Canberra Youth Orchestra
Canberra Children's Choir
Conducted by Rowan Harvey-Martin
Llewellyn Hall Saturday 17 November 2012
Reviewed by Len Power
The Llewellyn Choir’s concert program on Saturday night
provided such a diverse range of music that there must have been something for
everybody.
Musical director of the choir and the concert’s conductor,
Rowan Harvey-Martin, brought together not only the choir, but also the Canberra
Youth orchestra and the Canberra Children’s Choir.
Commencing with Purcell’s ‘The Music For The Funeral of
Queen Mary’, the brass players were placed strategically in the aisles of the
Llewellyn Hall. As they moved towards
the stage, you could imagine this glorious music accompanying a funeral
procession. The combination of voices
and instruments in this sombre work was quite moving.
Short works by de Victoria, Palestrina and Monteverdi
followed. All were played and sung with
feeling and precision. The haunting
Monteverdi work, ‘Beatus Vir’, sung by the dozen voices that made up the Semi-Choir,
was particularly appealing and very well sung.
The Canberra Children’s Choir followed with five delightful
works, of which ’The Moon’ by Andy Beck and ‘Chantez Alleluia’ were standouts.
Alexander Borodin’s ‘Polovetsian Dances’ from ‘Prince Igor’
demonstrated the full power of the orchestra and singers together, as did
Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms’. The
concert concluded with selections from Carl Orff’s ever-popular ‘Carmina
Burana’. The finale, ‘O Fortuna’, almost
lifted the roof off the hall.
As an encore, we were given Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Suite From
“West Side Story”’, concluding with a rousing excerpt from the song, ‘America’,
which we were invited to join in and sing with the choir.
The concert was a delight from start to finish. There was a good mix of familiar and
unfamiliar works. The conductor, Rowan
Harvey-Martin, obtained excellent results from the musicians and singers and
even provided a joke or two at her own expense.
Everyone involved should be congratulated on providing a memorable
evening of sublime music.
Originally broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Dress Circle’ program
on Sunday 18 November 2012
