Originally published in Sydney Arts Guide

31 MAY 2021 HOLLY CHAMPION

This concert was the second-last performance in a program that has successfully toured from Melbourne to Sydney and will finally be performed in Canberra on Thursday 10th June, at Yarralumla’s Albert Hall. The Sydney iteration of Burden of Truth is a collaboration between The Song Company and Vox, a young adults’ chamber choir under the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, as well as with the teenage singers of the Conservatorium High School, the Song Company’s Education Partner. Consequently, this is a very youthful concert, with no-one on stage (except Artistic Director Antony Pitts) over the age of 50. These fresh and supple, highly trained voices combined in gorgeous, lush harmonies as they gave the world premiere run of Pitts’ own work, Transiens, as well as a new a cappella arrangement of Gavin Bryars’ famous Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, using a looped recording of a nameless homeless man singing a half-remembered, half-improvised hymn. These two modern works make up the lion’s share of a program of interconnected sacred choral music that spans the 16th to 21st centuries.

In Sydney, this religious music was contrasted with a very secular venue: The National Art School’s Cell Block Theatre was literally once the women’s wing of the old Darlinghurst Gaol, but has more recently been completely gutted to become a vaulting cathedral-like space, with the traces of its old stairwell and cells still visible in the rough-hewn sandstone. Fitted out with funky steel scaffolding, the venue’s juxtaposition of the old and the new is, in fact, perfectly suited to the Song Company’s ‘menu’. 

The hors d’oeuvre was a traditional four-part hymn by James M. Black, His Love Never Failed Me Yet, sung in simple and lovely four-part harmony by the Song Company singers, who surprised the audience by starting the concert behind us. (A couple of latecomers popping up behind the singers and being shooed away provided some muffled laughs). This intriguing use of the space, in the manner of a chapel, was only just beginning. The singers began processing as if up to the altar, humming the plainchant melody Jesus autem transiens (our amuse-bouche course for the afternoon), as they were joined by dozens more singers from the Conservatorium and Vox, all pouring into the venue from the side doors. Once at the ‘altar’, they broke into full monophonic voice. Pitts’ conducting was precise and the singers tightly synchronised; no easy feat with plainchant’s often ambiguous rhythm. Perhaps spellbound with the reverent atmosphere, the audience did not applaud.

Our salad course, to continue the metaphor, was William Byrd’s 1605 motet Ave verum corpus. At the first notes, my husband (himself a long-time choral singer) sank back into his chair with a happy sigh, mouthing along with the words. It was truly a wonderful, rich performance of this immortal polyphonic work. Yet, in a fascinating example of audience groupthink (or was it just a painfully middle-class fear of clapping between movements taken to extremes?) there was still no applause.

Our main course, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, started almost imperceptibly softly with the fade-in of the looped recording. With his quavering voice, worn by age, rough sleeping and hard living, the unknown ‘co-composer’ of this work seemed for a moment to be an unexpected interloper from the streets of Darlinghurst. Over and over, trapped in poverty and in time, he sang his semi-garbled version of Black’s hymn, while the trained singers gradually built up a complex array of ever-changing, overlapping words and harmonies around it. Pitts provided expert direction, not only in the swirl of song but also in the complex choreography, as singers continually created small choirs, then shifted around slowly to disband and form new ones. The work is beautiful, but it is so long and repetitious as to be quite trance-inducing and a little dull, despite this sensitive performance. The end of the work fades out again, with only sopranos and altos with their ethereal pianissimo humming, and finally just the looped recording receding into the distance. Still no clapping.

Our dessert course was a triptych in 25 voice-parts. Transiens held our attention more thoroughly than Jesus’ Blood, even from the beginning with a strong bass drone that contrasted sharply with the preceding work’s ending. Transiens is a monumental new work, profoundly influenced by Renaissance sacred choral music in general and, of course, by Robert Wylkynson’s canonic treatment of Jesus autem transiens in particular. In its antiphonal use of small choirs (with more dynamic vocal placement throughout), there is a definite relationship to Tallis’s Spem in Alium here: not surprising when one reads in Pitts’ bio that he has also composed the work XL, a 40-voice-part companion piece to Spem, which, also in 40 parts, is beloved by ambitious choristers everywhere. Rich with chiaroscuro and the tension between chaos and order, sometimes almost schizophrenic in its imitative polyphony, sometimes a glorious wash of sound like waves rolling over the audience, Transiens is a significant new addition to the Australian choral repertory. Pitts should be extremely proud, not only of the composition, but also of the multiple young collaborating choirs and the remarkably unified sound he has achieved with them. All this happily exists on a new album, recorded in isolation during Covid and available now on Bandcamp and as a limited edition vinyl recording. 

