This concert brought an interesting mix of musical cultures, with performances of Old Roman chant and choral polyphony of the ninth to 12th centuries alternately set against and conjoining with the meditative playing of the Japanese shakuhachi flute.
The program opened on an unusual note, with Australian master of the shakuhachi, Riley Lee, making a processional entrance to the sound of a piece played by the komuso, a sect of Zen Buddhist monks, while on pilgrimages. The haunting tone of this traditional bamboo flute, which was first introduced into Japan in the eighth century, comes not only from its construction but also from the distinctive playing techniques applied to it - flutter-tonguing, multiple trilling and harmonics - employed in repeated patterns which have an inward and hypnotic effect.
These expressive techniques were displayed in such solo pieces as the descriptive San'ya (Mountain Valley), the prayer Daha (Pounding Wave), and the "blowing meditation" Suzuru (Nesting of the Cranes), all played with the authority which Riley Lee brings to his performance of this traditional Japanese meditative music.
Eight Canberra singers, directed by Matthew Armstrong, provided the examples of European religious vocal music of the Middle Ages. These ranged from single-voice chants, such as Jubilate Deo omnis terra sung by Peter Campbell, and the two-voice conductus Quod promisit ab eterno sung by Helen Thomson and Diana Harvey, to the ninefold kyrie Cunctipotens genitor for men's choir,and the polyphony of the 12th century Alleluia Pascha nostrum. These were all sung with assurance and a fine vocal quality.
In a matching of the cultures of East and West, Lee joined with the singers in some of the choral pieces, and then provided with Thomson a suitable concluding item, the melismatic organum De monte lapis in which voice and shakuhachi were balanced in a performance of considerable beauty.
From W. L. Hoffmann's Music column, Canberra Times, Tuesday 10 September 1996
Page created 01 March 1997; last updated 25 April 2000