VOICES The Unusual Silence – interview with director Stuart Maunder, General Director of NZ Opera
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No fewer than 6 NZYC Alumni are participating in this year’s Lexus Song Quest! The NZ Secondary Students Choir is performing this weekend in Auckland before they leave on their tour to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Also, an interview with NZYC tenor Peter Liley.
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FROM: Hawke’s Bay Today 24 April 2012
Hawke’s Bay Opera House, Hastings
21 April 2012
Reviewer: Peter Williams
New director, same astonishing standard
There has been a changing of the guard in the choir with this, the first concert under its new music director, David Squire, who was appointed to follow former long-time director Karen Grylls.
Change of director certainly but no diminution of quality. Residents from Otago to Auckland, these 45 talented, auditioned young singers, aged from 18 to 25, meet for a just a couple of weeks a year, plus some regional rehearsals.
An astonishingly high standard of performance was always maintained; the dedication, discipline, concentration and pleasure gained from singing together was always in evidence.
The programme was uncompromising in its requirements to reach a satisfying performance. The ever-changing idiom of each item seemed to be assimilated with ease – from the opening complex contrapuntal motet Musica Musarum, sung from the opera house boxes and conducted from the gallery by assistant music director James Tibbles, to the very serious cycle Vier doppelchorige Gesänge by Schumann, and a highlight of the programme, the very moving rendition of the Five Negro Spirituals from A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett.
There was a welcome emphasis on music by New Zealand composers in the second part of the programme – the spectacular setting of the Magnificat by former choir member Andrew Baldwin, Hawke’s Bay composer Stephen Lange’s very original sounding He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, Palmerston North composer Helen Caskie’s five light-hearted songs Ten Cent Mixture, the rollicking NZ folk song settings by Douglas Mews and David Hamilton’s exciting Didn’t it Rain – each with its own special character convincingly projected.
Diction throughout was almost always exemplary, maintenance of pitch in a whole programme sung a capella, embracing multiple parts, extended discords and obscure interval combinations, was hugely impressive – all a great credit to the singers and those who train them.
There was one inspiring guitar-accompanied item to end the concert – a Youth Choir signature tune, Wairua Tapu, beautifully sung, together with the elegant movement of sign language.
Items were enhanced by some fine solo passages from within the choir and by the excellent spoken introductions from James Tibbles and vocal consultant Morag Atchison. Acknowledgment was made of the sponsors who support the choir, which seems certain to maintain the brilliant success of previous Youth Choirs achieved over the past 30-plus years.
This event was sponsored by: Eastern and Central Community Trust, Endeavour Community Foundation and Infinity Foundation
The NZSO National Youth Orchestra, with the New Zealand Youth Choir, conducted by Wyn Davies.
Music by Alex Taylor and Michael Tippett, at the CBS Canterbury Arena. 6:30pm, Saturday 8 September 2012.
Reviewed by David Sell for The Press.
A MUSICAL LESSON IN DISCIPLINE AND EXCELLENCE
The National Youth Orchestra and New Zealand Youth Choir have spent the past week here in Christchurch preparing the two works that made up this fine concert.
Any temptation to condescend to youth and inexperience was immediately dispelled as these young people showed the results of their training and rehearsal.
Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time is a mature work built of mature concepts and based on mature feelings. Performing it with such conviction must have been one of the most concentrated learning experiences these young people could ever have.
The work itself is incredibly rich in meaning, this being reflected in its musical palette. The emotional power of the spirituals, and dense content of the musical material made for a challenging experience for both the young performers and the large audience.
I continue to marvel at the high standard of the orchestra. Life is in their youth. But so is discipline. Individual technique is adequate for anything presented to them, and with the guidance of conductor, Wyn Davies, the outcome could only be first-rate.
I was pleasantly impressed at how well the 60-voice choir sounded out over the full symphony orchestra in A Child of our Time. Control was the keyword. Thorough musical preparation from the choir director David Squire was evident, giving the conductor, Wyn Davies a secure and understanding vocal instrument to work with.
And of course the four soloists were key people in all this. Bass, Moses Mackay took the role of narrator, and was especially strong in the solo sections of the spiritual, Go down, Moses. Kate Spence, mezzo-soprano, established depth to the initial dark scenes, and Thomas Atkins, tenor, followed that through in the aria I have no money for my bread, with its cynical tango accompaniment.
Soprano, Morag Atchison, was simply brilliant. Her strong emotionally-charged counter-melodies in some of the spirituals continued to ring long after the concert.
While Tippett was looking into the world in A Child of our Time, Alex Taylor, the NYO’s 2012 Composer-in-Residence, was looking into himself in Feel. An introspective four-movement work, it was fragmentary in structure, in a texturally-based musical language. Taylor used some interesting orchestral effects, which were orchestrated very well. It is a work that would benefit from another hearing.
