
Josquin Desprez Regina caeli laetare
Josquin Desprez Benedicta es, caelorum regina
Josquin Desprez Alma redemptoris/Ave regina caelorum
Josquin Desprez Illibata Dei virgo nutrix
Josquin Desprez Stabat mater
Josquin Desprez O virgo virginum
Josquin Desprez Salve regina (à 5)
Josquin Desprez Praeter rerum seriem

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REVIEW

Tuesday, 6 June 2000, The Age [Melbourne], p 4.
Local composers’ ensemble oomph
Joel Crotty

ENSEMBLE Gombert radically changed its choral program from featuring eight Renaissance composers to
just one – Josquin Desprez.
It was a pity the concert was scaled down. One of the endearing features of this group is its performance of lesser-known Renaissance composers.
It is to be hoped that the scores of Constanzo Festa, Phillippe Verdelo and Andreas de Silva, which were
pushed aside, will be performed next year.
Nevertheless, a night of Josquin Desprez’s Marian motets was not a bad thing. For it gave us the opportunity
to reinforce within our minds the creative depth of this composer.
The choristers were able to project a blended sound and, as such, the tone-colors were continuously being
sympathetically remixed. Their sophisticated sound wash was still very much apparent in the numerous duet
passages.
Even the points of imitation were, in most cases, delivered accurately and without force. And because the
constituent phrases were delivered in a smooth rather than a disjointed manner, the presentations were all
suitably defined.
But there were some indecisive moments when phrases tapered off and pitch precision was on occasion
messy.
The tenors at times struggled to present a powerful influence on the proceedings. This was due, in part, to the
writing lingering in the higher registers.
John O’Donnell, Ensemble Gombert’s director, edited all 13 motets. And while he might have been
adventurous in musicological terms, they are a welcome addition to the edited literature.

Joel Crotty/Courtesy of The Age