REVIEW :: Age No Problem to music's masters

From The West Australian
by Neville Cohn
Tuesday 09/09/08

CONCERT
----------------------
New I Voci Singers
Government House Ballroom
Review: Neville Cohn
----------------------

As I drove to Government House Ballroom on Sunday, I listened on the car radio to a broadcast by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the 83-year-old Pierre Boulez - and I marvelled at the intensity and vitality he brought to his task.

At the ballroom, I marvelled yet again at the focused energy of John Christmass, that other seemingly tireless octogenarian who has devoted a long life to training choirs. The enthusiastic audience included people who had been in Christmass' first choral classes 40 years ago, their attendance a measure of the affection and respect show this grand old man of music.

Some of the most satisfying offerings of the afternoon lay in the keeping of a bracket o madrigals stretching back as far as the early 17h century. Much of the unaccompanied singing here was informed by a most pleasing refinement of style as in Thomas Morley's Now is the Month of Maying was no less pleasingly essayed.

Very little attention has been paid in Perth to marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams so it was good to listen to his arrangement of English folk melodies, especially the delightful Wassail Song, its inherent joviality most effectively evoked in a fitting tribute to a great composer.

Duncan Gardiner (guitar) and Heather Bex (clarinet) provided a gentle instrumental interlude.
An account of Brahm's Gypsy Songs, opus 103, was less uniformly satisfying. Perhaps the choir had not taken the full measure of the venue's acoustics, singing these often-extrovert and passionate lieder rather too softly, an effect paralleled by the accompaniment played, beautifully, by Alex Roberts on a grand paino with its lid closed resulting in muffled tone.

Later, the choir gave an amusingly choreographed account of Anderson and Ulvaeus' Take a Chance on Me as well as Tim Cunniffe's arrangement of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah which brought the house down.

This concert marked the 30th anniversary of the founding of I Voci. May there be many more happy birthdays.