March 12, 2011
A Tudor Lent

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, March 14, 2011

Pious evening of majestic control

JOHN O'Donnell and the Ensemble Gombert gave a remarkable musical picture of what Lent might have been like at the court of Elizabeth I where the season was observed with thankful piety.

The Gomberts met the challenge of delivering some of the finest and emotionally charged Tudor works with customary control.

The 20-strong body began with five motets by Byrd and Tallis, three of them completely new to this listener's live experience. Following this majestic sequence, O'Donnell took his forces through four Lamentations settings, none of which replicated the others in textual material but showed a collegiality of emotional and intellectual response.

The Tallis setting was the most well known, followed by others by Robert White, the obscure Norwich composer Osbert Parsley, and a youthful treatment by Byrd, with White's setting of Psalm 50 rounding off the night as it does each Tenebrae service in Holy Week.

Expert as the singers' sustained accomplishment was, the most memorable moments came in Tallis's seven-voice Miserere nostril, a marvel of canonic construction and here splendidly carried off with an enviable plasticity of texture.

December 11, 2010
Christmas to Candlemas

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, December 13, 2010

IN AN all-too-brief concert, the excellent Ensemble Gombert presented its annual Christmas program on Saturday night, two days after the fine, alto-fortunate Consort of Melbourne gave its seasonal celebration.

While the Consort and instrumental partners La Compania revelled in the music of Palestrina and Praetorius, the Gombert singers under John O'Donnell centred on works by Tomas Luis de Victoria - with Palestrina, one of the major composers of Counter-Reformation art and a master of subtle verbal coloration.

Without taking a break, O'Donnell took his forces through three hymns, five motets and the terse Mass O magnum mysterium, based on the composer's well-known setting. Impressive as always were the group's four tenors, articulating the plainchant verses of each hymn with certainty and that uniformity of attack you find in the best prepared vocal bodies.

Still, much of this music's effect depends on the sopranos who often find themselves in exposed situations above the altos and on this night seemingly miles above the rolling basses of Steven Hodgson, Tim Daly and Jerzy Kozlowski.

Even in this intense and sharply etched demonstration of vocal craft you could find moments of exceptional impact, such as the stately interweaving of parts in the O magnum mysterium motet or the gleaming subtleties of Quem vidistis, pastores?, which pictures the central Christmas tableau in music of striking emotional fervour.

When you hear music-making of this quality, the essence of this season's spiritual significance comes to vivid life beyond tawdry presents and gimcrack decorations.

Once again, we are indebted to the Ensemble Gombert musicians for their inspiring display of choral accomplishment.

September 11, 2010
The School of Palestrina

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, September 13, 2010

ON SATURDAY night, the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge repeated their touring program, notable for juxtaposing old and new and highlighting director Stephen Layton's passion for contemporary Baltic music. Employing half the British body's personnel, John O'Donnell's Ensemble Gombert follows different paths, concentrating on specific composers like Tomas Luis de Victoria, who provides all the content in the group's Christmas concert this year, or multi-polyphonic lines as in April's offering event centred on Brumel's Earthquake Mass. Coinciding with the second Cambridge recital, the Gomberts sang music by writers taught by Palestrina, influenced by him, or who rearranged the Renaissance master's own work.

Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli was held up to his contemporaries as the exemplar of all that could be achieved in Counter-Reformation music: transparent and unembellished, on textual message throughout, elevating in emotional content, suggestive of unshakeable strength of faith in its Creed's later stages.

Rather than singing the original six-part Mass, the Gomberts worked through an arrangement by Palestrina's one-time pupil, Francesco Soriano, for eight lines or two choirs, which made lavish use of antiphonal effects, realised to excellent effect by a cleverly arranged division of the Gombert voices, one group having a bright timbral edge while the other enjoyed a firm, carrying tenor-and-bass partnership. Gifted with finely trained participants, the ensemble transformed this curiosity into a richly thick tapestry, almost overwhelming in pivotal sections where every line merges in sonorously stunning affirmations of belief.

As well as the mass, this night's other contributions featured a short version of Giovanni Nanino's chorale-like Stabat mater, a variety-packed Lumen ad revelationem by Anerio, and a trio of Victoria motets where the two-choir Alma Redemptoris mater and Ave Maria prepared for the night's major work.

For this fine body's admirers, the only disappointment was that the night passed all too rapidly.