What an extraordinary achievement for The Song Company, to have completed this project during what is surely one of history’s most difficult periods to be a singer. They must be thanking their lucky stars that their Melbourne concerts came just before the current Victorian lockdown. How lucky are we, too, to be able to attend concerts like this maskless, and with very little concern about Covid at the moment, while Victorians (not to mention Indians and so many others around the world) are trapped once more in their homes, fearing sometimes for their lives. 

Like the audience (who finally clapped very enthusiastically after an agonized moment of silence at the very end of Transiens) I heartily enjoyed this musical menu with its cleverly cohesive mix of styles and periods. I highly recommend that Canberra-based lovers of choral music, especially Christian sacred music, attend the final concert on the 10th of June.  

The concert took place at 3pm on the 29th May 2021 at the Cell Block Theatre, National Art School.

If you don’t have the chance to get there and see The Song Company in person, you can buy the album of the music either as a digital download or a vinyl record at https://thesongcompany.bandcamp.com/  or visit  website at http://the.song.company. It’s a great way to support your local artists and keep Arts alive in Australia.

Featured image : ‘Burden Of Truth’ pic  Christopher Hayles photography

Originally published in Sydney Arts Guide

Sydney Arts Guide

26 JUNE 2021 HOLLY CHAMPION

It was a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon in Sydney on June 19th, with a local Covid cluster once again threatening to destroy the school holidays. The throng of suitably be-masked audience members eagerly milled into the City Recital Hall for the Musica Viva chamber concert by soloists Emily Sun, Amir Farid and Nicolas Fleury, which promised to be excellent. The average age of the audience was quite high, as is usual for classical matinee performances in Sydney, and I admired their bravery until it occurred to me that, being over 50, most of them had already probably been vaccinated. I admit to being a little jealous. Meanwhile, my friend had fallen prey to the casual cruelties of finding parking in the CBD in the rain, so I left her ticket at the box office and kept an eye out for her arrival, as I took my seat. 

This concert was always going to have a special meaning for me. The final item on the program, the famous 1865 Op. 40 Trio by Brahms, is one of the few piano trios in The Canon to be rebadged as a ‘Horn Trio’, and it has a fond place in my heart. It was the piece I performed (as pianist) for my HSC Music Extension exam twenty years ago with my teachers, one on violin and one on clarinet standing in for the Waldhorn, or natural horn; and then later again in my undergraduate years with my fellow students on violin and viola, in the continued absence of any good hornists. (Advice to young musicians: learn the French horn. If you’re any good you’ll be in very, very hot demand.) I had idly fished the sheet music out of a dusty garage sale box in the late 90s and slowly, inexorably, I fell for this work’s charms: its passionate, lush harmonies, vivacious hunting motifs, pianistic and synchronistic challenges and hearty German Romantic flavour. I have listened over the years to many different recordings, performed by musicians far more capable than I have ever been: the Perlman/Barenboim/Celvenger video on YouTube is a particular standout. This, then, was to be the real treat of the afternoon: a live performance of the Horn Trio by a supergroup of young international soloists, complete with (spoiler alert) an actual horn.

First, however, we had Mozart’s Horn Quintet K407 (1782), as arranged by Ernst Naumann (1910). Composer Gordon Kerry’s insightful program notes point out how Naumann may have been thinking of his friend Brahms’ great Trio when arranging the Mozart work, so this is a natural programming choice. Kerry also tells us about Mozart’s much-abused friend, the horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb, for whom the genius wrote his great works for horn, including the Concerto No. 4 of “I once had a whim and I had to obey it/ To buy a French horn in a second-hand shop” fame. While Mozart was a pianist and violist who liked to give the viola a special role, as he did in this Quintet, there is no viola in Naumann’s arrangement and the piano is relegated to an accompaniment role. The charmingly tousle-haired, musically sensitive pianistic powerhouse Amir Farid was therefore a little underused, and the horn and violin are the stars. Emily Sun’s totally assured, expressive playing on her beautiful 1760 Nicolo Gagliano violin and even the splendour of her dress seemed to mark her out as the trio’s leader, though perhaps this is mostly related to the greater degree of physical movement that is naturally permitted by the violin, in comparison with the horn. Fleury certainly did not disappoint however, with an outstandingly mellifluous rich tone, perfect precision of intonation and virtuosic facility across the registers.

