In Tempore Paschali - Review - Sydney Morning Herald

Song Company reviewed by Sydney Morning Herald. Full link here.

The Song Company, St Mary's Crypt

March 30

★★★★½

Song Company - Photo Credit: Simon Gorges

In 1610, after transforming his musical style with what he called the seconda pratica, or "second practice", and creating the first musically significant opera, Claudio Monteverdi had a "retro" moment, composing a six-part Mass of gloriously intricate polyphony in the style of 16th century masters like Josquin and Palestrina.

To clinch the connection, he based it on musical motives drawn from a motet by another 16th century composer, Nicolas Gombert, In illo tempore and it was Monteverdi's Missa In illo tempore and Gombert's motet that formed the central thread of the three parts of The Song Company's radiant presentation in the acoustically miraculous crypt of St Mary's Cathedral under their new artistic director, Antony Pitts.

Standing in a circle on the terrazzo floor under the central vault, the building amplified and echoed the interweaving lines with iridescent resonance, building to a peak of intensity in the elaborate counterpoint that closes the Gloria and Credo of the mass that was quite magical.

The three parts of the concert followed an Easter theme – Tomb, Hades and Throne – and each involved a short piece by Pitts himself and music by English Renaissance composers William Byrd and William Mundy and Australians Elliott Gyger and Alice Chance. Gyger's Creator alme sideru used an old plainchant as the basis for an elaboration in sensitively tonal style which evolved towards densely voiced chords of rich dissonance, using this composer's characteristic sensitivity to vocal capacity.

Chance's piece, And the Lord said, Fiat Lux, sung by a treble subgroup from behind the audience, explored darker sounds and caressing astringent suspended dissonances to create the idea that with the creation of light comes life and pain. Pitts' music expanded classic polyphonic vocal textures to incorporate modern harmonies within a broadly consonant framework and an original and sensitive understanding of the voice.

As new director, Pitts continues and honours The Song Company's special expertise in the glories of the Renaissance under previous director Roland Peelman, while also bringing a distinct and cogent personal perspective. This was a concert of rare and transcendent beauty.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/the-song-company-review-a-concert-of-rare-and-transcendent-beauty-20160401-gnvr0v.html#ixzz46cx5oIxd

Hourglass Beach - Review - Cut Common Magazine

A review of Hourglass Beach, in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House.

Read the full article here.

In true form to its aesthetic and mission statement as a chamber ensemble, Sydney’s new Hourglass Ensemble provided a mix of Polish and new Australian music including two world premieres in the Utzon Room. The programming provided opportunities for each of the artists to display their solo playing as well as demonstrate their tight, chamber ensemble skills.

The evening opened with Peter Sculthorpe’s ‘DreamTracks’ for clarinet, violin and piano. This piece takes influences from the musical ideas of ‘Dijilie’, and taken from the larger ‘Songlines’ series. The three musicians rendered their intricately woven musical parts together and created a vibrant rhythmic and textural scape. Gregory Kinda’s piano part provided the rhythmic and harmonic framework over which Andrew Kennedy on clarinet and Beata Stanowska danced and floated. Here, we heard some extremely fine ensemble playing matched with an enthusiastic presentation of this work.

The next piece on offering was a world premiere by Margery Smith. ‘White Shadows’, dedicated to her brother Peter, who tragically took his own life this year, is an exploration on the themes of impermanence, loss and isolation. Before the piece began, Smith spoke to the audience about the process of writing the work and the importance of the text. Poet Lidja Simkute then took to the stage and recited the text contained in the final movement. It is certainly refreshing to hear composers talk about their personal experiences and how this is displayed in their work.

The fifth movement ‘En Plein Air’ contained text from Rita Bratovich, based on the writings of Peter. The opening of this piece set the tone for the remainder of the work and a delicate atmosphere was soon established. The flute was placed off to the left and the violin to the right, gently echoing in the distance before moving closer to the rest of the ensemble. This was an extremely well crafted and considered composition that explored many shadings of colour from instrumental combinations. Baritone Andrew O’Connor, who was a guest soloist, relieved the lines of text with tenderness and delicacy, his velvety voice gliding atop the musical lines from the chamber ensemble. O’Connor’s expression and shading in these songs brought the poetry and the text to the fore.

To conclude the first half was a new work by Australian composer Michal Rosiak: ‘Contrasts’ for flute, clarinet and piano is cast in two contrasting movements. The first movement contains spiky harmonic and rhythmic episodes that quickly move into new musical ideas. Overall, this piece contained many fast-paced ideas that quickly changed without really evolving the musical line. Frantic episodes emerged and submerged themselves in a virtuosic feast. The ensemble performed to the highest of standards and the interplay between Kowalski on flute and Kennedy on clarinet was highly charged. Kinda’s pianistic gymnastics provided a tightly woven rhythmic impetus upon which the foundation of the ensemble was situated.

Opening the second set was Ewa Kowalski performing the solo flute work ‘Orient Bis’ by Adam Porebski. The piece draws on Japanese and Chines flute playing and explores extended techniques such as triple and double tonguing, flutter tonguing and glissandi, all which demonstrate exciting tonal palettes from the flute. Kowalski’s control of tone was highly developed and her control of the instrument highly crafted. Her approach to the extended techniques explored every subtle nuance of the flute and she was able to display all of her skills, technique and stagecraft in this virtuosic performance.

The centerpiece of the evening was a solo piano performance from Gregorgy Kinda, whose musical craft and sensibility were evident from the first few notes in his rendition of Grazyna Bacewiz’s Piano Sonata No. 2. This piece was composed in the early 1950s and displays a plethora of influences, ranging from hefty Russian rhythms and dissonances to elements of jazz, French music and Impressionistic overtones. Kinda’s thunderous approach demonstrates his total command and control of the Steinway piano, much like a race car driver behind the wheel of at high speed event. He propelled highly climactic music forward with every phrase. This was a charged performance of a work that had nearly everything in it. I had always thought Horowitz was my favourite pianist – and then I heard Gregory Kinda.

