MUSICA INTIMAE: EVENSONGS
Vox Camerata
Yong Musicians Foundation Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Tuesday (17 January 2017 )
The
first choral concert of the year was given by Vox Camerata, a choir founded by
Mohamed Shahril bin Mohamed Salleh which has a distinction of programming
serious choral repertoire yet without subjecting its members to a formal
audition. This open-handed and egalitarian approach, characterised by a total
absence of snobbery, has been rewarded by seriously good performances in venues
as diverse as the Armenian Church, School of the Arts and The Arts House.
Its
Esplanade Concert Hall debut was backed by an orchestra, no less than the young
and very promising The Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra. The concert opened
without voices, in Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture, also known as Fingal's Cave ,
conducted by Ignatius Wang. The evenness of the playing was remarkable, led by
very good strings (with ex-SSO veteran violinist Lim Shue Churn as concertmaster),
and as the work progressed, a very fine woodwind section with an excellent
clarinet principal. If the slow opening pages sounded little soporific in pace,
it soon built up a head of steam. This was a performance of polish, if not one
of raw passion and a little wildness. That would come with some more
experience.
The
chorus of Vox Camerata, joined by guests from the Anderson Junior College
Alumni Choir and German Protestant Church Choir, had their say in Vaughan
Williams' Five Mystical Songs with baritone Brent Allcock as soloist,
and conducted by Alvin Seville Arumugam. Using the poems of George Herbert, the
music relived the English pastoral tradition which the New Zealander Allcock
was totally at home with. His is a warm and reassuring voice that sounded
gorgeous in the opening Easter, with the words “Rise, heart. Thy Lord
is risen”, echoed with deep resonance from the chorus. This set the tone,
further lit up with I Got Me Flowers, gently accompanied by harp and
strings, and Love Bade Me Welcome, with subtle woodwind contributions
and the chorus joining in later with fine and discreet unison humming.
Credit
has to go to conductor Arumugam for his command of the orchestra, which was
always sensitive to the voices, and never threatened to overwhelm. The
transparency of the strings and sublime
woodwind solos were true to the music's gentle spirit. The Call was for
a short but moving baritone solo, followed by the final song Antiphon,
perhaps the most exciting for the chorus, which proclaimed “Let the world in
every corner sing”, and meaning every word of it. Vaughan Williams is not
often performed in Singapore
The
strings remained onstage, joined by pianist Ong Seng Choo to accompany the
choir in Gabriel Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine, which was conducted by
Ignatius Wang. This short work breathes the same ethereal air as the French
composer's Requiem, that is it sounds otherwordly. The men's voices that
opened sounded uneven, with the volume weighted to the lower registers, but
that soon leavened with the entry of the women. The strained voices sounded
exposed here but the spirit with which the music was sung made up for this
shortcoming.
It
was laudable that in order to save trees, no programme booklets were printed
for the concert, with all programme information and notes made available in a
downloadable soft copy. The price to pay was that the audience applauded after
every single movement, and that trend continued well into the second half.
The
excellent orchestra was dispensed with in John Rutter's Magnificat,
which was conducted by Vox Camerata Chorusmaster Shahril himself with Ong again
on piano accompaniment. In this larger scale work, the chorus occupying
centrestage under the acoustic canopy seemed overmatched by the venue, and some
parts sounded thin as a result. A choir double its size would have been
preferable, but make no mistake, it still brought out a gutsy and committed
performance, full of heart and feeling.
The
syncopated opening Magnificat was well-delivered, with a keen mastery of
its tricky rhythms. Rutter's very tonal and highly approachable music risks
sounding saccharine, so the chorus avoided over sentimentality in the slower
movements. The 2nd movement, Of a Rose, a Lovely Rose, was
poetically sung, contrasted with pomp and ceremony of Quia fecit mihi magna.
Guest soprano Akiko Otao was a standout, her lovely voice wafted clearly over
the chorus in Et Misericordia and Esurientes. If one wondered
what an angel sounds like, this would be a pretty close approximation. There
was a jazzy choral fugue in Fecit potentiam which was unfortunately not
further elaborated by the composer, but the final Gloria patria recapped
the opening's high spirits and the concert closed on a celebratory high.
The
audience clearly enjoyed the music and effort put in the performance, and the
applause showed it. Thus it was a pity that the performers chose to leave the
stage at the very first opportunity, which curtailed any further plaudits. So
there were no curtain calls at all! Here amateur musicians could take a leaf
from their professional counterparts by staying onstage for a longer duration,
and milk the applause for themselves and their collaborators what it is worth.
This would be a lesson for future concert opportunities: You put in the hard
work, so you deserve all the credit!
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