September 12, 2009
Voices of our Time

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, September 14, 2009

New is old as exemplary choir sings premieres

IT ALL depends on what you mean by ''our time'', but the most recently written segments of the Ensemble Gombert's latest subscription recital sounded noticeably old-fashioned, if not antique.

After offering a small selection of American and British works, John O'Donnell and his exemplary choir sang world premieres of short pieces by two of the Gombert tenor personnel.

First was Peter Campbell's staid, only slightly adventurous Sunrise on the Coast, a setting of an A. B. Paterson lyric; then came Vaughan McAlley's responses to two Latin liturgical texts written in a vocabulary recalling Renaissance masters and the Gabrielis' Venice.

Calvin Bowman's new Missa Vexilla regis uses parts of the eponymous plainchant and moves rapidly through the familiar texts with a pleasure in candid sonorities, spiced by unexpected sideways harmonic moves. Like his Australian colleagues on this night, Bowman avoids grinding dissonances, making this new mass easy to assimilate.

The most contemporary-sounding music came in centenarian Elliott Carter's Musicians Wrestle Everywhere, a bristling 1945 mesh of polyphonic devices, against which Britten's almost contemporary Hymn to St Cecilia sounded tame, if rather rushed in this performance.

But the most affecting music-making emerged during two juxtaposed settings of the Hopkins sonnet God's Grandeur by Samuel Barber and Kenneth Leighton: similar but individual, sung with evenly spread accomplishment right through to their spell-binding final bars.

March 7, 2009
Jean Mouton: French Royal Composer

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, March 10, 2009

Vocal display of grace and balance

UNDER director John O'Donnell, the Ensemble Gombert opened its five-concert annual series with a program consisting largely of motets by one of France's greatest composers during the middle Renaissance. Unusually for this expert choral group, much of Saturday night's music-making required only four lines, the effect in the recital's first half one of piercing clarity, particularly in the sequence of apostrophes that occupy much of the length in OChriste redemptor: one of several addresses to the Almighty to increase the child-production rate of that unfortunate lady Anne of Brittany, who married three times without producing the requisite son.

Not that Mouton's music turns to the lugubrious when referring to the daughter-cursed queen; the fluency of the eight motets sung by the Gomberts demonstrated the composer's grace of utterance, sense of dynamic balance, proportionate weighting of vocal layers, and interesting if unadventurous textures. Mouton had an eye for textual highlighting, shown by his rare repetition of focal lines and employment of homophonic movement when words held high significance, as during the deploration on Anne's death, Quis dabit oculis nostris.

Probably the most striking music of the night sounded the most atypical. The solid Missus est angelus Gabriel tells the annunciation story pretty close to St Luke's version but in a polyphonic five-line onslaught that prefigures the sonorous grandeur of the Gabrielis' Venice. The Gomberts produced a powerful sound, as impervious to disruption as a waterfall, an engrossing display of vocal consonance in action.

Later, the ensemble sang another Marian motet, Benedicta es caelorum regina, and the Mass based on its content by Morales. Apart from some coarseness from the tenors at the motet's opening, this half of the night generated the same impression of mastery, with the added benefit of the Spanish composer's longer-breathed melodic lines, his Mass ending in a moving Agnus Dei that started in the orthodox four parts, moved to plainchant, then concluded in a full-bodied six-line texture displaying the female voices in this fine group.

December 13, 2008

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, December 15, 2008

Spirit soars in simple hymn of redemption

FOLLOWING a pattern set in last year's Christmas-to-Candlemas recital, the Ensemble Gombert presented interleaving Venetian works: psalm-settings, a hymn and Magnificat from Monteverdi's so-called Christmas Vespers, interspersed with organ intonations and toccatas by Andrea Gabrieli and Quagliati supplied by the conductor John O'Donnell.

Pairs of violins and bass viols, one violone, a sackbut and Samantha Cohen's theorbo supplied a solid instrumental support for the voices that offered added interest.

The tenor line now enjoys two more high-flying voices in Daniel and Matthew Thomson, while Peter Campbell's stalwart efforts have a worthy foil in Tim van Nooten whose timbre has broadened in colour and confidence. A similar invigorating experience emerged hearing sopranos Fiona Seers and Claerwen Jones take on heavy responsibilities, notably in the Magnificat.

