The Song Company | Odd Couples Pairings
20 September, 2025, Utzon Room, Sydney NSW
Guest Director: Huw Belling
It’s not often you go to a choral concert and leave thinking about insomnia, lust, gunfire and Proust. But The Song Company, in their typically mischievous way, delivered all that and more in Pairings and Odd Couples, a program curated by guest director Huw Belling. It was eccentric, eclectic and exactly what you expect from The Song Company.
Do, Re, Mi
The opening Ut queant laxis (D’Arrezzo), the medieval hymn on which our musical solfège system is based, emerged as chant led by Andrew O’Connor’s rich bass, the women tracing a shimmering scale beneath before breaking into Lassus’s harmonised setting. A short, sweet prelude to what would become an evening of wild contrasts.
From there, we jumped centuries to the (likely) Australian premiere of Long Time by Irish composer Gerald Barry with a work entirely in C major, setting text from Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in a kind of stream-of-consciousness sleep spiral. Belling described it (accurately) as “practising scales for an insomnia cure,” but Barry’s humour goes further: as the sung narration passed between voices we heard whistles, erratic leaps and disjunct entrances across a quartet of voices. The text, just coherent enough to feel like a half-remembered dream, was delivered with immaculate diction. Complex and humorous.
Pärt’s Solfeggio followed, usually heard in a fuller choral setting where the sound has more places to ‘hide’, but here performed by a solo quartet. It was quite effective. Each voice was exposed, clear, almost architectural. Though paired for their shared tonal centre, where the Barry had presented a kind of chaos, the Pärt sat quite still, like a meditation.
Sacred Music, Surreal Surroundings
The sacred centre of the program arrived with Pärt’s Magnificat, performed by all six singers. As happens on Saturday nights in the Utzon Room, fireworks began to explode in the distance. As the decision was taken to move on with the show, Belling quipped that we should “just imagine there are no fireworks,” but in truth, their warlike cracks created a surreal backdrop – lights flashing on the harbour while a prayer unfolded in quiet solemnity. The ensemble didn’t pause. Instead, they leaned into the moment. As the fireworks crescendoed, so did the voices. It was one of those uniquely Sydney, uniquely live moments. Magical.
Roxanna Panufnik’s Nunc Dimittis followed, again tutti voices, this time with lush, close harmonies and a powerful solo from Amy Moore. Belling’s program notes cheekily called it “almost sacchariferous,” and yes, it was sweet, but nor really sentimental offering a contrast to Pärt’s austerity.
Visceral Pairings: Finsterer and Andriessen
The emotional heart of the concert I think was Mary Finsterer’s Omaggio alla Pietà, a 1999 Song Company commission revisited. Jessica O’Donoghue delivered the central solo as Mary, as Finsterer’s notes instruct she is the “main actor, and should remain uninfluenced by the other voices”. While the ensemble fractured around her: the women representing joy and suffering, the men “institutionally celebratory”. It was, in O’Donoghue words, “a really wild ride, both vocally and stylistically,” full of extended techniques, vocal cries and sudden shifts. Very avant-garde. Percussionist Nicki Johnson added a sharp immediacy to the texture which added to the thrilling, raw and entirely captivating performance.
Louis Andriessen’s Ahania Weeping, paired for its stylistic and personal connection to Finsterer (he was her mentor), featured a quartet of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The men’s lines felt almost weeping, the four singers achieving a tight vocal blend that underscored the mystical lamentation in Blake’s text.
Fuego, Agua, and the ‘Celestial Sewing Machine’
16th Century Spanish composer Mateo Flecha’s El Fuego exploded with energy, both sacred and cheeky, this was performed by quartet plus percussion and felt a bit like a musical theatre scene complete with fire calls, percussive punctuation and rich colour shifts. Rustic one moment, reverent the next, this was pure entertainments and lots of fun to watch and listen to.
In response came Belling’s Fuego y Agua, a world premiere for full ensemble. Keeping the same text, he transformed the fire into something more elemental (at least for me!) conjuring up bullfights, desire, danger. With vocal clicks and shhhhs and tappity-tapping drums, it smouldered. If Flecha’s fire was literal, Belling’s burned more from the inside. Nicki Johnson’s percussion was again essential – tight, characterful and dynamic.
Finally, Bach. Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden was sung by all six under Belling’s direction, his conducting precise, energised and fully embedded in the ensemble. Belling pointed out that Bach has been affectionately dubbed a “celestial sewing machine”, a nod to the precise, interlocking beauty of his counterpoint, where divine inspiration hums along with mechanical perfection – so though this work is often performed by larger choirs, Lobet den Herrn is equally at home in one-to-a-part renditions such as this performance showcasing the detail in Bach’s tightly woven lines.
Belling’s response, another world premiere, Partitia Fragment, closed the night. This piece started with jazzy ‘Swingle style’ flair and ended somewhere in Spanish-inflected dance. Percussion again played a leading role, adding gravity, and the whole thing had the feel of a Bach encore with a nod and a wink.
Final word? A thoughtful, virtuosic and truly odd coupling of works, styles and centuries, just what we love and expect from The Song Company. And it worked brilliantly. Bravo.
