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

Sea & Land concert review

Sea & Land
Saturday 8 August 2015
Knox Church

A choral programme which differed from its more customary repertoire was presented by City Choir Dunedin in Knox Church on Saturday evening, with St Kilda Brass Band, pianist Sandra Crawshaw, mezzo-soprano Claire Barton and tenor Samuel Madden. Conducting was David Burchell.

The evening began with Songs of Sea and Land, a selection of seven New Zealand folk songs arranged for choir with brass accompaniment especially for this occasion by Auckland composer David Hamilton.

The part-singing for these seafaring songs was quite demanding, and at times the brass accompaniment was overwhelming, but Lullaby, with prominent lyrics over softer harmonic brass texture, was very effective and highlights were Darling Johnny O and My Man's Gone with strong solo sections from Barton.

An a capella medley of Afrikaans folk songs (arr. Burchell) was well delivered with generally good balance and nuance.

The popular work by Constant Lambert, The Rio Grande (1972), is a setting of text by Sachacerell Sitwell.

Written for brass band, piano and choir, the work combines ragtime, syncopation and Brazilian influences.

The combination includes a demanding role for the pianist and Crawshaw was in her element, pounding out the syncopation with strength and virtuosity.

Fervent brass sections interspersed the choral text and the percussionists had a ball with this thrilling repertoire.

Three showy band pieces complemented the British folk song choral items of the second half of the programme.

Familiar tunes came with A North Country Fantasie, strong solo tenor from Madden in Brigg Fair and an interesting a capella arrangement of I Love My Love (Gustav Holst).

More mezzo lines were highlights and the final rollicking Green Grow the Rushes O provided an exhilarating finish to the evening.

Review by Elizabeth Bouman in the ODT, Monday 10 August 2015.

Virtuosic piano, then sound and fury

A Sea Symphony
Saturday 18 April 2015
Dunedin Town Hall

City Choir Dunedin and Auckland Choral join the Southern Sinfonia in their production of Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony.

A near capacity audience was enthralled by the wash of sound produced by two large works by inexperienced composers in the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday.

Rachmaninov wrote his Piano Concerto No 1 in F sharp minor when he was just 17 (1890). Its earliest version shows all the the fiery exuberance, the self-indulgent display and confused revelry of adolescence, where melodic repose is merely snatched at.

Pianist Modi Deng's performance showed tremendous virtuosic power, quicksilver speed and as much elegance as can be wrought from the raw work. Her affinity with youthful works, first showcased in her 2010 performance of Chopin's Variations on Mozart's La ci darem la mano, written when Chopin was 19, was again deservedly acclaimed. We look forward to a similar display of her apparent but as yet underexposed expressive strengths.

The Southern Sinfonia was joined by the City Choir Dunedin and the Auckland Choral with guests soprano Anna Leese and baritone Marcin Bronikowski for Vaughan Williams' first symphony, A Sea Symphony (1910), under the direction of Nicholas Braithwaite.

A Sea Symphony washes the audience in sound and conjures images of moody seas.

Both soloists showed remarkable power in making themselves heard against the orchestral storms, thus revealing the work's strength and weakness.

Inevitably, Walt Whitman's fine words are lost in the melee. Though they are printed in the programme, what persists in the ear is the sibilant sounds.

Though performed with uniform dedication producing an enthusiastically received wall of sound, A Sea Symphony remains somewhat frustratingly all sound and fury.

The Southern Sinfonia farewells Stephen Christensen, president of the board, and concertmaster Sydney Manowitz.

The audience acknowledged Manowitz's distinguished and gracious career leadership of 20 years with a unanimous standing ovation, prolonged cheers and stamping feet.

Reviewed for the Otago Daily Times by Marian Poole, 20 April 2015.

Another view on Southern Sinfonia concert

It was a thrilling moment when a massed choir, representing both extremes of the compass of New Zealand, supported by Norma and the forces of the Southern Sinfonia, gave voice to the majestic Sea Symphony on Saturday night at the town hall. If the earth had vibrated at that moment we would not have felt it – such was the excitement of the waves, splashes and power of the sound sweeping over a rapt audience. Great was the contrast provided by the second movement with its delicate tone painting of gossamer-like transparency and the beautiful singing of the baritone soloist in On the Beach Alone at Night. The sea and its extensive moods were well limned throughout a work of much more than mere “sound and fury”. Clearly, not all members of the audience would be in accord with what the reviewer (ODT, 20.4.15) heard and reported about this concert.

As the programme notes made clear, Rachmaninov rewrote his first concerto, smoothing out the “confused revelry of adolescence”, reworking his material into more organic development. Modi Deng grasped this great concerto whole, demonstrating the power and speed that we expect in a performer of her exceptional ability. It was a beautiful and very moving performance. Ms Deng’s poise and wonderful sense of timing showed maturity beyond her years, creating a satisfying performance in all respects. Kudos to Modi Deng, Maestro Braithwaite et al.

John Van Buskirk
North Dunedin

Letter to the the Editor, Otago Daily Times, 21 April 2015.

Reviewed for The Star by Brenda Harwood, 23 April 2015.