But the evening's surprise came through a simple hymn, Christe, redemptor omnium. No clever detail here; just a shapely melody treated with sensitivity and a crisp sparkle, spot-on for this season's celebrations.

May 24, 2008

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, May 27, 2008

Ensemble in assured rendition of Prophecies

IN THE middle of its annual subscription series, the Ensemble Gombert concentrated on Renaissance protean composer Orlande de Lassus, presenting two major works from either end of his career: the Prophecies of the Sibyls and the Tears of St Peter. Because of the Messiaen festival in St Patrick's Cathedral, I was able to hear only the 12-section setting of the verses purporting to foretell the coming and life of Christ.

While much of the popular music of Lassus falls on the ear with bracing sweetness when placed in the company of his contemporaries, the language of the Prophecies holds a startling amount of chromatic shifts, a device prefigured in Lassus' own introductory verses and that parts of the following segments live up to vigorously. Not that these sideways slips held many challenges for the Gombert singers, who are well-versed in much more arcane material.

Further, the work asks for four vocal lines only and so the full energy of the Gombert sopranos and tenors reinforced the deliberation of Lassus' word-setting, which rarely involves repetition but proceeds through each stanza with a time-conserving rigour. Still, the uninterrupted flow of the work showed this admirable body in fine voice, if nowhere near fully stretched technically or interpretively.

March 15, 2008

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, March 18, 2008

For Easter, the Ensemble Gombert presented an interwoven night's music, melding the Lassus settings of the Lamentations for Holy Saturday with the balancing final set of nine responsories by Gesualdo. The program ended with Andrea Gabrieli's rich Miserere to flesh out this reduced Tenebrae service. As expected, the singers gave the Lassus settings every care, with a veiled weight coming from the bass line.

While his Miserere has little of the evocative mystery of its all-too-famous Allegri counterpart, Gabrieli gives his executants many pages of consonance-rich energy and, like much of this evening's music, it enjoyed a driving mobility, surging powerfully towards its many cadences.

But the night's most arresting singing came with the Gesualdo settings, including a bitingly direct O vos omnes and a reading of Aestimatus sum that emphasised with exemplary power the abrupt turn from chromatic gloom to light-filled clarity: the essence of Easter. Even in the composer's most wrenching harmonic disjunctions the Gomberts reinforced their reputation for finesse and precision.

Christmas to CandelmasDecember 15, 2007
Christmas to Candelmas

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, December 18, 2007

Stately sounds of Venice

VENETIAN Renaissance and Baroque composers produced an instantly recognisable church music: stately and aurally impressive, assured in utterance. We have a vivid idea of the affluence of this city from a notable group of composers, the top four featuring in the year's final concert from John O'Donnell's Ensemble Gombert.

Escorted by a string trio - two violins and a bass viol - as well as a cornett-and-sackbut quartet, this accomplished body divided itself into antiphonal choirs of seven or eight lines, even splitting into 14 parts with instrumental help for a lavish Nunc dimittis setting.

This program stayed rooted in Venice, with music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, two richly resonant motets from Giovanni Bassano, and three Monteverdi products, the concert ending with his Magnificat in a restored version by O'Donnell, who punctuated the night's vocal/instrumental action with short Intonations, ornate introductions that gave the St Marks singers their note.

Soprano Carol Veldhoven, tenor Peter Campbell and bass Tim Daly worked through some ornate solo lines with unflustered security. But the highlights were the huge blocks of sounds for intersecting forces that glorified God (and the Venetian state) with inspired jubilation.

Anna McAlister, The Herald Sun, December 18, 2007

CHRISTMAS, Epiphany and Candlemas were the focus of Ensemble Gombert's concert. They sang Venetian motets of the Renaissance and Baroque periods -- staple repertoire at the basilica of San Marco -- accompanied by an ensemble of early string and brass instruments.

Introducing many of the motets were brief organ ``intonaziones'' performed by director John O'Donnell, who also led many of the works from a small organ at the front of the ensemble.

Much of the voicing and instrumentation in this music is the performers' choice: the different lines can be divided in a variety of ways among the singers and instruments. The musicians, therefore, realised O'Donnell's arrangements.

Gombert sang with their usual clean, perfectly blended timbre. The sopranos, as always, were outstanding. Their stratospheric lines in Giovanni Gabrieli's Nunc dimittis were clear and in tune with the volume delightfully restrained.

