SCUNA history » Concerts » 1966 - 1
| Conductor: | William Herbert |
| Soloists: | Susan Hough |
| Geoffrey Brennan | |
| Works: | Fauré Requiem |
| Goehr Virtutes |
[Similar ads appeared on 17 and 20 September - those were the days!]
ANU Choral Society
Conducted by WILLIAM HERBERT
presents
Faure: Requiem Mass
Goehr: "Virtutes"
Bruce Hall, Tuesday, September 20
Bookings at David Jones'
The Australian premiere performance of Virtutes, by the 34-year-old contemporary British composer Alexander Goehr, will highlight a concert by the ANU Choral Society at Bruce Hall on September 20 at 8.15pm.
In Virtutes, Alexander Goehr, son of conductor Walter Goehr, has taken a series of little-known 18th and 19th century poems and translated their meaning into music.
Goehr's music, which shows the influence of Schoenberg and Messaien, embodies the tonal qualities of modern musical thought.
Since the main work in the programme will be Gabriel Faure's Requiem Mass, the concert will be a departure from the usual fare presented by the choir, in that it will consist entirely of late romantic and modern music.
The Requiem Mass provides a more conventional harmonic approach and is regarded as the masterpiece of French religious music. The In Paradisum climaxes the work's mood of fervent prayer.
Conductor Mr William Herbert, will conduct the 25-member choir with organ accompaniment by Canon L. Murchison. Soloists in the Requiem Mass will be Geoffrey Brennan and Sue Hough.
The choir has already this year given several broadcasts for the ABC and has performed at many university functions.
This concert, the fifth annual presentation since the choir was formed in 1961, will be the climax of this year's activity.4
Members of the ANU Choral Society (from left), Margaret Greenham, Sue Barnes, Jill Fleming and Rhonda McKnight, practise for the concert to be given in Bruce Hall on September 20.
The ANU Choral Society broke new ground in its concert at Bruce Hall last night when it presented music of the late 19th century and mid 20th century.
However, it was not so much the period as the type of music chosen, which was unusually enterprising for a local society.
The main work was Gabriel Faure's lovely and moving Requiem, and French choral music very rarely figures on programmes. This was preceded by six songs from Virtutes, a cycle of songs and melodrama by Alexander Goehr.
Goehr is one of the younger English avant garde composers who has written a number of works for unaccompanied choir. The influence of the French composer Messiaen is very apparent in this work although some of it exhibits a fragmentation of texture which derives from Schoenberg.
Adequate resources
William Herbert led the choir through a confident performance of these interesting songs which make quite a call on the technical resources of the singers.
The singing was always nicely toned and generally very sure in intonation. This work made a short but attractive introduction to the longer spans and greater depth of the Faure Requiem. Here is music of radiant beauty and nobility worthy to stand with the great Requiems of Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi.
If the performance last night did not realise all the implications of the music this was hardly unexpected in view of the limited resources available.
Faure's delicate and restrained orchestral scoring is so integrated in the complete realisation of the text that it cannot be adequately presented by an organ alone. The luminous serenity of the Sanctus is quite lost without the warm colour of the harp arpeggios and the motive for muted violins which rises from it; in the Agnus Dei one misses the inexorable tread of the pizzicato basses.
Nevertheless what the performance did do was to show something of the beauty and the quiet serenity of Faure's vision of the eternal.
The singing was expressive, with a tonal balance among all sections of the choir: the climaxes were full without any suggestion of strain, while the many pianissimo moments were beautifully controlled.
Geoffrey Brennan was a little tentative in his first solo in the Offertory but in the Libera Mea he achieved a warmth and fullness of tone which caught the spirit of this final prayer for rest.
The other soloist was soprano Susan Hough, and her singing of Pie Jesu was a moment of pure delight. This tender prayer of intercession was given exactly the right feeling of quiet tranquility by the use of a pure and vibrato-free tone. Here again one felt the sure hand of the conductor in guiding the overall conception of the work.
The difficult, but essential, realisation of the orchestral parts was played on the organ by Canon Murchison.
This was William Herbert's first appearance as conductor of the ANU Choral Society and the singing already shows evidence of his wide experience. Last night's concert not only maintained the standard which this society has attained in the past but gave promise of greater flexibility and improved technical resources.
1Source: Personal communication from Peter Campbell
2Source: Advertising. (1966, September 14). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), p. 26. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article106935757
3Article source: ANU Choral Society in new work. (1966, September 8). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), p. 23. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article106934734
4If the choir had formed in 1961, and if it had given annual concerts, this might have been the fifth. It's generally agreed that SCUNA started in 1963 and gave its first concert, Bastien and Bastienne, that year.
5Source: Leisure- the arts. (1966, September 21). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), p. 25. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article106936922