The concluding piece was another world premiere. Kennedy’s ‘Hourglass Beach’, for chamber ensemble and baritone explores themes of morality in today’s world. Beginning with a modal sounding harmonic framework, the musicians wove individual lines around musical ideas. Guest soprano Suzi Stengel entered the stage midway through the work and sung a lament in the second movement ‘Three Lullabies’. The soprano voice added a change of colour and pace to the work and served as a new palette before Andrew O’Connor took the reigns to conclude the piece. Andrew Kennedy’s scoring was well considered and thoughtful. His use of tonal language included modal elements and strong melodies.

This was a stand out performance from the Hourglass Ensemble in its inaugural performance as Sydney’s newcomer to the chamber music scene. Throughout the evening the group engaged with the audience, explaining the pieces and giving personal stories about the players. The room was charged with energy and enthusiasm and if this performance is anything to go by, it is safe to say Hourglass will have a very bright future as a high calibre chamber ensemble.

http://www.cutcommonmag.com/live-review-hourglass-beach/

LAMENTATIONS FOR A SOLIDER - LIMELIGHT MAGAZINE REVIEW

Review: Lamentations for a Soldier (The Song Company)

by Maxim Boon on April 16, 2015
An uplifting, spiritually cleansing and intelligently multi-cultural Gallipoli tribute.

The Crypt, St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
April 14, 2015

'... This richly spiritual music not only showcased the superb blend and musicianship of the Song Company (particular praise should go the ensemble’s newest member, Bass Andrew O’Connor, who was a faultless foundation throughout the evening), but also made full use of the gloriously generous acoustic of St Mary’s Crypt.'

*******

How do you commemorate an event of unimaginable horror? It’s a question many arts organisations have been pondering in recent months as the centenary of the ANZAC campaign at Gallipoli approaches. Some, such as the ACO’s Reflections of Gallipoli for example, have opted for unflinching historical accuracy, confronting the audience with the magnitude of the death and suffering experienced in those Turkish trenches one hundred years ago. This approach is strikingly effective, not to mention affecting, but there is another tact, such as that explored in the Song Company’s Lamentations for a Soldier, staged in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral.

Rather than attempting to take an audience back in time to relive and remember the senseless destruction of the Dardanelles campaign, Artistic Director Roland Peelman has adopted a more serene, spiritually cleansing, and ultimately uplifting programme in tribute to this pivotal moment in our Nation’s history. The hopeful, forward-facing message of this commemorative programme, delivered with subtlety and deeply moving poignancy, is one of peace and multi-cultural acceptance.

The most conspicuous connection to the ANZAC centenary is the acknowledgement of the two cultural identities that a century ago clashed during the bloody Gallipoli campaign. Throughout the programme, in a beautifully poetic display of reconciliation, music from Turkish antiquity, performed by Oguz Mülayim on the ney (a Turkish, wooden flute) is woven in and out of ancient music of the Christian faith, representing in music the historical and cultural roots of the two armies who fought and died during the battles on the Turkish peninsula.

Binding these two radically different aesthetics together were the works of three contemporary composers, whose carefully curated roles allowed a cohesive thread to run from start to finish through this diverse evening of music. This is typically savvy programming by Peelman, who is an expert at delivering pathos laced with a healthy dose of cerebral stimulation.

The breathy, spectrally ethereal tone of the ney, resonant within the welcoming acoustic of St Mary’s crypt, yet nonetheless incongruous in its exoticness, introduced the first of five short pieces by Turkish-Australian composer Ekrem Mülayim, Some Echo Still, in its world premiere performance. These short movements, dotted throughout the programme, were inspired by the writings of Sufi mystic, Rumi, although not conventional settings of these texts as such. Small fragments of vocalised sounds, spoken phrases, and chromatically serpentine melodies pass between the six singers of the Song Company, arranged in a circle at the centre of the crypt. The swirling vortex of fractured repetition evokes the furious spinning of the whirling dervishes, but also cycles of the universe, orbits of planets and galaxies, and the movements of atomic particles. An exhaustively thorough amount of academic preparation (as outlined in the programme) was used to fathom out the implied rotational relationships at work within the music, and this rigour occasionally make these pieces feel overly sterile. However when Mülayim allows the music to connect with a more instinctual, emotionally rich language, its impact is immediate and powerful.

Of the English Renaissance music offered, which included two different settings of When David Heard by Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Weelkes respectively, Robert White’s Lamentations for six voices yielded the most compelling performances. Breaking down into trios and duets, before revelling again in the complexity of six-part polyphony, this richly spiritual music not only showcased the superb blend and musicianship of the Song Company (particular praise should go the ensemble’s newest member, Bass Andrew O’Connor, who was a faultless foundation throughout the evening), but also made full use of the gloriously generous acoustic of St Mary’s Crypt.

Kim Cunio’s setting of Psalm 57, the second of the evening’s three contemporary works, also took full advantage of the rich acoustic setting, with thick, pleasingly dissonant harmonies mixed with hand percussion that at once made reference to both the secular medieval tradition of central Europe and the ethnic musical heritage of the Turkish ney.

For the final piece of the evening, Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem Domine, the ensemble processed to the distant end of the crypt, allowing the remoteness of the performance to make room for a moment of personal reflection. Composed in 2004 in memory of the victims of the Madrid train bombings, Pärt’s simple yet devastatingly beautiful piece is a tranquil anthem of peace and remembrance; a perfect summation of everything this tribute concert endeavours to honour.