Above: Elena Kats-Chernin, composer of ‘Human Waves’ for choir and orchestra, heard in world premiere at this concert. Photo credit: Vicki Lauren. Featured image: Sydney Philharmonia Choirs on stage at the Opera House with soloist Kanen Breen, and conductor Brett Weymark OAM. Photo credit: Simon Crossley-Meates.
The retrospective retrieval and re-use of language, fortunes and descriptions from long ago has often been a resource used in current artistic creations . The modern renovation of ancient or comparatively old texts in order to understand history continues to enhance our thoughts and relationships now.
Above: Writer of the text for ‘Human Waves’ and orchestral pianist for this world premiere, Tamara-Anna Cislowska. Photo Credit: Chris Donaldson.
The performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana (1937) took up the entire second half. The springtime sold out Opera House Concert hall was full of audience who have lived with this secular cantata’s iconic opening on recording, in live performance, in movie soundtracks from Excalibur and The Doors to ads for products from instant coffee to beer.
This year’s season for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs carries the subtitle: Voice, Energy, Joy. These three elements burst forward from the Opera House stage during Orff’s popular work.
The assembled choir and soloists delivered an entertaining, powerhouse version of this massive choral music hit. The ‘O fortuna imperatrix mundi’ moments to open and close sliced through the space with huge walls of sound. Brett Weymark ensured the hope for joy and luck through this tight performance of the famous secular verse setting was especially resounding for Spring 2023.
Above: Baritone solist for ‘Carmina Burana’, Hadleigh Adams. Photo: supplied.
Orchestral colour and mini fanfare – like gesture were notably well harnessed throughout the work. Any sudden mood changes, introductory fragments and declamations inside movements were forceful and precise. The same precision was standard for the choirs ennunciation of the Latin-mix verse.
Despite the size of vocal forces, the unison voice impressed over and over with its nuance and crispness. The children’s choir also provided its atmospheres with seamless, smooth and beautifully realised phrasing.
Soloists Hadleigh Adams (baritone) and Lorina Gore (soprano) showed off the humour and shifts in the diverse text . They elaborately ensured a large range in characterisation and vocal timbre. Whether portraying a drunk Abott, young people drunk on springtime love or joyously surrendering to local love, they triumphed. These singers used a lot of their vocal arsenal and innate acting skill to attack each new level of bawdiness in the storyline.
Above: Soprano soloist in ‘Carmina Burana’ – Lorina Gore. photo: supplied.
A highlight of the unexpected and comic element in this work came with tenor Kanen Breen’s moment of escape from the rotisserie as the charred swan. Choreography and vocal colourisation was exemplary for this, the most out of the box bit in the codex. Breen’s command of the stage in full winged costume was complete following an entry from the house to lament his bad fortune.
The large commission work by Elena Kats-Chernin , Human Waves was a sensitive and no-holds- barred set of portraits of immigrants settling in Australia from the late 1800’s to the 1980s. Five movemtents traced the fortunes of different cultural groups (Vietnamese, Chinese, Lebanese, Italian and Russian). The large work also dealt with our famed Vitamin B rich breakky spread, light through the intoxicating Aussie landscape or forests and the chants of Citizenship pledges.
Above: Tenor soloist for Carmina Burana, Kanen Breen. Photo: supplied.
The concise, direct, descriptions in text by Tamara-Anna Cislowska were set with Kats-Chernin’s trademark instant and complete evocation of atmosphere and mood. Whether it was the lapping lilt of water on refugee boats, a restless, busy comment on the city with religious flavour by Italians, a litany of language fragments from in Chinese or the racy ambition of Lebanese taxi drivers, the vignettes bristled with hypnotic hope and at times the humour within predicament.
Cislowska’s inclusion of foreign language was highly effective. Whether the musical setting was a huge driven moment or pulsed with a gentle intimate energy, foreign words and phrases became cultural logos joining the often rapid-fire delivery for choir.
Above: Composer of ‘Murrgumurrgu (Ibis), James Henry. Photo credit : Keith Saunders.
Librettist-pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska added a diverse set of gestures colours plus rhythms from the piano through out this premiere. The orchestra responded well to the contrasts forged by the composer, whose impressive, unique and loved descriptive voice was matched by Brett Weymark’s impressive harnessing of energies and elements in the caricatures.
James Henry’s arrangement of Murrgumurrgu in Yuwaalaraay language began the event with a goose bump moment. The composer introduced the first traditional downward trajectory of song in solo voice with clapsticks from the rear of the orchestra. The successive reiterations gained momentum as the huge choir and accompanying Western orchestra reinforced the traditional melody. This piece encourages us to rethink of land, spirit, animals and simplicity of musical commentary that works via familiarity and overlapping repetition rather than unnecessary elaboration.
Always worthwhile to celebrate a new work in First Nations language, the message emerging from this hybrid songline also urged us to look back from annoyance at nature, and a displaced bird. In this work and all others in the concert, we could celebrate what once was. We were encouraged to process detail from the past and be inspired by evocative settings of text.
The strength of the choral and instrumental music working so well together in all three works urged us to find a home for cross-cultural voices. We were often covered in a blaket of sound, of sheer energy and could anticipate the joy of hearing a loved work plus meeting the high calibre of rich, new music possible in this diversely peopled country.
