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Musica Viva: Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

Director Stephen Cleobury's tight control brought forth the colours and textures of each piece, as well as all the lines.
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Image supplied by Musica Viva.

‘I’m sorry, but the organist seems to have disappeared.’ These words, spoken by director Stephen Cleobury, were perhaps not what one would have expected at a classical music concert. Who knows what shenanigans go on backstage, but usually everyone is usually on stage at the appropriate time. The words, spoken at the very end of the concert just before the encore, were accompanied by bemused and confused looks from all and sundry on the Concert Hall platform, peering up high to the organist’s box, bereft as it was of any human organs. But both organist and page turner came out at last, and we were treated to Mozart’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’, a fitting after dinner mint to the huge requiem that had come before.

This was a most unusual concert for the Musica Viva series, confined as they usually are to the City Recital Hall. Instead here, in the second of two programs (the first performed at homebase, as it were), this critic found himself in a sold-out Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. The stage, barer than it usually is – featuring only 32 choristers and a conductor – made one slightly concerned for the acoustics. No doubt they were compromised, and the experience may have been better in the more intimate City Recital Hall, but, then again, the Recital Hall doesn’t have the huge monstrosity of an organ that the Concert Hall does, which adds instant solemnity and grandeur to everything. Thankfully, the voices of the choir were more than enough to tolerably fill the ear throughout the afternoon.

We began with Parry’s ‘Hear My Words, Ye People’, which was a prolonged cut-and-paste of many bible verses that ended in the famous hymn. The choir themselves had a crystalline precision that one might not have expected from such a venue, and the work never felt rushed nor did the Parry tarry. Indeed, this was to be a mark of Cleobury’s direction, with his whole being seemingly conforming to a precise tempo chosen for each part of the concert, even more pronounced when he talked to the audience. Taking just a little longer than one might expect to pick up a microphone, he told anecdotes and introduced the pieces with a calm and confidence in his words that had the aura of someone who never rushed into things without thinking about it first. Slightly unusual in diction, it worked wonders for the music, as his tight control brought forth the colours and textures of each piece, as well as all the lines. This was especially notable in the next two, Byrd’s ‘Sing Joyfully’ and Palestrina’s ‘Dum complerentur’.

Three Australian pieces followed, all commissioned for the Choir’s famous Easter broadcast. They were Peter Sculthorpe’s ‘The Birthday of Thy King’, Brett Deans’ ‘Now Comes the Dawn’, and Musica Viva artistic director Carl Vine’s ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells’. All typified the type of composer that they were, condensed into four minute nuggets (Sculthorpe was instantly recognisable as old Australian, Dean balancing as usual between the creepy and the mysterious ethereal, and Vine providing a more modern Australia with a dash of humming at parts that surprised the ear). Britten’s ‘Hymn to St Cecilia, op 27’ ended the first half, although it’s performance wasn’t quite as impressive as that which had come before. After the interval we were treated to Faure’s Requiem, and while it started in a somewhat sedentary mode, it quickly grew in power and beauty, especially the always delightful Pie Jesu, in an assured and unwavering performance from one of the boy sopranos. The other soloists, drawn from the ranks, where impressive here too. And, when we finally found the organist, so too was the encore.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Musica Viva
Director: Stephen Cleobury

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point
www.musicaviva.com.au

26 July
National tour sold out.

Tomas Boot
About the Author
Tomas Boot is a 24-year-old writer from Sydney whose hobbies include eavesdropping on trains, complaining about his distinct lack of money, and devising preliminary plans for world domination. He also likes to attend live performances on occasion, and has previously written about such cultural excursions for Time Out Sydney.