Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus | Song Cycles
26 May, 2024, Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne, VIC
Like me, you’ve probably enjoyed the chorus of your symphony orchestra in wonderful works like the Beethoven Ninth, and no year seems complete without a performance of Handel’s Messiah. But hearing the MSO Chorus a cappella and with just piano accompaniment, you could appreciate the full breadth and depth of their talent and capacity for fine singing.
78 singers, director Warren Trevelyan-Jones and hard working accompanist Timothy Mallis, treated us to two very fine modern choral works. One being Timeless Land: An Australian Song Cycle by Joseph Twist (b. 1982), a work bursting with drama and humour, and the other by English composer Jonathon Dove (b. 1959) entitled The Passing of a Year, a beautifully introspective and much more reserved work.
Each song cycle sets a series of poems to music. In the case of Timeless Land, Twist draws on poems by Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Judith Wright, Michael Leunig, Les Murray, Peter Skrzyneki, Jack Twist and Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who incidentally is the first published Aboriginal poet.
There was beautiful word painting in the composition, with repetition of words between parts and a fabulous crescendo to the voice of God in Sunshine on the Coast, to the plaintiff Andy’s Gone with Cattle from soloist Sophia Gyger. The waves of the creek seemed to flow between singers in Wonga Vine with soloist Samantha Davies, and later Katy Turbitt, another soloist, helped to focus the feeling of sadness in Ashes a work about devastation of bushfires.
The chorus seemed to light up with delight in the very amusing settings that describe uniquely Australian fauna: the swooping Magpie, screeching Lorikeets and the ‘globing’ Jellyfish, where the composer played with a fair amount of what I believe is called onomatopoeia, with basses and tenors gleefully making words that sounded like a jellyfish might swimming in the waters.
I reckon Joseph Twist wrote all this with the larrikin in mind in these central movements of the song cycle but he does save a very powerful and serious mindset for the last song, Time Is Running Out.
Written by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, she paints an ugly picture of the violation of Country by mining and human greed. Twist meets this in the music, and the MSO Chorus sent that message with power and conviction, sending it through the back wall of the Iwaki Auditorium, matching sound with the last stanza of the poem:
Time to take a stand.
Make the violent miner feel
Your violent love of land.
Jonathon Dove’s The Passing of the Year also delves into similar themes about the natural world and our relationship with the seasons over time. His selection of poems includes William Blake, Emily Dickinson, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
While the work has less of the irreverent humour of the Australian work, after a wonderful and expansive opening with songs such as The narrow bud opens her beauties to the sun and the fun Answer July it then moves to explore the darker side of the human experience with Ah, Sun-flower! and Aduei! Farewell, earth’s bliss.
I loved moments such as the fast moving Show me the Snow.. Bells… Joy of Emily Dickinson and the beautiful refrain of Lord, have mercy on us. But again, the MSO Chorus blossomed, singing the old year out and a thousand years of peace in the final song of the concert.
Chorus Director Warren Trevelyan-Jones put together a simple but effective program of two contrasting works that explore our relationship with the natural world. Within that there there was so much contrast of sound and mood, all enhanced by Timothy Mallis on the piano.
The concert was a fundraiser for the upcoming MSO and MSO Chorus tour to Singapore to help choristers seeking support make the trip. Given that choristers are volunteers and give so generously of their voices to us throughout the year, I hope they make their fundraising target and raise the roof in Singapore with their performance of Carmina Burana.
