Handel's Messiah

Tuesday 8 December 2015, 7:30 pm
Dunedin Town Hall

Conductor: David Burchell
Emma Fraser soprano, Wendy Dawn Thompson mezzo-soprano
David Hamilton tenor, Martin Snell bass
City Choir Dunedin
Southern Sinfonia

Messiah is heard around the world during the Christmas season, being greatly appreciated, admired and enjoyed. City Choir Dunedin with the Southern Sinfonia, conducted by David Burchell, is pleased to again perform this oratorio. We welcome home soprano Emma Fraser and together with mezzo Wendy Dawn Thompson, tenor David Hamilton and bass Martin Snell, we will provide a fantastic opportunity for you to experience a world-class delivery of this dramatic and passionate work.

Handel began composing Messiah on August 22, 1741, and completed it twenty-four days later. The scholar Clifford Bartlett writes that “such speed was not unusual, nor was the time of year. Not much happened in London during the summer, so it was a good time to get ahead with the preparation for the next season . . . Bach could produce a cantata, organizing the copying of parts, and rehearse and perform it every week: Three weeks to compose an oratorio without the immediate responsibility for organizing the performance was, therefore, ample. But, however hasty the composition, the power of the musical imagination, the wealth of ideas, the depth of inspiration, and the sheer variety of invention continue to astonish.” 

Messiah is unique among Handel's oratorios in its New Testament subject and reflective treatment. It has been described as a 'collection' taken from the Bible and the Prayer Book Psalter, and is a mixture of narrative and commentary. This freed Handel from some of the more restrictive opera conventions and permitted greater use of the chorus than is generally the case in his other oratorios. Messiah is probably Handel's most famous work and its ubiquity has outreached anything Handel could ever have envisaged.

Familiar landscape emotively evoked

These Lands Are Ours

Saturday 26 September
Knox Church


A healthy-sized audience at Knox Church attended a rousing and emotive programme of nationally-inspired music performed by Dunedin Youth Orchestra and City Choir Dunedin.

The first half of the concert, performed solely by the orchestra, began with Douglas Lilburn's Drysdale Overture. This conveyed an impressionistic soundscape of New Zealand's natural beauty, transporting the audience between impetuous cadenzas and broad, elegiac melodies.

The work was performed with gravitas and rhythmic tightness, yet lapsing occasionally in brightness of tuning during some prominent melodic lines.

Thereafter, the first movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor featured violinist Matthew Scadden, a performance student at the University of Otago. Whilst a hint of insecurity was evident at the beginning of the work, its performance grew boldly in stature, culminating in an impressive showcase of both soloist and orchestra.

A Run in Ross Creek, written by emerging composer Merlin Callister, evoked the dense greenery of its titular inspiration, conveying the melodic splendour of national-romanticism, whilst spiritedly colouring the musical language with warm, impressionistic vistas. In this, Callister's inspiring tone-poem was performed by the orchestra with abundant relish and panache.

The first half of the concert concluded with Alexander Mackenzie's fervent First Scottish Rhapsody. Through its imitative form and contrasting, nostalgic imagery of Scotland, it is a satisfying and emotive work, conveyed in particular through the compassionate tenderness expressed by the orchestra in the middle section.

Elgar's The Banner of St George provided the second half of the concert, sung with clear appetite by City Choir Dunedin, and accompanied by the orchestra.

David Burchell's direction, passionate and eloquent throughout the concert, piloted this late-Victorian drama of singularly English fashion. In this, the legend of St George and the dragon was conveyed with swashbuckling bravado.

A warm, well-blended choral tone, despite occasional lapses in clarity of diction, crafted a thoroughly inspiring performance; the work typified the excitement of Elgarian spectacle, showcasing the performers' fruitful combination of nimble, dexterous orchestral accompaniment and engaging, charismatic choral singing.

Reviewed by George Chittenden, Otago Daily Times 28 September 2015