Sunday December 3
SOUTHERN CANTATA
St. John’s Bach Choir and Orchestra
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Southgate at 9 am.
To celebrate 500 years since Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, and to mark 20 years since the Bach cantata program started in Southgate, St. John’s has commissioned a new work from Sydney composer Andrew Schultz to a text by Melbourne poet Katherine Firth. This four-movement construct will be performed, as have a slew of Bach cantatas over the past two decades, at the centre of the Sunday 9 am service in St. John’s. Southern Cantata is scored for two soloists, chorus and period instrument orchestra, all conducted by Graham Lieschke, and, in a compositional device familiar from Bach’s 200-plus examples, Schultz’s score incorporates a chorale; in this case, Luther’s own Advent melody, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.
Sunday December 3
BACH’S CHRISTMAS ORATORIO
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 2:30 pm
Four years ago, the ACO and an imported Choir of London with a wealth of top-notch soloists presented this collation of six seasonal cantatas to excellent effect in this same venue, rounding out 2013 with a bang. Here is a revisiting, even down to having the same Evangelist-tenor, Nicholas Mulroy, who impressed mightily in those years of benevolent reception before the flowering of local talent in Andrew Goodwin and the Thomson brothers, Daniel and Matthew – remarkable and reliable Bach exponents all. You live in high expectation that Richard Tognetti and his musicians will bring off something like the same joyous experience tonight. Whatever happens, you can always relish the delights of the first two elements in the sequence: Jauchzet, frohlocket and Und es waren Hirten, both of which encapsulate my Christmas ideal more than any other music.
This program will be repeated on Monday December 4 at 6:30 pm.
Monday December 4
Paul Lewis
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm
Not one to sidestep obsessions, British pianist Paul Lewis has found a set of new foci for investigation. In this typically chaste program, he confines himself to a brace of Haydn sonatas, the late Six Bagatelles Op. 126 by Beethoven, and the just-as-late Six Pieces Op. 118 of Brahms. Even the Haydn works feature fairly late in the composer’s output in this form: the last of the G majors, Hob. XVI. 40 from 1784, and the third-last of the lot in C Major Hob. XVI: 50 which dates from 1794. Although this composer has enjoyed something of a resurgence in the past decade, he is still an irregular recital presence. Not so with the Beethoven block which are unique in their intimate starkness. And the Brahms collection of four intermezzi, a ballade and romanze are often heard as single items, not so often en masse.
Saturday December 9
NOEL! NOEL!
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre at 5 pm and 7:30 pm
Pail Dyer and his spirited players begin their Christmas celebrations in the Murdoch Hall with another program of odds and sods. You’ve got the Brandenburg Choir leading the way with some seasonal regulars – Deck the Halls, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, O Come, All Ye Faithful – as well as works by Palestrina, Gibbons, Rutter and Faure. The night displays a young talent in tenor Joel Parnis, fresh from Sydney’s My Fair Lady production, who has been entrusted with Bring Him Home from Les Miserables – that Christmas-centric musical – O Holy Night, Irving Berlin’s tooth-numbingly saccharine White Christmas, Silent Night, Once in Royal David’s City and an updated Twelve Days of Christmas. And from the slips comes a choral piece out of the first of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films: My Love Is Always Here by Alexandre Desplat. It’s all unabashed populism, just like Carols by Candlelight but without the inbuilt ads.
Saturday December 9
HANDEL’S MESSIAH
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 7 pm
Anything new here? Conductor for the performances is Rinaldo Alessandrini, a Baroque keyboard authority; perhaps he’ll direct this performance from a harpsichord or chamber organ . . . we can but hope. His soloists include soprano Sara Macliver and mezzo Joslyn Rechter, both well-known Australian-born singers. The male principals are British tenor Ed Lyon and Catania-born bass Salvo Vitale who boasts a wealth of Baroque opera experience. The MSO Chorus could probably sing this score in their sleep and the orchestra will hardly be pressed, although Alessandrini will certainly have an individual take on how to tackle this venerable masterpiece that has almost a third of its content either directly or laterally relevant to the Christmas season.
This program will be repeated on Sunday December 10 at 5 pm.
Saturday December 9
CHRISTMAS TO CANDLEMAS: AROUND 1600
Ensemble Gombert
Xavier College Chapel at 8 pm
Once again, John O’Donnell and his formidable choir are presenting a programs of Renaissance glories for the season, in collaboration with Danny Lucin’s La Compania of period instruments. The night opens with two settings of Resonet in laudibus: the 7-voice one by Praetorius and Lassus’ 5-voice version, both seeming to share a common opening shape of a falling common chord. Andrea Gabrieli is represented by a Hodie Christus natus est but his nephew Andrea bears the burden of much of the night’s music-making: two glorious canzone – a primi toni and a duodecimi toni – as well as O magnum mysterium for double choir and the night’s concluding Nunc dimittis in 14 parts from the Sacrae symphoniae. Lassus reappears with his creamy-rich Omnes de Saba and Adorna thalamum, the latter quite unknown to me. And O’Donnell includes a moving early four-part motet by Victoria in Senex puerum portabat. The combination of this choral body and the cornetti, sackbuts and dulcians of the Renaissance band – from past experience – is both impressive and moving.
Saturday December 16
MSO CHRISTMAS
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm
This is a celebration with definite Christmas elements and other parts that can be stretched to fit the framework; a more well-judged operating principle of supplying something for everyone than underpins the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Noel! Noel! program above (see Saturday December 9). The main point of difference is that this one-off night sticks to its last pretty much throughout. Guest conductor Christopher Seaman begins with some seasonal arcana: the Polonaise from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Christmas Eve in which the MSO Chorus should play a major role. Some extracts from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel follow: the Prelude and the Dream Pantomime where the moving Abendsegen is given luxurious post-Wagnerian treatment. Naturally, the MSO will play some scraps from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, the MSO Chorus returning for the opening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio – that bouncy sample of triumphant Christianity, Jauchzet, frohlocket – juxtaposed with Berlioz’s chromatic pastorale, the Shepherds’ Farewell from L’enfance du Christ. Not wasting last week’s work, Messiah extracts follow (I’d guess the Nativity section, Scene 4 from Part the First, but will the organizers be able to resist a Hallelujah! reprise?), the night ending in O Come, All Ye Faithful
Sunday December 17
A MIGHTY WONDER: CHRISTMAS WITH THE AUSTRALIAN BOYS CHOIR
Melbourne Recital Centre at 3 pm
This year’s concert from Noel Ancell’s choirs – the ABC itself, its graduate-enfolding Vocal Consort, and its tyro singers – is based around the chant O magnum mysterium although I don’t think the young musicians will be demonstrating their prowess with the Andrea Gabrieli construct featured in the Ensemble Gombert program of a week previous (see Saturday December 9 above). We are promised settings by Byrd, Victoria, Poulenc and Norwegian/American Ola Gjeilo’s slow-moving Scandi-mystic version with an obbligato cello line; don’t know why I’m being sniffy about the Gombert’s Gabrieli as this one splits into 11 vocal parts at two stages. And, of course, there will be lacunae for mass participation when the ABC parents show with unbridled gusto the origin of their sons’ lung power.
O'Connell the Music 