Review: Auckland Choral at the Town Hall - Brahms Requiem
By
William Dart
NZ Herald, 31 May 2010
That ardent Wagnerian, George Bernard Shaw, was no fan of the Brahms German Requiem, which he deemed "so execrably dull and ponderous that the very flattest of funerals would seem like a ballet, or at least a danse macabre after it".
Auckland
Choral put the lie to Shaw's smart sideswipe when its singers delivered
the work on Saturday evening under the direction of Uwe Grodd. Major
contributors to its success were the full symphonic forces of the
Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, complete with the two harps Brahms
asked for, and John Wells working his customary wonders at the organ.
Grodd approached the score with an almost theatrical flair, using the original German text. One felt the inevitable momentum as the musicians progressed through Brahms' pages, from the dramatic build-up to the first choral entry to those final, serene F major chords on the word "selig" (blessed).
Grodd approached the fringes of Mahlerian territory in Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras, and liberated the gentle, very Brahmsian waltz that lies sleeping in Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen.
The choir responded with vigour throughout, even if the blend was occasionally on the raw side and sopranos were generally ill at ease in their upper register.
Grant Dickson, singing the baritone solo without printed score, had taken Grodd's dramatic intentions to heart. This, as well as the sense of utter conviction he conveyed, almost made one overlook the distracting tremulous quality in the veteran's voice.
Alongside him, Ileana Otto-Johansen made less of her lovely Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit. Accurately enough voiced, the soprano's lines never soared as they should over the rich textures that the APO was laying out.
Saturday night was not all given over to such seriousness. The concert opened with Anthony Ritchie's Third Piano Concerto, alerting Aucklanders to the stylish pianism of Emma Sayers.
One is usually aware of echoes from composers who have gone before in Ritchie's music, but here they were marshalled with such lightness and brio, and handled by Sayers and the APO with such elegance and good spirits, that one would have to be as prickly as GBS not to be captivated.
Review: Daring flourish marks end of successful concert year!
By
William Dart
NZ Herald, 15 December 2009
Auckland Choral's Messiah is a major event
in our city's musical life, marking the close of the year's concert
season and a particularly successful 12 months for Auckland Choral under
the directorship of Uwe Grodd.
With Miranda Hutton leading the strings of Pipers Sinfonia, the familiar
Overture proved an irresistible welcoming, its Allegro
bubbling over with Handelian energy.
If David Hamilton's Comfort Ye was occasionally wanting in robustness, few tenors could match his daring final flourish in Ev'ry Valley and dramatic presentation of Thou Shalt Break Them.
Morag Atchison, never less than musicianly and remarkably nimble tackling the coloratura of Rejoice Greatly, was burdened with an intrusively tight vibrato that seriously undercut her subtly decorated I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.
Wendy Dawn Thompson, last seen swooping around the Aotea stage on a Segway as Rossini's Isabella in The Italian Girl in Algiers, showed a rare ability to cut straight to the emotional core of her arias.
One felt the weight of every word in He Was Despised, with some utterly spellbinding moments when her burnished mezzo floated unaccompanied throughout the hall.
Jared Holt gave a workmanlike performance but was uncomfortable in the lower register, failing to muster enough rage for Why Do the Nations or create the requisite wonderment in The Trumpet Shall Sound.
Grodd's year with the choir has been a good one. From the lilting clarity of And the Glory to the final resounding Amen, there was a real engagement with Handel's score.
Two choruses, rescued from the cutting-room floor, showed the singers coping well with sturdy counterpoint. Grodd took risks too, stressing those extraordinary textural shifts in Glory to God with memorable results - only in Behold the Lamb of God were there twinges of insecurity.
While Pipers Sinfonia gave of their very best, the evening would have been much poorer without the two continuo men, John Wells and Indra Hughes.
Both provided apt and often ingenious musical commentary, Wells' harpsichord making us feel the sting of the smiters in He Was Despised and Hughes' chamber organ offering an insouciant ramble around the fringes of All we like sheep.
