Tag Archives: Rehearsals

Jail Birds

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Voices from Inside

Jonathon Welch, director

ABC Classics 476 3689

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Knowing the circumstances under which this recording was made, it is very difficult to listen to it without being moved. Here is a ‘good news’ story about a choral director with a vision and the determination to make it a reality.

All the singers in this ensemble are convicted criminals who are – or have been – serving sentences. Welch has done wonders with his choristers, not all of whom would have been trained musicians.

There are precedents for this ie in relation to obtaining vocal excellence from singers who might be musically illiterate eg the Eoan Group Opera Company in Cape Town. Through the vision and staying power of Joseph Manca, so called “coloured’ folk, who by virtue of their skin colour were declared non-white (an odious term of the apartheid government then in power) and so barred from entry to the city’s fine opera house, had their day in the sun.

Manca, with a near-saintly dedication to the job (for which he never drew a salary of any kind)  taught each vocal part parrot fashion – in the original Italian – and the results, after scores of piano rehearsals, were astonishingly professional. I can testify to the success of this initiative as I was the piano repetiteur as a very young man. The end result, drawing capacity audiences and adulatory reviews, was extraordinary and the most eloquent of rebuffs to the apartheid czars. In the most moving sense, this was a triumph over adversity.

Much the same could be said of this recording, another instance of a leader with vision and determination – and the whole-hearted co-operation of the singers proving the sceptics wrong. Performances like this don’t fall from the sky. The project would have been a non-starter without the determination and staying power of all concerned, including a co-operative officialdom.

These tracks are impressive; they deserve to be heard by the widest possible audience. It’s a thoroughly commendable offering. Listen to it; it’s heartwarming stuff – and for all the right reasons.

A percentage of royalties from the sale of this recording goes to the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

W.A.Youth Orchestra

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Perth Concert Hall

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

I came to the Concert Hall on Saturday evening wondering to what effect the W.A. Youth Orchestra would engage with Stravinsky’s Rite of  Spring. This is one of the 20th century’s most complex and demanding scores, a work that even the most experienced of fulltime, professional orchestral players needs to approach with caution. It is a score that constantly challenges the players. Its rhythmic complexities are like a musical minefield; there is danger at every turn. And there can be no passengers in a work such as this. Total concentration is essential to avoid this musical enterprise from finishing on the rocks.

 

A one-hundred-strong WAYO (with more than fifty of its players aged 19 years or more) came through this protracted ordeal with banners flying high.

 

Performances like this don’t just happen. There would have been a gruelling preparation for this performance, with the WAYO musicians fronting up to rehearsals that ran from 10am to 4pm from the Monday to the Friday preceding the performance as well as during Saturday morning at the Concert Hall. There would also have had to be intensive preliminary study of the score and dedicated supervision by tutors to come up with a result as meaningful as this.

 

All this investment of time and skill paid handsome musical dividends.

 

Tze Law Chan presided over events, taking his young charges through a reading that most effectively evoked the powerfully atavistic nature of Stravinsky’s barrier-breaking score. Incidentally, at its first performance in Paris, the work (to choreography by Nijinsky) so infuriated the audience that the gendarmes had to be called to cope with the riot and fistfights that broke out in the theatre. Stravinsky was bundled into a hansom cab to distance himself from members of the audience who might have wanted to assault him – or worse.

 

There was also a performance of Beethoven’s Emperor concerto with Thomas Hecht as soloist. Apart from trivialising the keyboard flourishes in the opening moments of this most loved of piano concertos, the presentation was most impressive. Here was a reading that took up an interpretative position at the emotional epicentre of the concerto. Not the least of the pleasures of this account was the extraordinary range of tone colours that Hecht brought to his performance, so bringing freshness to familiar notes.

 

Hecht is blessed with near-infallible fingers; the slowly ascending trills in the slow movement were faultlessly spun. Throughout, wonderfully flexible wrists and an unflagging pace added to the overall impact of the performance. It was a tour de force to which the WAYO players responded with a consistently meaningful accompaniment.