Muisca Viva. Adelaide Town Hall. 31 Jul 2024
The ultimate distinction in any human endeavour, arguably, is to become part of the furniture. In the world of choral singing, it is hard to imagine the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge not being there. Indeed, King’s College Choir was established in 1441 by King Henry VI to provide daily singing, and it has continued to do so at the highest level of proficiency since then. Part of furniture? Most certainly, and what exquisite and precious furniture.
The choir consists of 17 boy and 14 adult male choristers. They are all students at King’s College at Cambridge University or an associated school. With almost military precision they file on stage with crossed arms supporting their songbooks and dressed formally: grey trousers, white shirts, bow ties (for the adults) and straight ties for the boys, and black undergraduate gowns. They are joined by their two organists. They all look immaculate. They form three tiered ranks and are then joined by Director of Music, Daniel Hyde dressed similarly. He looks dignified, in total control, and benevolent. One senses the choristers have a deep respect and admiration for him, and they should. He is an internationally regarded musician in his own right, and was once a member of the choir himself. He’s grown up through the ranks. He understands the choir’s history and traditions, and his musical and choral knowledge is second to none.
As is often the case with Musica Viva tours, there are two programs on offer, and the programs prepared by Hyde vary according to the availability or not of a grand pipe organ at the venue. The Adelaide Town Hall is blessed with a magnificent pipe organ built by J.W. Walker and Sons located in Brandon, Essex, which is a mere 50 kilometres or so from Cambridge, and so the program performed here included pieces that significantly feature the organ.
The program included choral works by G.F. Handel, G. Gabrielli, M. Lauridsen, E. Bainton, D. Barbeler, and M. Duruflé. There were also two substantial organ solos by O. Messiaen.
The evening began with a crowd pleaser – Handel’s anthem Zadok the Priest. The organ set a brisk pace throughout the ninety second introduction before reaching the crescendo that stuns the audience with the choir erupting with the iconic text. It’s stirring stuff, and the choir of 31 voices sounded more like one of twice that number. This reviewer sensed that the audience would have liked to hear more like Zadok: maybe Franck’s Panis Angelicus, an excerpt from Allegri’s Miserere, Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, or Parry’s I Was Glad. The King’s Choir has sold almost uncountable numbers of CDs with these same titles.
But it’s perfectly fine to program a concert with compositions that are less well known, and Hyde did precisely that. The second half of the program entirely comprised Duruflé’s setting of the catholic requiem mass. The excellent program notes include: ‘If you are not an organist, you probably know little about Maurice Duruflé: he wrote little, kept less, and almost all of it is church music, for organ, choir, or both.’ It is a substantial work – 45 minutes in duration – and unlike better known Requiems such as by Verdi, Mozart and Fauré, it doesn’t really inflame the passions and transport us to other places other than to a peaceful corner of one’s own mind. Perhaps not a bad thing.
Musica Viva concerts frequently include world premières of new music, and this concert was no exception. Australian composer Damian Barbeler has adapted text from Australian poet Judith Nangala Crispin’s poem On Finding Charlotte in the Anthropological Record and set it to music that is rich, varied and evocative of peaceful but mysterious Australian landscapes. The poem won the 2020 Blake Poetry Prize and focusses on Crispin’s 20-year search to uncover information about her Indigenous Australian Heritage. The text is not easy to articulate in song and it was helpful having the poem printed in full in the program, otherwise some of it would have been lost. The text includes the powerful phrase ‘Can you tell me who I am’, which, thankfully, was heard clearly and was enhanced by music that was empathetic to the confronting messaging.
The choir’s performance of Gabrielli’s O magnum mysterium (composed in 1557) , and Morten Lauridsen’s setting of the same text (composed nearly 450 years later in 1994), were fascinating contrasts. Edgar Bainton’s And I Saw a New Heaven provided a connection to the tradition of English choral music that was largely missing from the program, with the exception of the Handel. Perhaps the connection might have been better provided with English organ music rather than the two pieces by Olivier Messiaen? Regardless of the merits of programming choices, the two organists Harrison Cole and Paul Greally were magnificent in their performances of Messiaen’s Les Anges and Transports de joie, both of which are difficult to play and impressive to hear.
At the end of the the final exultant and long sustained note of Transports de joie, the almost capacity Adelaide Town Hall audience could be heard to gasp in amazed and awe-struck appreciation. It might have been better if the concert finished with a similar wow factor rather than the muted contentment of the Requiem.
Kym Clayton
When: 31 Jul
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
