Divisi Chamber Singers | The Passing of the Year – Dove & D’Netto
March 17, 2024, fortyfive downstairs, Melbourne, VIC
Hearing a work in development in a concert setting is a particular joy. The feeling of exploring something new and hearing it grow and develop over time is a real privilege. So it was with Stove photography by Connor D’Netto which I heard and reviewed some weeks ago at a concert by Divisi Singers for Midsumma, Melbourne’s Pride festival.
The work is based on the text or story by Bastian Fox Phelan and was expanded to seven movements, each exploring a facet of queer visibility. It was so heartening to have the text projected behind the singers, so we could move with them through the text.
Having heard the work before, this time it felt more complete. A better balance between the movements. In fact, there was a bit of humour in the writing which really helped moderate some of the more extreme and serious moments.
The singing was fantastic, as was the accompaniment by Coady Green. Beautifully balanced and focused. I thought bodies were machines which centred on the physical stress of writing, was brilliant. I felt the pain! Whereas the sadness of People make you pay the toll tugged on the emotional heart strings.
I’m grateful to have seen the work again, as it takes shape and becomes a substantial piece. Less is always more and I’m sure the composer, who was there, was listening as keenly as I was.
There were a couple of wonderful intermediate pieces including the Dum medium silentium by Vytautas Miškinis the Lithuanian composer, a work that rings in your ears well after it is finished, leading to one of the classics of our time: The Passing of the Year by the English composer Jonathan Dove.
The full ensemble took the stage: Marjorie Butcher, Lily Flynn, Alex Ritter, Chole James, Anish Nair, Alex Gorbatov, Alex Owens and Bailey Montgomerie.
The seven movements take us through the seasons of the earth and our lives. The texts by Blake, Dickinson and Tennyson among others are superb in the setting by Dove. Divisi were in their element. The deafening tuttis and subsequent cooling off were handled with expert ease by the singers.
Alex Gorbatov said at the outset that this was a (to use my words) part piece and one that Divisi had (again my words) conquered. And it was so. My only wish was that the bells of peace peeling in the last movement, Ring out wild bells, had been real ones, ringing out from on high.