Some of the male-voice ensembles seemed less controlled, especially in Monteverdi's Magnificat. Its solos and ensembles demand considerable agility and were not quite as polished as Gombert's norm.

Xavier College chapel has an excellent acoustic for Gombert a cappella, but it proved less successful for some combinations of voices and instruments.

The players balanced and blended sensitively but the thicker-textured works, such as the Hodie Christus natus est settings of Bassano and Andrea Gabrieli, lacked Gombert's usual sparkling clarity. Monteverdi's sparser Christe, Redemptor omnium and Magnificat settings fared better.

September 8, 2007
German Baroque a capella

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, September 11, 2007

... On Saturday night, the Ensemble Gombert began easily, moving through congenial Baroque choral music before finishing with three a cappella challenges from J. S Bach ...

At the Gombert event, the first part ran twice as long as the following Bach motets sequence, the prefatory material coming from Orlando di Lasso, whose In te Domine speravi served as a springboard for the following Magnificat by Praetorius.

This pairing yielded the night's most honeyed singing, rich chords and full-spectrum harmonies flattering the choir, which was put to slightly sterner work in four pieces by Schutz, where the development of material becomes more organised and dense.

But the Bach works displayed the Gomberts' dynamic powers, the opening Furchte dich nicht erupting onto the scene with heightened effect and urgency after the sombre steadiness of the preceding program items.

The newly attributed Ich lasse dich nicht operates in a smaller field but gave clear definition to the differences in texture between the double choirs, while the final Komm, Jesu, komm emphasised the linear complexity and strength of the composer's vocal writing.

Every choir finds Bach's more tangled contrapuntal segments difficult to articulate with absolute ease, but this group of experts gives as close to an ideal realisation of the composer's hefty vocal concertato sequences as we are likely to hear in this country. ...

August 4, 2007
Taverner to Tavener

Ann McAlister, The Herald Sun, August 8, 2007

ENSEMBLE Gombert's Taverner to Tavener program explored British a cappella choral music from the 16th and 20th centuries.

Interestingly, the composers John Taverner (born 1490-ish) and John Tavener (born 1944) are not just namesakes with an R to differentiate; they are distantly related.

Taverner's gorgeous Dum transisset Sabbatum began a concert of strikingly polished and controlled performances. The 18-piece choir displayed consistently honed balance, the sopranos never unsubtle, the basses tantalisingly present.

Under director John O'Donnell they moved flawlessly together and individual voices formed perfectly blended sections. Though each vocal line ebbed and flowed dynamically, the volume range was compact throughout. The result was pure, clear and warm, the soprano voices flatteringly airbrushed.

Vaughan-Williams' Three Shakespeare Songs and Britten's Five Flower Songs were the only secular works on the program.

In the first Shakespeare song, Full Fathom Five, the close dissonances were spot-on for pitch and they resonated and decayed, convincingly bell-like, at the end.

A personal favourite was Tavener's Two Hymns to the Mother of God (1985). The texture felt three-dimensional: continuous shimmering chords in the inner voices (again pitched to perfection) seemed like a current of warm air suspending melodies in the soprano and bass lines.

Clive O'Connnell, The Age, August 7, 2007

... AT THE latest Ensemble Gombert recital, director John O'Donnell divided his program into two discrete halves, both consisting of English church music.

The first dealt with three Tudor composers, including William Mundy's ornate motet Vox Patris caelestis and the Euge bone mass by Christopher Tye. These works, with Taverner's Dum transisset Sabbatum, exemplify the Gomberts' normal playing field and once again they showed the haunting gravity of their communal timbre.

While the sopranos retain their penetrating clarity, this occasion demonstrated the high quality in the male ranks, with Peter Campbell and Tim van Nooten's confident tenors balancing the impressive stateliness of Jerzy Kozlowski's bass.

The group then took a 350-year leap forward to the 1919 Magnificat by Stanford for double choir, which sounded most persuasive in its Bach-indebted opening and closing strophes, if somehow underpowered in the central segments. O'Donnell also led his forces in Vaughan Williams' Three Shakespeare Songs and the Five Flower Songs by Benjamin Britten.

Concluding the night with a living composer, the ensemble sang Two Hymns to the Mother of God written in 1985 by John Tavener. This wound up a long journey from the assertive certainty of the first great school of British music to the unexpected Orthodox strain assumed by the country's leading religious music exponent.