Above: the historic St James Church provided a stunning sound and setting for this concert by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Chamber Singers.
Artistic and Music Director Brett Weymark OAM has brought the small Philharmonia Choirs group, the Chamber Singers, to the exquisite inner city location of St James Church for this most recent concert. He furnished them with pivotal and engaging works from right across the eighteenth century sacred music canon. Vocal blend was seamless on the night, as was vocal and instrumental blend as the Italian Baroque composers’ approaches to sacred text setting was illuminated for us.
Some of the Italian composers such as Monteverdi, presented in accompanied format here, were familiar and household names. Monteverdi’s svelte and clearer text setting instead of dense polyphony was here paid tribute to. We were gifted with a complete Montwevrdi mass setting in the church concert venue.
It was also a thrill to delve into the rich legacy of Domenico Scarlatti’s non-instrumental music and to be exposed to his larger setting of the Stabat Mater text. This work’s challenges were well managed by choir and conductor.
In the work, which is full of contrasts, we watched and heard the choir’s capable rendering of Scarlatti’s breathtaking manipulation of text and choral resources.
To begin the concert- and with dramatic additions from the exterior of thunder claps and rain- was the joyous work Hodie completi sunt dies Pentecostes from the pen of expressive and choral music innovator Giovanni Gabrielli.
Such shorter works did not skimp on drama and contrast either. Texts such as the Crucifixus and Dixit Dominus were effectively treated by composers and brilliantly traced by the choir.
Above: St James Church was the venue for this Chamber Singer’s concert.
This concert, delivering sacred Baroque music sans Germanic great composers rang out beautifully in the St James Church acoustic. From an audience point of view it was a rewarding experience to hear explorations of Italian composers, especially those such as Caldara, Carissimi and Lotti rather than only from the typically programmed team of Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Albinoni or Corelli.
This programme was accompanied by a small ensemble of Anthea Cottee (viola da gamba), Stephen Lalor (lute and theorbo), Pippa MacMillan (violone), Nathan Cox (Harpsichord) and David Drury (organ). This instrumental troupe helped convey the colours and atmosphere shifts of the text settings by composers so capable of painting the text-all from the country where the art form of opera was in its infancy.
Perhaps the most rewarding take-home from this feast of liturgical and sacred text settings was Domenico Scrlatti’s vivid pantnng of the Virgin Mary at the crucifixion in his Stabat Mater. Bookended by two dynamic, mulit-part settings of the Crucifixus (from composers Caldara and Lotti), this chameleon masterpiece, demanding great flexibility and emotional plus vocal fitness from the singers was presented in a commanding emotional and vocal performance by the Chamber Singers.
The layered Crucifixus work in sixteen parts by Caldara was successful managed in this space. Choir members at the front of the church were arranged for the entire concert looking inwards, in U-shaped lines surrounding the instrumental players. The final instalment of Christian drama, (the Crucifixus by Lotti) was a brief but consistently brilliantly nuanced pezzo of carefully produced interlocking precision. There was great synergy from the vocal and instrumental musicians displaying the tensions and release of religious drama and musical shaping.
The structure of the concert’s first half was similar to the second half. At its centre was the Monteverdi Messa a 4 voci, SV 190, a major work for choir from a composer that was and is still a household name, with very interesting works surrounding this composer in the bracket.
Above: Artistic and Music Director of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Brett Weymark, conducted the Chamber Singers for this concert. Photo. credit: Keith Saunders.
In this way, the bracket began with the antiphonal celebration of Pentecost in Gabrieli’s work Hodie completi sunt dies Pentecostes. The part singing divisions and shapes created as the celebratory text was celebrated being a fine prelude to the Messa a4 voci, SV 190, also written whilst Monteverdi served the same Church workplace- the Basilica San Marco in Venice. The colourful and continued excelllence of this large work’s reading was a lesson in sacred choral realisation for us all.
This performance of Monteverdi’s continious, functional, liturgical line was a joy to follow. It suited the space and was appreciated by the large crowd in attendance.
The first half concluded with the chamber singers responding expertly to the expressive techniques of Carissimi in his Dixit Dominus setting. Conductor Brett Weymark’s clear direction here once more guided the Chamber Singers group through the musical challenges and changes as the important, emotional sacred words were distributed with ingenuity across the choir by the Italian composer.
This concert location, this section of the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs as well as this focus country and period promised a special night. And it delivered many times over.
This controlled, well-balanced, well-nuanced and interestingly ordered half-dozen works were an excellent reminder and snapshot of the developments in Baroque Italy, which produced a wide range of sacred music at the time.
The favourable shapshot this concert provided of the Chamber Singers and the use of St James Church continued the run of innovative and touching concerts by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the last before this being the Rachmaninoff Vespers at Sydney Town Hall.
The next Sydney Philharmonia Choirs concert returns to the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. ‘Ode to Joy’ features the Festival Chorus and Sydney Youth Orchestra – with music by Beethoven and suffragette Ethel Smyth.