Sacred Masterpieces: Haydn, Mozart and Hummel
By
William Dart
NZ Herald 2 November 2009
Insanae et vanae curae is a curiosity in the Haydn catalogue, a storm-tossed chorus rescued from his aria-heavy oratorio, The Return of Tobias.
It made a suitably celebratory work for Auckland Choral's Amadeus concert, with the full forces of the hundred-plus singers and Pipers Sinfonia behind it. Uwe Grodd marshalled it all with his customary enthusiasm, although occasionally the men of the chorus sacrificed focus for gusto. Some phrases sounded closer to the Finnish shouting-choir tradition than what we expect with the First Viennese School.
Mozart's Coronation Mass brought more refinement and so, when words like "Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum" were punched out in the Credo, they made a real impact. In the later Sanctus, the "Hosanna in excelsis" had an attractive lilt to it.
A quartet of soloists blended well in the "Et incarnatus est" with Patricia Wright standing out, particularly in her Agnus Dei with its uncanny premonition of the lovelorn Countess's "Porgi amor" in The Marriage of Figaro.
After interval came the Australasian premiere of Hummel's Missa Solemnis, which Grodd premiered on disc back in 2003.
Hummel is one of a number of composers caught, as it were, in the shift from classic to romantic. For this generously proportioned work to register fully, it needs sturdier orchestral playing. The choir was tonally patchy, with too many passing glitches in the ensemble, although the soloists (Wright, Kate Spence, Derek Hill and Stephen Bennett) were a sonorous foursome.
Hummel's Agnus Dei was eight superb minutes, propelled on a series of poignant suspensions. This movement fully deserved the enthusiasm of Allan Badley's programme note and the choir sang with an appropriate fervour.
An Overflowing Holy Trinity Cathedral: Pounamu and Vivaldi's Gloria
Tuesday, 4
August 2009
By
William Dart
Opening up its annual "subscribers' bonus concert" to the general community was a shrewd ploy on the part of Auckland Choral. The result was as predictable as it was deserved with musicians playing to a packed Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Setting off with a
taste of Kiwi, David Hamilton conducted Helen Fisher's Pounamu, a
fragrant meld of European and Maori sensibilities.
Uwe Grodd's flute spun its own mystical rhapsodies and then wove and flickered through Fisher's often sumptuous choral textures.
With an eloquent soloist in Kate Spence, this was a performance that captured the calm, glisten and shimmer that the score's central waiata sings of.
Hamilton's own Orpheus, a tribute for the Haydn bicentenary, was based on a poem by the American William Jay Smith.
After a robust start, with a bracingly confident choir against John Wells' sometimes tumultuous organ toccata, Hamilton carefully drew out specific words and images through his music. Spence's shapely melodic line was beautifully turned, especially when the poem transported us to places extra-terrestrial.
There were passing moments of choral thinness, but the final combination of vibrant vocalising and instrumental splendour were the perfect celebration of both Haydn and the composer's singing colleagues.
Talking splendour, Vivaldi's Gloria is a prime specimen of the Baroque variety, born of the same spirit as Handel's Zadok the Priest. Taking over the baton, Uwe Grodd ensured that Vivaldi's work lived up to its name.
Kate Spence and soprano Lilia Carpinelli duetted well, Carpinelli impressing with a clear, unaffected soprano voice and Spence using her lustrous tone to advantage in numerous solos.
The drive and thrust of the opening chorus was not to be resisted and nor were the conviction and resonant singing of Qui tollis peccata mundi and the mighty fugue of the final Cum sancto spiritu.
Grodd also inspired some of the best playing that I have ever heard from Pipers Sinfonia, with outstanding contributions from oboist Alison Dunlop along with the untiringly ingenious harpsichord stylings of John Wells.
Auckland Choral at Auckland Town Hall: Haydn's Creation
By William Dart
Auckland Choral's The Creation was an imaginative contribution to the Haydn bicentenary as well as being a welcome opportunity to hear a work last performed in this city eight years ago. This is one of the monuments of its genre. Influenced by the popular oratorios of Handel, The Creation has Haydn setting texts from Genesis, the Book of Psalms and Milton's Paradise Lost to express his wonderment and faith in Mankind.
