THE
SILENT REALM IN MAJESTY
The
Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Victoria
Concert Hall
Sunday
(13 March 2015 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 March 2016 with the title "Choral concert focuses on longing for spiritual peace".
The Philharmonic Chamber Choir, founded
by conductor Lim Yau, is now in its 22nd year. The choir's greatest
strength lies in its programming of concerts with specific themes. This concert
of German a cappella choral music, guest-conducted by Manfred Schreier
from the Freiburg Hochschule fur Musik, was centred on man's longing for
spiritual peace.
Opening the afternoon was Hungarian
Zoltan Kodaly's Jesus und die Krämer (Jesus and the Traders), a
narration of Christ's display of righteous indignation at the Temple of Jerusalem
The choir then settled into two songs by
Josef Rheinberger, the soft cushioned harmonies of Abendlied (Evensong)
and Ich liebe, weil erhöret der Herr (I Love the Lord, because He
hath heard), both of which provided a calming sense of solace. The choir's
sensitivity to words and music made these sound totally convincing.
Genesis, Clytus Gottwald's choral arrangement of
the orchestral prelude to Haydn's The Creation, known as The Representation
of Chaos, with words by Moses Mendelssohn based on the Torah, then
taxed the 26-strong ensemble. A deliberate absence of melodic line and unstable
tonal centres were to throw off any semblance of order. Were the singers in
pitch and in sync, or not? Or was that the general idea of the work that closed
calmly in C minor?
A better depiction of heavenly bliss than
Finn Jaako Mantyjärvi's Die Stimme des Kindes (The Voice of the Child)
would be hard to find. Over a gently rocking rhythm, the music portrayed the
sleep of innocents with hosts of angels, before melting into a soft peal of
bells. This aural balm continued into Gottwald's transcription of Mahler's Ich
bin der welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the World) from the Ruckert-Lieder
song cycle.
Was this an improvement over the original
for solo voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment? It certainly sounded
more fussy, with voices sharing both solo part and orchestral details, which
included a mellifluous soprano line that soared towards the celestial realm.
There were two Bach transcriptions,
beginning with Knut Nystedt's revisionist look at the well-known chorale Komm,
Susser Tod (Come, Sweet Death) which had eight singers planted in
the stalls. The antiphonal bending of pitches and off-phase entries provided a
brief haunting sense of disorientation, with order restored in Dieter
Schnebel's more conventional transcription of Contrapunctus I from The
Art of Fugue.
Completing each half of the concert were
Hugo Wolf's Sechs Geistliche Lieder (6 Sacred Songs) and Johannes
Brahms' late Fünf Gesänge (5 Songs). The first probed man's
uneasy quest for solace, where Eichendorff's words Herrlich ein im Stillen
Reich (Silent Realm In Majesty) provided the concert's title. The
second was an autumnal reflection at the end of life's journey, one rewarded
with eternal peace. The choir's response was one of quiet rejoicing and radiant
equanimity, and given their demanding programme, also for a job well done.
 |
| Manfred Schreier receives his applause. |
 |
| Two Sibelius aficionados meet: Lim Yau, Singapore's foremost Sibelius conductor with Erik T.Tawaststjerna, Head of Piano at Helsinki's Sibelius Academy and son of Erik Tawaststjerna, Sibelius' biographer. |
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