Choral home

I've just travelled and heard Bach's choir and more and on return recorded Wesley's Oriana Chorale and I remain dumbfounded at our local quality.  This was really very good.  Oriana Chorale is a local non-professional choir but it performed complex modern works with great authenticity and quality,  The main work was Mass for double choir by Frank Martin (pronounced as in French) and it was complex with its eight parts (SSAATTBB, I guess) with dissonant harmonies and odd intervals and there were times the entrances were a bit unsteady in some parts but there were also times, far more frequent, that the voices just rang with those odd harmonies and questioning dissonances and high sopranos and melding lower and mid parts and the beauty was quintessential.  That was eight parts and complex, but the simpler four parts could be similarly challenging if not so dense and the performance equally enthralling.  Brooke Shelley Nativity, a modern work out of Sydney, and Poulenc Found motets for Noel were thus and even the shorter C16th madrigal by Madalena Casulana were similarly adventurous, with rich inventiveness of chromaticism and conterpoint.  They were all musics pretty new to me and all performed with seriousness and dedication and mature awareness for a devouring crowd.  I was pretty stunned actually.  There's great music in Europe but we have our fair share, perhaps more than our share here in Canberra.  So I guess the message is be proud and be there. 

Dan Walker (musical director) led Oriana Chorale in a Christmas themed concert called O Magnum Mysterium at Wesley with music by Frank Martin, Poulenc, Brooke Shelley and Madalena Casulana.