Review: Australian Chamber Choir – music that elevates your inner being

The Australian Chamber Choir

Scots Church Melbourne, Sunday April 18, 2021

Music by Brahms, John Tavener and Fauré

In 2016, on a wonderful adventure of art and music, I spent six weeks in Paris and one of my treats was to visit churches where great composers worked and important repertoire was premiered. To be where the legendary Olivier Messiaen played as church organist for over 60 years Sainte-Trinité was an emotional event for me and attending choral performances there and in other places such as St-Étienne-du-Mont and the Madeleine church were musical and artistic highlights of my time in Paris. To hear Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem op.9 performed in the church where it was premiered, St-Étienne-du-Mont, was a magical moment and to visit the place where Fauré ’s Requiem op.48 was given first life, the Madeline church, was like a pilgrimage for someone from faraway Sydney.

So to be able to watch online the Australian Chamber Choir present a concert in the Scots Church in Melbourne with the major work being the Requiem by Fauré was like a little trip back in time to pre-Covid travel conditions.

A short motet by Brahms, Schaffe in mir Gott, ein rein Herz, opened the concert and such sweet harmonies were beautifully sung by all. In fine Germanic romantic style some dense writing followed and then some lilting dance-like music before a return to the opening sweetness.

Svyati by John Tavener with solo cellist Rosanne Hunt is a simple and atmospheric reinterpretation of music that became the realm of Tavener’s later output – music that emanates from the orthodox music of eastern Europe. It seems that the choir enjoyed singing the work and the playing by Hunt was exactly in that place between emotion and coolness.

Fauré‘s delightfully romantic Cantique de Jean Racine op. 11 with its piano part hinting at the writing one would expect from a harp was an appropriate conclusion to the first section of the concert. Pianist Rhys Boak and the choir were at ease with the music and the audience clearly enjoyed this little gem.

The main work, due to its duration and the variety that comes from such, the Requiem by Fauré brought the choir and soloists musical challenges that they all dispatched with flair and consummate ease. Oliver Mann, baritone, is a singer I heard two years ago in Melbourne singing Bach’s St John Passion and then as now he shows he is a musician of the highest order. In particular his singing of the Libera me was perfectly dramatic and commanding and strangely, most comforting.  Soprano Amelia Jones brought a measured approach to the most famous solo Pie Jesu and floated a lovely line throughout. The final In Paradisum was a most enchanting completion to a choral concert of reinvigoration for the ACC.

The ACC and the instrumentalists under the direction of the indefatigable Douglas Lawrence perform this concert a few more times around regional Victoria and if you can go then do so and you will surely be rewarded with music that elevates your inner being.

More dates…

Fauré Requiem

Saturday 24 April at 3PM – Thomson Memorial Church, Terang

Sunday 25 April at 3PM – St John’s Flinders SOLD OUT

Saturday 1 May at 3PM – Church of the Resurrection Macedon

Saturday 21 August at 7PM – St Andrew’s Hamilton

Sunday 29 August at 3PM – Christ Church, Castlemaine