BY MARK BOSCH
Dance Chant
Sydney Chamber Choir and Synergy Percussion
City Recital Hall, 4 August
The greatest strength of Saturday night’s Dance Chant was its unbroken appeal to reverence. Reverence for one of the most inimitable voices in Australian music, Ross Edwards, certainly. But also reverence for a God, for the Earth, and — as a joint presentation by Sydney Chamber Choir and Synergy Percussion — for the two most ancient forms of music making.
As a birthday celebration, there were also the expected rounds of reverence paid by speakers throughout the evening, including those of the disembodied voice of Richard Gill, Sydney Chamber Choir’s current musical director who, in absentia, was certainly not forgotten. It was a joy to hear from Richard and from all others who spoke: as stories and in-jokes and well wishes were shared, this fledgling reviewer started to feel not-quite-so wet behind the ears. More than mere celebration, City Recital Hall was host to a public and profound strengthening of kinship between so many powerhouses of Australian music to which, in witness, I could not help but grin my broadest grin. What a wonderful thing to have felt a part of. And now, to the music!
Loaded with the still and quiet reverence of Hildegard von Bingen, Monteverdi, and Ockeghem — all strikingly performed — the first half of the program would nonetheless have benefited from a bit of punctuation. A number like Edwards’ Prelude and Dragonfly Dance — excellently performed by Synergy after the interval — would have perhaps proved a better fit in the first half in which the group’s virtuosic presence was mostly absent. That said, Sydney Chamber Choir owned the stage completely throughout what was a tour de force for even their most experienced members. Under Paul Stanhope, especially, they laced into the music with a vitality that was particularly rewarding in the former’s Agnus Dei and in the world premiere of Josie Gibson’s Let Them All Come.
Gibson’s work was a tremendously sensitive setting of the Walkley Award-winning text of cartoonist and national treasure First Dog on the Moon, capturing its sense of frustration and mordant humour with grace and inspiring, knowing half-smiles in myself and several of my neighbours.
Olivia Swift’s Dew was a beautifully balanced setting of Sara Teasdale, and one that really spotlighted the choir’s masterful handling of harmonic complexity. Indeed, throughout the night the choir never faltered in its delivery of highly complex vocal writing; though, the male voices could, generally speaking, have been slightly stronger in order to match the powerful altos and sopranos — a hard act to follow if ever there was one. All choristers considered, however, I must say: let Sydney Chamber Choir’s musicianship be an example to us all. It is an excellent ensemble, and, as was duly mentioned during one of the many speeches, an ensemble that has done very well to live long with nary a scrap of government funding.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that the night ended with a reprise of Edwards’ joyous Dance Mantra, adapted to the simple text of ‘happy 75th birthday, Ross!’. After its exclamatory end, party horns unfurled and confetti flew. Everybody laughed, and the sentiment echoed: here’s to the next one — the big 8-0.
Read Mark’s interview with composers Ross Edwards; and Josie Gibson and Olivia Swift (below), whose works were world premiered at this performance.
Images supplied. Olivia captured by Peter Hislop, Ross captured by Bridget Elliot.