One of the best things about chamber music is watching the eyes, and my seat allowed me to indulge. I was fascinated by the interplay between the performers and by the expressions on their (all strikingly attractive, it has to be said) faces and in their body language. In the Mozart, they were all ease, joyousness and vivacity. The brisk but never rushed tempo of the first movement gave way to a lovely lyrical second movement with beautiful messa di voce effects on violin in the A section and a more dramatic, but short B section. In the third movement some of the Brahms Trio’s ‘hunting’ flavour was foreshadowed, with brilliant scalic runs, trills and arpeggios. Finally the piano got a brief moment to shine in the coda, but thankfully Farid never seemed to have the sense of arrogant ego that mars the performances of many a piano soloist, especially in a chamber context. The three virtuosi were beautifully in sync with each other, not just in terms of timing but also in mood, as evident in their faces and bodies.

Fleury then took a well-earned break while Gordon Kerry himself came to the stage, thanking everyone for “braving the weather and plague” and noting the contribution of the next piece’s benefactor, Julian Burnside AO QC, who is a great philanthropic supporter of the arts “simply out of the belief that the arts are good for us and we need more of them.” (Having missed out on his Greens senate bid last year, could he please just lobby our government…?) Kerry explained that he composed the upcoming little Sonata for violin and piano to play to each performer’s strengths. It is a premiere run of this work, which is always exciting.

The Sonata began with dramatic high harmonics on violin and shimmering chords on the piano. The stop-start, stop-start phrasing built suspense in a painterly, impressionistic style, with the pulse often obscured through time signature and tempo changes. Again, I felt that Sun on violin was really the star here, though Farid had more to do than in the Mozart. The intense focus on the faces of the performers reflected the difficulty of this made-to-measure work, which required exceptional technique and attention to each other’s cues, and explored various different violin techniques such as fluttering cross-string sul tasto and aggressive spiccato. Gradually descending in tessitura in both instruments, some more lyrical and declamatory melodic material brought us to the close. Kerry’s new little baby has been born, and it is demanding both of the performers and the audience, but also very rewarding.

Now for the one we’d all been waiting for: the Brahms. Sun stood up and took the mic, again seeming to take the lead. She explained how this concert had “nearly not happened” as they had all been languishing in lockdown in Melbourne, forced to spend countless hours on FaceTime demonstrating tempos and experimenting out-of-sync with each other– surely an incredibly frustrating experience, when chamber music requires the most attention to synchronisation of all the genres. Farid even had to cope with only a digital piano at home! Eventually however they made it to real rehearsals in Sydney and this gloriousness was born. 

I say gloriousness, because the Brahms lived up to all my very high expectations. I wept slightly at the opening chords. The three young stars were much more daring with rubato and with tempo in general than I ever was, having complete mastery of their instruments. Finally Farid really came into his own: the piano part is quite challenging and the three instruments have equal roles in this work, operating as a tight team. Here, their faces and bodies showed passionate intensity, marked by moments of great joy, all of which was perfectly matched by their musical expression. The Andante’s sweeping pastoral vistas gave way to the Scherzo’s intense and joyful hunt, and the Adagio Mesto’s beautiful funeral dirge, written in memory of Brahms’ mother, tore at the heartstrings. 

My only quibble was that for all the Artistic Director Paul Kildea’s notes in the program about Brahms’ Luddite scoring for the natural horn, Fleury played this on the modern valved horn, despite being trained in both. It is certainly a greater challenge on the Waldhorn, but surely Fleury would be up to it? A recent Limelight interview with Fleury has him stating “I will be performing both pieces on the modern instrument. The key to an accurate interpretation is to always remember what the composer intended. So, despite using my modern instrument, I will use my left hand (the valves system) far less than I usually would in music like Mahler or Debussy for example.” This seems to me as if Fleury is hedging his bets. And with the ideological developments of the past few decades, do we even need ‘accuracy’ and ‘fidelity to the composer’s intentions’ in interpretations any more? On the other hand, I like the idea of using the Waldhorn, if only because the closer a performance gets to the limits of the performer’s abilities, the more exciting it is for the audience.

At any rate, Fleury’s performance is extraordinarily beautiful, as are Sun’s and Farid’s. Brahms’ exuberant Finale is taken at breathtaking speed and seems to positively crackle with excitement. This is a performance well worth catching: the Finale rounds out a wonderful, if slightly short, concert. Though she never made it to the seat next to mine, fortunately my friend did catch most of the concert and thoroughly enjoyed it too. In fact, it was so much fun that I think I will watch tonight’s livestreamed performance as well. In the meantime, I’m off to go and brush up on that Finale at the piano.

Production photography by Annelise Maurer