Above: This programme was further enhanced on the day with choral works by Fauré and John Rutter. Featured image: the choir, assembled by conductor Jeremy Kindl. Photo: supplied.
Marvels, the third concert in Woollahra Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2025 concert series was full of fabulous firsts for the enthusiastic audience in attendance.
The concert started with an overture from an opera by Mozart’s contemporary Domenico Cimarosa. His overture to the opera Il matrimonio segreto was a rare treat.
This seldom-programmed work and composer’s inclusion was not only significant from a musicological and concert practice or planning perspective, but it was a dramatic, well-articulated start to an event full of rewarding interpretation and stamina from orchestra, choir, piano soloist Paul Cheung and conductor at the helm Jeremy Kindl.
The effective plan regarding layering of nuance and atmospheres focussed on by this conductor, with clear discourse across the orchestra was no first for a WPO event. This leadership did assist in this concert’s first collaboration between orchestra, pianist and choir being so very successful.
Above: Piano soloist Paul Cheung. Photo: supplied.
The feature work for orchestra, solo piano and choir was no less than Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy Op 80, with the composer’s original text as prelude to the Freude of his great 9th Symphony ‘Ode to Joy’.
The Choral Fantasy text and melodic trajectories celebrate the joy to be had when beautiful art surrounds us.
Both beauty and joy were in abundance at Woollahra for this work’s delivery. Pianist Paul Cheung got it off to a commanding and suitably Beethovenesque declamation.
Cheung’s further filigree over orchestral and choral lines and conversation with these two other forces was impeccably balanced, with degrees of brightness, lyricism and bravura beautifully and thoughtfully handled as this work (also relatively rare on concert programmes) unfolded for us.
This choir of less than twenty voices attacked the German text with clarity, alacrity and elegance, creating a choral layer of full, smooth sound from the side church pews despite the small number of singers present.
To make the most out of the chance to make beautiful art and music with a choir, the Beethoven work was preceded by the famous Cantique de Jean Racine of Fauré and John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth.
Above: WPO wowed the audience at St Columba Uniting Church Woollahra. Flowers were worn by orchestral players and decorated the church for this spring concert. Photo: supplied.
These favourites were heard with full orchestra accompaniment as the languages sung headed towards three for the afternoon and the fine shaping and sensitivity to text and mood that these works require were fully exploited by WPO and choir.
After interval the final work presented in the Marvels programme was no less than a symphony by Wagner. This work also pioneered an early sound from Wagner we rarely hear in a concert setting. His early composition, pre-opera classics and closer to the textbook earlier sound of Beethoven and Wagner’s other predecessors, was presented here for our discovery.
Once again, conductor Jeremy Kindl was attentive to the architecture of this work, both in detailed shaping of each of the four movements and of the contrasts between them.
The orchestra responded well to this guidance. Despite this being an early Wagner work, some seeds of future Gesamptkunstwerk glory and big sounds can be heard. There were some satisfying climaxes and moments of organic growth in this regard as motifs and expressive outbursts had to be tossed around the band and blasted from them in unison also.
Fine work from winds and brass ensured the Wagnerian accent was unmistakable even though in this early work. More intimate beauty was to be found in the slower second movement and the extended, rich swathes of sound in the third movement Minuet and Trio were admirably offered up as the symphony hurtled towards its conclusion without losing momentum or energy maintained by this combination of hard-working conductor and orchestra.
The next Woollahra Philharmonic Orchestra concert -‘Yearnings’ takes place on December 6-7. It will also feature rare and interesting gems – theatre music from Fauré, a concerto for double bass by Vanhal as well as Sibelius’ Symphony No 3. Tickets available from Humantix.
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