Subscription Concert 3

Michelangelo, reluctant painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, completed the four-year task in 1512. The Chapel was first opened to the public on 1 November (All Saints’ Day) the same year. What music was performed on that occasion is not known for certain; but Josquin’s Missa Gaudeamus is based on the Introit for All Saints’ Day, and the Mass was copied into the Sistine Chapel choirbooks shortly before that time, making it a prime suspect. The motets that make up the remainder of this program were also copied into the choirbooks shortly before or during 1512, so at the very least these works were in the choir’s repertoire at this time, allowing our imaginations to synchronise sight and sound.

Please note the earlier start time of 5.30pm for concerts during the colder months.

PROGRAM
Antoine Brumel Laudate Dominum in caelis
Jacob Obrecht Laudemus nunc
Johannes Prioris In principio erat Verbum
Loyset Compère Ad honorem tuum Christe
Josquin Desprez Liber generationes Jesu
Josquin Desprez Salve Regina
Josquin Desprez Missa Gaudeamus

Purchase tickets to this concert.

SINGERS

Subscription Concert 2

With guest soloists Daniel Thomson (Evangelist) and Jerzy Kozlowski (Jesus)

St John’s account of the Passion of Christ is recited throughout most of the Western Church on Good Friday. Musical settings abound, from Gregorian chant to Arvo Pärt’s Passio of 1982. This program presents two of the finest German Baroque settings before Bach’s great Johannes-Passion. Demantius (1631) sets the Gospel as a large six-voice motet in three sections. Apart from introductory and concluding sentences, the text is entirely that presented in St John’s Gospel. Schütz (1666) also frames his biblical narrative with introduction and conclusion — the latter a setting of a stanza of the chorale ‘Christus, der uns selig macht,’ with which we open the program in a double-choir setting by Praetorius — but employs solo recitative for the Evangelist and individual characters, and four-voice choir for the interjections of the crowds.

PROGRAM
Praetorius Christus, der uns selig macht
Christoph Demantius Passion nach dem Evangelisten Johannes
Heinrich Schütz Historia des Leidens und Sterbens unser Herrn und Heilandes Jesu Christi nach dem Evangelisten St. Johannes

SINGERS

Released on Tall Poppies (TP121, 2000)

The late seventeenth-century composer Johann Caspar Kerll (1627–1693) wrote numerous organ works, some of which are recorded here for the first time by John O’Donnell. Kerll was born in Adorn where his father was a church organist, and worked in Vienna before being appointed to the palace of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels. He was Kapellmeister in the Munich court of the Elector Ferdinand Maria from 1656, and later organist to the Emperor in Vienna.

1. Eight Toccatas
2. Six Canzonas
3. Four Harpsichord Suites
4. Capriccio sopra il Cucu
5. Battaglia
6. Ciaccona
7. Passacaglia
8. Ricercata
9. Modulatio Organica

REVIEW

John O’Donnell has used his own edition of this music for this welcome addition to Kerll’s sparse discography.… His harpsichord playing, confident but more muted that we generally expect for seventeenth-century German harpsichord music today, emphasises the music’s dignity and grace. The rest of the works are played on the wonderful 1731 Egedacher organ of Stift Zwettl, whose choice O’Donnell explains was dictated by its ell-tempered tuning. It is a stunningly beautiful instrument, brighter (and more crisply recorded) than the meantone-tuned 1642 Freundt organ at Klosterneuberg used by Haselböck … His playing of even the showier works is more thoughtful than that of his Austrian colleague. This makes his performance of the Modulatio organica (a massive and serious contrapuntal investigation of the Magificat tones) particularly satisfying. The plainsong versets are sung attractively by O’Donnell’s Ensemble Gombert – although the voices. recorded in Melbourne eight months after the organ music, sound a little too close in relation to the organ.
Christopher Price
International Record Review, November 2000.

Subscription Concert 1

This program commemorates two outstanding Late Renaissance composers whose lives encroached on the early years of the Baroque. The two were friends and, for a period of some eighteen months, fellow students of Giovanni’s uncle Andrea Gabrieli. The two collaborated in the composition of at least one piece, while they currently share the attribution of another. Organ works by both composers will supplement the choral program listed here, and an ensemble of Renaissance brass, strings and organ joins us for this commemoration.

PROGRAM
Giovanni Gabrieli In ecclesiis
Giovanni Gabrieli Jubilate Deo
Giovanni Gabrieli Deus, qui beati Marcum
Giovanni Gabrieli O Domine Jesu Christe
Giovanni Gabrieli Deus, Deus meus
Giovanni Gabrieli O magnum mysterium
Giovanni Gabrieli Hodie completi sunt
Giovanni Gabrieli Magnificat a 8
Hans Leo Haßler Dixit Maria
Hans Leo Haßler Miserere mei, Deus
Hans Leo Haßler Missa Octava a 8

Subscription Concert 2

Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria, priest and musician, was one of the three great Continental composers of the Counter-Reformation, the other two being his renowned master, Palestrina, and the extraordinarily prolific Lassus. This quattrocentennial tribute falls on the exact anniversary of Victoria’s death and features his great six-voice Requiem, along with a selection of his grandest motets.

