Seasonal celebration from City Choir

Rejoice! Music for Christmas 

Saturday 28 November 2020, Dunedin Town Hall 

A large audience and nearly 100 City Choir Dunedin singers accompanied by Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Burchell, filled Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday evening for a celebration of Christmas classical repertoire entitled Rejoice!. 

The programme had more variety than their regular biannual seasonal performances of Handel’s Messiah and opened with a lesser known Messe de Minuit pour Noel cc.1694 by Charpentier. 

Joyful, dance-like and more musically secular than masses of the time, this was a challenging work for all, and despite strongly accented orchestral backing, the choir’s big choral entries generally lacked definition and accented articulation, especially at first entries such as in the Gloria. 

The tempo and intonation were good, and the final Amen of the Credo section was an exciting highlight. 

Soloists Lois Johnston and Caroline Burchell (sopranos), Claire Barton (alto), Andrew Grenon (tenor) and James Harrison (bass) delivered some well balanced segments, though at times the Baroque-sized orchestra tended to dominate. 

Popular A Ceremony of Carols (1942), written by Benjamin Britten for treble voices and harps, comprises 11 short 15th and 16th century texts, in contrasting settings of bright, happy Christmas music. Excellent pace and dynamic palette captured the bell-like spirit of Wolcum Yole! and Deo Gracias, and effective strong unison highlighted Hodie Christus est. 

Harpist Helen Webby (Christchurch) excelled in providing clear emotional accompaniment throughout for the 60 choir ladies and soprano soloists Johnson and Burchell. 

Burchell conducted J.S. Bach’s Magnificat BWV 243.1 (1723) from the harpsichord, setting good pace, with three trumpeters and some excellent woodwind passages highlighting throughout. 

A very dramatic performance overall, but again with such a big choir, the massive melismatic passages such as in Freut euch und jubiliert and Gloria Patri often lacked accent and cohesion. 

Nevertheless, this was an exciting evening of exhilarating music for patrons and performers alike, a privileged event for Dunedin in this troubled Covid year.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Bouman for the Otago Daily Times, 30 November 2020.

Sung and Played from the Heart

The title, the timing and the content of Songs for Humanity (Knox Church, 1 August 2020) by City Choir Dunedin were all spot-on – so much so that one could hardly believe they were chosen (as conductor David Burchell pointed out in his preamble) before the world-wide spread of Covid-19. What could be more appropriate in the midst of so many people’s trials and tribulations than to use music’s power as a balm and salve during this devastating pandemic, and to dedicate the performance of the main work – Fauré’s Requiem – to those “who have died and will yet die” from it?

Three shorter pieces of accessible music by living composers made up the programme’s first half. In Norwegian-born Ola Gjeilo’s Song of the Universal, ably sung by all the women’s voices supported by the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra’s strings (concertmaster: Tessa Petersen) and pianist Sandra Crawshaw, alternating slow and fast sections brought out the ecstatic, aspirational quality of Walt Whitman’s poem. By contrast, in New Zealander Christopher Marshall’s more complex Pastorale – a setting of Psalm 23 for soprano solo and men’s voices with specially arranged accompaniment of strings, organ (David Burchell) and percussion – the prevailing mood was consolatory, albeit punctuated by dramatic outbursts which tested both the choir and the soloist (soprano Caroline Burchell) to the utmost, as well as assistant conductor Mark Anderson on the podium. Then came Latvian Pēteris Vasks’ Dona nobis pacem for four-part choir, strings and organ (Johnny Mottershead) – a highly effective final item, where the mostly slow-moving music’s austere diatonic language provided a series of cumulative build-ups of tension and excitement before the peaceful ending, and where conductor Burchell – now back on the podium – achieved an excellent choral blend throughout.

In his hands, too, the concert’s main work, Fauré’s Requiem, received a most sensitive and stylish interpretation. The crystalline radiance of soprano Caroline Burchell in the Pie Jesu and the darker, more anguished tones of baritone Scott Bezett in the Offertorium and the Libera me were particularly noteworthy, and the choir coped well with the subtleties of the composer’s chromatically-enhanced harmonic language. The orchestra’s lower strings (Fauré wanted no violins except for a violin solo in the Sanctus) combined with organ, horns and harp to give unfailingly appropriate support to the choir’s flowing lines, with well-judged dramatic irruptions by the horns for ‘Hosanna’ in the Sanctus and the ‘Dies Irae’ section of the Libera me, and delicious arpeggios on the organ for the In Paradisum.

Beethoven inscribed on the manuscript of his Missa solemnis these words: “From the heart – may it go back – to the heart.” The capacity audience’s response to all the items in this concert showed how deeply they felt that every musician who sang or played  in this moving and memorable event did so wholeheartedly, thereby making a worthy contribution to the maintenance of true human values in a world that sorely needs them.

Review by Donald Cullington, 2 August 2020

Photo: Ian Thomson