Above: Composer David Lang, whose Pulitzer Prize – winning work, ‘The Little Matchgirl Passion’ concluded this concert event. Photo credit: Peter Serling.
There are all sorts of passion. And there are a variety of ways creatives can depict and communicate the atmospheres around them.
This concert extends JS Bach’s character-assigning approach in his Passions of Jesus Christ. These well-known masterpieces bring to a dramatic peak the journey of Christ towards inevitable death. Atmospheric crowd scenes and chorales commenting on the tale are features that gild the narrative with all shades of musical and dramatic colour.
Conductor Dr Elizabeth Scott and VOX – the talented choristers from Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ youth ranks delivered a stunning one hundred minutes of communication in this concert. Atmosphere, dense texts and heartbreaking stories were hurled at us, gently outlined and vividly voiced .
We sat enthralled during this storytime as clever pieces of tale transformation from adept choral composers Luke Byrne, Naomi Crellin and David Lang celebrated the sheer power a good choir has when bringing fantasy, fairy tales and tranches de vie so sensitively to life.
These stories were not devoid of horrors or hard environments. VOX brought them to us via exquisite musicianship, exemplary precision and virtuosic control.
The difficult challenges in this programme of each composer’s ingenious word scanning and setting were well met by conductor and choir. The ingenious works were enlivened as modern approaches to old versions of written or sung passions, fables or fantasy concepts re-invented storytelling.
Above: Dr Elizabeth Scot, conductor. Photo Credit : Keith Saunders.
VOX presented some exceptionally clear text, conversation and emotional gesturing under the economical, precise and atmospheric leadership of Elizabeth Scott.
The deliberate, clear dropping of loaded words into the responsive acoustic was a feature of all works. In the setting of Luke Byrne’s The Six Swans (2019) the choir maintained an even intimacy and fine momentum across the verse lyrics
Singing of the choruses in this song was joyously revisted every time. The balance of interplay with the composer’s own playing of the beautiful piano accompaniment washes beneath the choral voice was expertly achieved.
The Four Songs from Grimm’s, written by Byrne two years earlier, demand delivery of wordy texts, vivid imagery and a quartet of significantly fantastical concepts,. There are also heightened natural environments and a flow of story that need at all times a svelte, enticing swoop.
All these requirements in the score,to fill the concert space and emphasise the darkness of each Grimm fairytale possibility were achieved, luring us in to every unuasual world.
Above: Luke Byrne, composer of ‘The Six Swans’ and ‘Four Songs From Grimm’s’. Photo: supplied.
This concert’s world premiere work was a dark humour filled triptych by composer Naomi Crellin, of The Idea of North fame.
VOX and Elizabeth Scott responded with great flair to Crellin’s endearing, accessible and incisive three-movement work. (Thrice Upon a Time : ‘Someday’, ‘Goldilocks Zone’ and ‘Taco Bell’) The composer’s commentary on the nature of modern online dating (from screen to therapist couch ) was championed here through exquisite shaping by soloists and choir.
Atmospheres ably created by VOX to help hurtle Crellin’s tongue-in-cheek composition across the witty, exaggerated line included dating app sound effects (swipes left or right) and some patterned poetry sung with keen diction and suitable shaping.
Some old-world love song parodies swooned suitably in this time of social media’s questionable help.. The hilarious line ‘Someday my bae will come…’ bristled via a loaded, fateful croon when dealt with by this choir. The reference to Goldilocks, and the overall lightness and shade in this fun work made it both a wonderful choice for this choir and an edgy addition to the concert’s fairy tale or storytelling theme.
The storytelling demanded in David Lang’s Passion of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl is immense, but the choir’s stamina was more than up to the task. Lang’s sections of scene setting, featuring quasi choir-recits with intricate phrasing and bravura pauses make the performance of this sprawling work’s modernism not for the feint-hearted.
Above : Composer of ‘Thrice Upon A Time’, Naomi Crellin. Photo: supplied.
VOX handled this, the playing of percussion parts, and the undulations of mood, landscape, weather and hopelessness with consummate and smooth ease. Vulnerability was given the prescribed huge range of colouring by the choir as David Lang’s masterpiece both shocked and moved us.
This adaptable choir painted a tragic tone poem through the expert realisation of Lang’s talented writing. It let a well known classic piece of literature breathe again with the extended outlook of JS Bach.
This time the choir showed its ability to shine as Bach-like narrator, as protagonists, as tiny, hopeful evangelist in the street and as orchestra. VOX topped off this special concert’s storytelling with some forward-looking, new-age chorales. Through the expert intoning of this narrative, as in the entire programme presented, a pin drop could be heard, plus pain and predicament could easily be felt.