PROGRAM

Tomás Luis de Victoria O lux et decus Hispaniae
Tomás Luis de Victoria Alma Redemptoris mater a 5
Tomás Luis de Victoria Ave Regina caelorum a 8
Tomás Luis de Victoria Regina caeli laetare a 8
Tomás Luis de Victoria Salve, Regina a 6
Tomás Luis de Victoria Lauda Sion
Tomás Luis de Victoria Victimae paschali
Tomás Luis de Victoria Veni sancte Spiritus
Tomás Luis de Victoria Requiem a 6

Woodend Winter Arts Festival

PROGRAM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Requiem
Completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr

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SOLOISTS
Katherine Norman (soprano)
Niki Ebacioni (alto)
Timothy Van Nooten (tenor)
Kieran Rowe (bass)

Accademia Arcadia – conducted by John O’Donnell.

Subscription Concert 4
A French Baroque Christmas

Our annual Christmas to Candlemas visits to Louis XIV’s France this year, though the prolific Antoine Charpentier, whose music we feature, was never employed by the court. The Messe de Minuit pour Noël (Midnight Mass for Christmas) has become such a favourite in our time that it is surprising to learn that it was first published in 1962. Ensemble Gombert is joined by the instrumentalists of Accademia Arcadia for this French Baroque Christmas celebration.

PROGRAM

Antoine Charpentier  In nativitatem Domini canticum: Quem vidistis pastores?
Antoine Charpentier In nativitatem Domini canticum: Usquequo avertis faciem tuam Domine
Antoine Charpentier Messe de Minuit pour Noël

Conducted by Jeremy Summerly (Royal Academy of Music, London) with a period instrument ensemble led by Rachel Beesley and featuring Ensemble Gombert, The Choir of Trinity College, Melbourne, The Consort of Melbourne, and outstanding vocalists. This landmark choral event is presented by the Melbourne Recital Centre.

PROGRAM

J.S. Bach St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion)

The Consort of Melbourne
The Choir of Trinity College, Melbourne
Ensemble Gombert
Trebles of Melbourne Grammar School Chapel Choir
Ironwood Chamber Orchestra
Rachel Beesley – concertmaster
Julia Fredersdorff – concertmaster
Robert Macfarlane – Evangelist
Michael Leighton Jones – Christus
Siobhan Stagg – soprano solo
Lynette Alcantara – alto solo
Paul Bentley – tenor solo
Peter Tregear – bass solo

REVIEWS

Tuesday, 19 April 2011, The Age [Melbourne], page 15.
A long afternoon with Bach’s Passion
Clive O’Connell

A mixture of Melbourne-based choirs proved the main attraction at Sunday’s performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Without a program, I could identify only some participants, but members of the Ensemble Gombert, the Consort of Melbourne and Trinity College Choir featured among the personnel whose chorales made welcome hiatus points throughout the reading.

British conductor Jeremy Summerly directed a straightforward account of this Baroque masterwork, giving plenty of room to the music’s powerful drama by encouraging the vocal forces to produce full-blooded attacks. The double orchestra sounded uneven, one more careful with tuning and production than the other in a vibrato-free environment. When the oboists switched to caccia instruments, the duet timbres sounded unharnessed, their support tending to detract from the soloist.

As a central duo, Michael Leighton Jones’s Christus and Robert Macfarlane’s Evangelist made fine partners. Peter Tregear accounted for the bass arias with precise pitching and insistent accents, while the other three soloists enjoyed passages of fair quality. Unfailingly consistent accounts of the massive top-and-tail choral movements, reinforced by a laudably willing boys’ choir in part 1, raised the long afternoon’s achievement level considerably.

Tuesday, 19 April 2011, The Australian [Sydney], n.p.
Harmonic breakdowns overshadow and otherwise admirable venture
Chris Boyd

IN the margins of Puccini’s manuscript score for La Boheme, Mimi’s death is marked by a skull and crossbones.

Christ’s death in later versions of Bach’s St Matthew Passion is marked by nothing more than a gasp from the organ. In this performance, that mortal gasp was followed by a prolonged and perfect silence, mercifully unpunctuated by coughing or the rustling of librettos. That awe-inspiring silence was one of the more dramatic moments in an ambitious and risky venture that combined period and non-period instruments as well as period and non-period choirs.

Instead of a clash of thirds and sixths, as we might have expected, the meshing of the choirs was rarely less than felicitous. More often than not it was glorious. (One assumes that Ensemble Gombert has had more practice adapting to modern tunings and a variety of temperings than the other choirs have had.) Instrumentally, for the most part the lion and the lamb snuggled up together, too: the excellent viola da gamba sat well with the cellos, the violone with the double bass. Only the woodwinds sat in mutinous isolation.

Yet there were three clear instances when this performance came off the rails. The first was in the opening, when the massed orchestral forces generated a muddy and ugly sound. The second, just short of the climax of part one, was marked by some treacherous phrasing in the oboes. The third, near the end of the performance, was a tug of war between the bassoon-like fagotto and oboe da caccia on one side and the strings and voices on the other. Caught in the middle was singer Peter Tregear, whose light bass was pitched somewhere in between the competing armies. The timing and magnitude of these breakdowns in harmony overshadowed what was otherwise an admirable performance.

Robert Macfarlane as the Evangelist has the heroic tenor, agile and youthful, one would kill to hear in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. His singing was a delight. Lynette Alcantara brought genuine emotion to the alto solo. With great skill and tact, Siobhan Stagg began the soprano solo with a treble-like tone, then opened her voice to bring a more womanly presence, as required. Even Katherine Norman’s contribution – just a single sung line as the first maid – was bewitching.

On double bass, Kirsty McCahon was a vital presence. And Jeremy Summerly’s confidence-inspiring conducting was precise and economical. It was a shame he didn’t tune up one more time.