Uwe Grodd and his musicians certainly caught the freshness of Haydn's score, even if the opening Representation of Chaos had its insecure moments. However, from James Harrison's authoritative opening recitative, with its simple but effective choral refrain, we were caught up in this marvellous score.
With Auckland Choral joined by the young voices of the University of Auckland Chamber Choir, the great optimistic choruses like The Heavens are Telling stunned as intended. The more testing weave of the later Achieved is the glorious work also held no fear for these singers.
Pepe Becker is a soprano with Early Music allegiances so, not surprisingly; she allowed herself the occasional ornamentation here and there, her voice rising clear and true above the orchestra in arias like With verdure clad.
Kenneth
Cornish's scrupulously moulded tenor was apparent from his opening Now
Vanish Before the Holy Beams although he was not always as successful as
Becker in penetrating through the orchestra. His aria, In Native Worth,
immaculately phrased, would have benefited from more vocal bloom.
The lightish bass voice of James Harrison made for
complete audibility as far as texts were concerned and he also has a
keen appreciation of Haydn's shapely lines, although the recitatives in
which he introduces the newly-made creatures of sea and land, cried out
for more dramatisation.
The only severe disappointment of the evening came not from the musicians but from The Edge. A delay of 20 minutes was brought about through inefficient box office procedures and patrons were permitted to enter during the performance, one scampering none too lightly across the hall in front of us - an intrusion that is an insult to the audience, the musicians and, finally, to Haydn.
Messiah Triumph, Auckland Town Hall
2008
"This year's Auckland Choral’s performance of Handel’s Messiah was a triumph. Not only did its members sound brilliant, they also looked the part.
"...The choir looked and sounded like a choir of international stature.
"...With this years Messiah they achieved an exhilarating display by the Pipers, Sinfonia Auckland Choral and the four soloists; soprano Anna Leese, mezzo-soprano Carmel Carroll (replacing an ill Helen Medlyn), tenor David Hamilton and Bass David Griffiths.
"...Uwe Grodd in his first Messiah with the choir proved himself to be a conductor who thinks through the music. There was a balance between the various parts of the orchestra and between choir and orchestra which brought out the best in the music and the singers.
"...The choir was electrifying in some of its choruses producing sounds which ranged from the light and sweet to the vibrant and dark."
-John Daly-Peoples,
National Business Review, December 2008
"There was a real sense of occasion on Saturday when Auckland Choral farewelled Peter Watts after 20 years as music director. The concert was also a celebration, marking just how much this dynamic Englishman has provided a figurehead and direction for the group over the past two decades. David Hamilton's The Ring of Words set an appropriate tone, praising the power of music ...
"... Beethoven's Mass in C provided the impetus choir and orchestra needed ... The musicians were well-primed, from the striding fugal entries of the choristers to exquisite woodwind colorations and bracing outbursts from trumpets and drums ..."
-William Dart, New Zealand Herald, April 2008
"After interval, Watts had his choir well primed for the promised profanities of 'Carmina Burana'. From the steady stakling of 'O Fortuna' to those curly rhythms of the 'Veni, veni, venias', the 100 plus singers were in top gear.
-William Dart, New Zealand Herald, March 2007
"Peter Watts led the impressive choir and the powerful percussion-backed orchestra in a rendering of Webber's Requiem that sent the senses reeling."
-Diane Francis, Franklin Life Newspaper, July 2007
"Handel is a master of choral writing and all the singers enjoyed the fugal scurries along with resonant oases when the composer settles down to broader choral matters. Samson must go down as one of Auckland Choral's finest achievements."
-William Dart, New Zealand Herald, September 2007
"It was spellbinding. The choir's entry on 'Rex Tremendae' sent shivers down the spine. The lasting memory I take away is the sound of that big choir, booming out a bare fifth at the end of [Mozart's] Requiem."
-Anthony Ritchie, Otago Daily Times, 2005