New Zealand Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber
Conducted by Karen Grylls and David Squire
7:00pm, Wednesday 20 March 2013
Reviewed by William Dart. New Zealand Herald
AUCKLAND ARTS FESTIVAL: LITTLE BRITTEN
There were a few bumps leading up to Auckland Arts Festival’s first-centenary tribute to Benjamin Britten.
It took some of us ticket-holders five minutes to traverse the few metres to the auditorium door and, once in, we were told that programmes had run out.
But within the first few phrases of Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, irritations were forgotten.
The New Zealand Youth Choir’s young singers delivered warm and sonorous praise; conductor David Squire balanced them expertly against Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, positioned high in a balcony, behind the audience.
Karen Grylls introduced Rejoice in the Lamb with wit and useful pointers for punters without programmes.
Squire guided the Youth Choir through the work’s fairly radical shifts of style and, of four strong young soloists, mezzo Dilys Fong relished the humour of her contribution.
James Tibbles offered two organ solos, contrasting the rambling Voluntary on Tallis’ Lamentations with the more developed drama of a Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria.
His registrations for the Fugue were a particular joy, with mighty climaxes and fading away to Britten’s requested extreme of pianississimo.
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir included Britten’s Flower Songs in its town hall concert last year. Tonight, even more enjoyment was to be had as they reprised the work. Grylls swept them through the lilting Daffodils and ensured Ballad of Green Broom had the right earthy thrust.
These 16 singers also excelled in the composer’s challenging Sacred and Profane, eight medieval lyrics set by Britten towards the end of his life.
Fowl and fish were rendered fresh and frisky in I mon waxe wod while Lenten is come drew us in with its subtle tonal swells. Pepe Becker was cool and pure-voiced over the urging harmonies of Yif ic of luve can.
The concert ended in full celebratory mode with a 1961 Jubilate Deo. When the singers gave out its fervent, generously phrased tune, one could almost imagine Britten, had he lived a generation or two earlier, may well have penned a Jerusalem or I Vow to Thee, My Country.
WAR REQUIEM by BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Conducted by Eckehard Stier
Soprano Orla Boylan
Tenor Timothy Robinson
Baritone Ivan Ludlow
Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, New Zealand Youth Choir and Auckland Chamber Choir
Choralation: Westlake Girls High School. St Cuthberts College Choir
8pm, Saturday 23 March 2013, Auckland Town Hall
Reviewed by William Dart. New Zealand Herald
MAGNIFICENT OFFERING SOULFULLY DELIVERED
Substantial classical music has been meagre in this Auckland Arts Festival.
Little surprise then that the 90 engrossing minutes of Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s War Requiem resulted in a packed town hall. This was a magnificent undertaking – not only because of the indisputable quality of Britten’s score, but for the way in which it brought together the city’s young musicians with the APO in one of the monumental works of the last century. Watching Eckehard Stier on the podium, one could sense Britten’s music emanating from his baton.
Stier has spoken of the piece’s political impact and implications. He was clearly enjoying the bristling eclecticism with Britten’s references running from Bach and Verdi to Bernstein and Carl Orff.
The opening was appropriately sober and we sensed the weighty sorrows through terse orchestral tensions.
The racing fugue of Quam Olim seemed to be powered from within and, throughout, one was struck by the finesse of instrumentalists’ solo contributions.
Stier ensured that the last section, saturated with the colours of full orchestral and choral forces, gave the resolution that our souls demanded.
Shamefully, at this point, and earlier on, during a particularly hushed moment, the atmosphere was broken by a cellphone.
Tenor Timothy Robinson was outstanding. The signature of Peter Pears is all over this part, and Robinson had both the vocal flexibility for free-range virtuosity and the lyricism to make theAgnus Dei melt hearts. Baritone Ivan Ludlow was excellent, too, both duetting with Robinson in the Dies Irae and in his final observations on the pity of war.
Soprano Orla Boylan has a voice with Wagnerian heft.
She effortlessly soared over the choirs and, where needed, came up with that “wild animal sound” Britten called for.
The combined singers of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir, together with the local Auckland Chamber Choir, were splendid.
So too was the young treble choir, conducted by Karen Grylls, expertly navigating Britten’s tricky lines over John Wells’ pellucid organ sonorities
Read podcasts of Radio New Zealand reviews on performances featuring NZ Youth Choir and Voices NZ Chamber Choir at the Auckland Arts Festival 2013 below:
From Afternoons on Thursday 21 March 2013
Festival Review critiques English A capella group The Magnets, the Little Britten Concert by the New Zealand Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and wraps-up both the classical and contemporary music programmes.
Duration: 13′59″
From Upbeat on Tuesday 26 March 2013
Peter Hoar reviews last Saturday’s APO performance of Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ featuring Voices NZ and the NZ Youth Choir.
Duration: 7′51″
New Zealand Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
6:30pm, Tuesday 25 February 2014, Wesley Church, Wellington
Reviewed by John Button. Dominion Post
