SAMUEL BARBER Evening During Term in the College Chapel and Presents an Annual Concert Series
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559053bk Barber 15/6/06 9:51 pm Page 5 Choir of Ormond College, University of Melbourne Deborah Kayser Deborah Kayser performs in areas as diverse as ancient Byzantine chant, French and German Baroque song and In June and July of 2005 the Choir of Ormond College gave its eleventh international concert tour, visiting classical contemporary music, both scored and improvised. Her work has led her to tour regularly both within AMERICAN CLASSICS Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Poland and Italy. Other tours have included New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and internationally to Europe and Asia. She has recorded, as soloist, on numerous CDs, and her work is Holland, England, Scotland, Switzerland and Belgium. These tours have received outspoken praise from the public frequently broadcast on ABC FM. As a member of Jouissance, and the contemporary music ensembles Elision and and critics alike. The choir was formed by its Director; Douglas Lawrence, Master of the Chapel Music, in 1982. Libra, she has performed radical interpretations of Byzantine and Medieval chant, and given premières of works There are 24 Choral Scholars: ten sopranos, four altos, four tenors, and six basses. The choir sings each Sunday written specifically for her voice by local and overseas composers. Her performance highlights include works by SAMUEL BARBER evening during term in the College chapel and presents an annual concert series. Each year a number of outside composers Liza Lim, Richard Barrett and Chris Dench, her collaboration with bassist Nick Tsiavos, and oratorio and engagements are undertaken. These have included concerts for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Musica choral works with Douglas Lawrence. She was a member of the Choir of Ormond College for eight years from 1984, Viva, the Melbourne International Festival, the Melbourne Concert Hall, the Faculty of Music at Melbourne and has been the Principal Soprano of the Scot’s church since 1991. Choral Music University, Monash University, the Melbourne International Festival of Organ and Harpsichord, the Ballarat Opera Festival, the Fremantle Bach Festival, the Mildura Arts Festival and the Port Fairy Festival. In Europe Festival Grantley McDonald engagements have included the Wiener Festwochen, the Vendsyssel Festival, the Copenhagen Summer Festival, the Grantley McDonald was born in Melbourne in 1974, and received his first choral experience as a boy at St Paul’s Heaven-haven • Sure on this shining night • Agnus Dei Accademia Chigiana, the Sorø Festival, the Arolsen Barock Festspiele, the Dunkeld Festival, the Bonn cathedral. He later sang in a number of college choirs at the University of Melbourne, including the Choir of Ormond Sommerkonzerte, the Festival de L’Orgue Ancien-Sion. The choir’s repertoire is wide, ranging from the College, under the direction of Douglas Lawrence. He has performed in many countries (Australia, Japan, Germany, Choir of Ormond College • Douglas Lawrence Renaissance to the Baroque, with special attention given to the music of J.S. Bach, and with music of the nineteenth Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, France, Britain) as an ensemble singer, soloist and conductor. He attended and twentieth centuries, as well as contemporary compositions. The Choir of Ormond College has given over forty university in Melbourne and Berlin, and in 1997 studied ensemble singing under the instruction of the Hilliard premières. The choir has a strong commitment to early performance practice and gave the first authentic Melbourne Ensemble in the England. His repertoire ranges from chant and medieval polyphony, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and performances along with the Australian Baroque Ensemble of, amongst other works, Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn to recently commissioned works. He maintains a steady research programme in Renaissance music, Coronation Anthems and Bach’s St John Passion, St Matthew Passion (with the Choir of Trinity College), Mass in and in 2002 was awarded his PhD on the musical aesthetics of the fifteenth-century philosopher Marsilio Ficino. He B Minor, the Magnificat and several cantatas. was for some years choir-master at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, and is currently director of music at St Peter’s, Melbourne. Len Vorster Len Vorster left South Africa for Australia in 1983 after completing post-graduate piano studies with Lamar Crowson at the University of Cape Town. He made his concerto début with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra in 1976. In 1997 he recorded Michael Easton’s Concerto on Australian Themes with the State Orchestra of Victoria for Naxos, and gave the premières of the work in Italy, Hungary, Germany, and London. His Naxos recording of the two-piano version of Holst’s The Planets (with Robert Chamberlain) has received a Gramophone Magazine Award. Further Naxos recordings include music by de Falla, Stravinsky and Berkeley. He has recorded with Ian Partridge the complete songs and solo piano music of Lord Berners for Marco Polo. Len Vorster is founding Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, and is on the piano staff at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the Victorian College of the Arts. Ben Dickson Ben Dickson is a graduate of Australia’s premier performing arts institution, The Victorian College of the Arts. After several years working around Australia with many orchestras and ensembles he moved to Thailand, where he is now Principal Percussionist with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. 