Australian Chamber Choir | Encores
November 3, 2024, St Mary of the Angels Basilica, Geelong, VIC
It’s marvellous, you know that moment at the end of a concert when the audience goes mad with applause and everyone claps and claps in the hope of one last parting gift: an encore. Usually it’s a party piece, sometimes familiar or new or experimental, deep or frivolous, it doesn’t matter, because we know it’s a bonus, a special gift to delight and thrill us.
What a brilliant idea, then, for the Australian Chamber Choir to give a concert made up of all the Encores they sang during their recent triumphant tour to Europe earlier in the year.
I heard this marvellous program at the magnificent St Mary of the Angels Basilica in Geelong, hot on the heels of their concert in Terang and before their final performance of this program this coming weekend in Melbourne.
Imbued with its usual panache under the masterful direction of Douglas Lawrence, the ACC performed works grouped together in sections broadly by style, such as Classical, English Romantic, Aussie and Douglas’s Favourites.
There were two sections of Afro-American Spirituals by Moses Hogan whose arrangements and compositions are celebrated for their range, emotion and embodiment of the gospel sound.
Soprano Kate McBride soared and tenor Matthew Bennett proclaimed in ‘My soul’s been anchored in the Lord’ which opened the concert, followed by the soothing ‘There is a balm in Gilead.’
In the Baroque category were arrangements by Liz Anderson (ACC Manager and alto singer) of Handel’s Minuets from the Music for the Royal Fireworks, and the Air from the Water Music, which are dedicated to Frank de Rosso, Artistic Director of Music at the Basilica. Liz used a range of vocal techniques to ensure none of the attack and phrasing of the original instrumental writing is lost, while also showing off the technical powers and possibilities of the human voice.
Gustav Holst’s Nunc dimittis and Charles Villiers Stanford’s Beati quorum via were delivered with poise and polish of the English Romantic. Liz Anderson also arranged Mozart’s Ave verum corpus and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in the Classical section, which delighted the audience with a fresh take on familiar works.
The second set of Spirituals by Hogan started with a meditative wandering on the trials of life in ‘I want Jesus to walk with me’ with its plaintive solo by soprano Kristina Lang, and the more upbeat ‘Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho’, which featured Alex Hedt and wonderful dialogue between the high and low voices. I love the ending where the voices imitate the falling walls of the city and its crashing defeat.
The two Aussie works stole the show. Stephen Leek’s Kondalilla transported us into the bush with choristers dotted around the audience using masterful techniques to imitate bird and other naturalistic sounds, underpinned by complex and beautiful melodies and harmonies. Malcolm Williamson’s humorous The Quacks rounded off the set with fast and funny caricatures in music.
The concept of the voice as an instrument carried over to Ralph Vaughan Williams Valiant-for-truth from The Pilgrim’s Progress with its imitations of trumpets and then in the vocal rendition of Bach’s Organ Fugue in G minor BWV 578 arranged by Ward Swingle and sung at an exhilarating pace. The theme of the Fugue was especially familiar from watching actor Daniel Craig as the very funny detective in the TV film The Glass Onion just a night or two earlier. Both had me on the edge of my seat, although for very different reasons.
It’s no wonder audiences in Europe applauded long and loud. We did too, and were rewarded a delightful Afro-American Spiritual which heavily featured the deliverance of Daniel in the Lions Den. Well, I couldn’t help but LOVE that now, could I!?!?!