8.559053 5 6 8.559053 559053bk Barber 15/6/06 9:51 pm Page 2 Samuel Barber (1910–1981) Samuel Barber (1910–1981) Italy in 1936. It was subsequently reworked and From the same period come Heaven-haven and Sure Choral Music Choral Music renamed in 1938 Adagio for Strings and, in 1967, was on this shining night, that both began life originally as further transformed into a divided a cappella chorus to songs and were later arranged for chorus, in 1961 and 1 A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map, Op. 15 5:25 0 The Virgin Martyrs, Op. 8, No. 1 3:39 Born in March 1910 at West Chester, Pennsylvania, Stephens, and from them developed an inclination the words from the Latin Mass. Its stepwise movement, 1941 respectively. The first is a chordal setting of words Text: Stephen Spender (1909-1995) Text: Helen Waddell (1889-1965) Samuel Barber grew up with parents who encouraged an towards Celtic texts with a melancholic and nostalgic long-limbed lyricism and elegiac mood have justifiably by Gerard Manley Hopkins concerning a young nun (male chorus, three kettle drums) (a cappella female chorus) all-round education, an uncle who was a composer theme, which aptly matched his own musically romantic earned the work its extraordinary popularity. wishing to relinquish the outside world and asking for a 2 Under the Willow Tree (from Vanessa) 3:23 ! Let Down the Bars, O Death, Op. 8, No. 2 1:53 (exclusively of songs) and an aunt who was a celebrated persuasion. Forced to leave Europe in 1939, Barber returned to trouble-free environment away from ‘the swing of the Text: Gian Carlo Menotti (b. 1911) Text: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) contralto of international fame. Their occasional A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map is a disturbing the Curtis Institute where he ran a Madrigal Chorus. It sea’. The second, now with a piano, recreates James (a cappella mixed chorus, tenor solo, piano) (a cappella mixed chorus) presence in the Barber household was to be the most setting of a poem by Stephen Spender describing the was for this vocal ensemble that he conceived Agee’s affirmative text in a canon between soprano and important early influence on the young boy who death of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, during which Reincarnations, a trio of Celtic part-songs to words by tenor voices, where gentle dissonances and a sweeping 3 Twelfth Night, Op. 42, No. 1 4:32 @ Heaven-haven, Op. 13, No. 1 1:43 announced at the age of nine that he intended to be a the poet had spent time in Spain. It is scored for four- James Stephens. The exuberant and polyphonic Mary melodic line over a pulsating chordal accompaniment Text: Laurie Lee (1914-1997) Text: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) composer. At fourteen Barber entered the newly part male chorus with three kettledrums, adding optional Hynes, actually written in 1936, contrasts initial creates one of Barber’s most poetic settings. (a cappella mixed chorus) (a cappella mixed chorus) founded Curtis Institute in Philadelphia that opened for brass parts after its publication, and was written in 1940. rhythmic vigour with tender lyricism. Anthony O’Daly is The Easter Chorale was written for the dedication 4 To be sung on the Water, Op. 42, No. 2 2:48 # Sure on this shining night, Op. 13, No. 3 2:03 the first time in 1924 (he was in fact only the second The unsettling silences, timpani glissandi and haunting based on a true Irish rebel tale in which a captain is of the bell-tower of Washington’s National Cathedral in Text: Louise Bogan (1897-1970) Text: James Agee (1909-1933) student to go there). Revered by his fellow students final bars all contribute to the grim reality expressed in condemned to death and dies without betraying his 1964 and sets Pack Browning’s creation text in the style (a cappella mixed chorus) (mixed chorus, piano) (including Menotti), he became the star pupil excelling the text. Its structure is in the form of a double refrain friends. Throughout this atmospheric lament a tolling of a hymn-tune, chordal throughout, modal and with 5 The Monk and his Cat 2:13 $ Chorale for Ascension Day (Easter Chorale) 3:02 in all subjects and developing too a fine baritone voice. where each verse begins with the words ‘A Stopwatch bell-like figure underpins the other voices.