WINDS THAT WHISPER AND ROAR
(1) “WINDS THAT WHISPER” - New Zealand Choral Music from the 20th Century
The New Zealand National Youth Choir
Conductor: Karen Grylls
TRUST Records MMT 2016
(2) “TRANSPORTS DE JOIE” - French Organ Music from Wellington Cathedral
Philip Walsh (organ)
TRUST Records MMT 2014

reviewed 11/99

Two new and very different CDs from Trust Records continue this company’s admirable work on behalf of New Zealand music and musicians. On a disc entitled “Winds that Whisper” the New Zealand National Youth Choir conducted by Karen Grylls performs a programme of 20th Century NZ choral music (Trust MMT 2016), demonstrating the qualities that have enabled the group to win numerous choral competitions and awards world-wide. The other disc is a recital of French organ music played by Philip Walsh at the organ of Wellington Cathedral (Trust MMT 2014). Although English-born, Philip Walsh has come to be regarded as almost an adopted New Zealander through dint of his work with choirs and orchestras in this country over the last decade.

The National Youth Choir has enjoyed considerable success in competitions and festivals throughout the musical world during the 1990s under the guidance and tutorship of its inspired director Karen Grylls. Its advocacy of New Zealand music on this new Trust CD serves to give wider currency to a number of important compositions by local composers, as well as testifying to the choir’s continuing excellence. And while I wouldn’t put every composition on the disc at the same exalted level, it’s good to hear the choir giving as full-blooded approbation to the efforts of young composers like Sam Piper, a 22 year-old member of the choir, as to any of the other works recorded here.

Sam Piper wrote his “Requiem” at the age of seventeen. The “Kyrie”, which is performed here, uses simple means to create sonorous and mesmeric waves of sound. Piper’s less concerned with harmony and rhythm as explorations than as evocations, using repetition to evoke a simple, ritualistic plea for divine mercy. His “Kyrie” works well, especially the telling downward modulation into “Christe eleison”, and the bell-like pealings which follow.

The opening setting of John Ritchie’s “Canary Wine” song-cycle ( five of Ben Jonson’s verses brought together and aptly named by the composer, after a quote from the poet himself) brings an almost inevitable comparison with Britten’s treatment of the same poem “Queene and Huntress” in his “Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings”. Ritchie’s treatment of the words are far less mercurial, and of course without the robustness of Britten’s sharply-etched instrumental contributions - but the setting’s properly mellifluous and appropriately worshipful ( a pity the booklet omits the second verse of the poem). In “So Sweet is She” the delicate modulations in this study of sensuousness mirror the words perfectly, as does the rhythmic energy of the next song “Make Room for the Bouncing Belly”. A more serious note is struck by “Slow, slow, Fresh Fount”, a lament in the face of Time’s ravages, with its gently weeping rhythmic carriage. Finally, there’s “Mens Shadows”, a Jonsonian commentary on the Eternal Feminine, and the opposites which attract, the performance featuring some stunningly executed glissandi and pin-pointed open-harmonied sforzandi, expressing the time-honoured tensions and release-points of sexual interaction.

I’d encountered David Griffiths as a singer before, but not as a composer. His “Lie Deep My Love” song-cycle originally contained three settings of poems by James K.Baxter, of which the second and third are performed on this disc. In “Earth Does at Length” Griffiths varies the choral textures with solo voices, rather like the “concertante” and “ripeno” sections of a baroque concerto, the individual voices permitting themselves some vibrato which adds to the expressive effect. “Blow, wind of fruitfulness” has layered textures imitating waves, ripples, currents and shooting sap which channels everything towards a climactic outburst at the words “Blow on the mouth of morning”, before an epilogue of dying echoes hints at the poet’s suggestion of immortality.

Douglas Mews’ setting of a chant entitled “Lovesong of Rangipouri” contains for me the most powerful and evocative music on the disc. The words are based on a story about a fairy chief, Te Rangipouri, and his wooing of a human woman. Is there some convention of which I’m unaware that precludes the printing in the booklet of the Maori text for this and the other Maori songs? The poetry has amazing expressive range, with sentiments such as “to touch her human skin” drawn out, explored, and, as it were, made flesh. Mews’ adventurous writing uses harmonic textures which fully convey the anguish of unfulfilled desire and separation from a loved one. The use of both English and Maori in the setting enhances our sense of being at one with something that’s both timeless and from long ago. After this, the other, more conventional Polynesian settings, “Hinemoa” and a hymn “Ka Waiata ki a Maria”, sound somewhat anti-climactic, though the choir skilfully realises that open-sounding, almost raw vocal quality that Maori and Pacific Island choirs seem to possess in abundance.

Not only are we denied Maori texts, but accompanying David Hamilton’s setting of Spanish poet Miguel de Unamuno’s verses “The Moon Is Silently Singing” is only an English version of the words in the booklet, for whatever reason. No matter - for this is such incredibly evocative music, the composer could have made do with the words “canta”(singing) and “luna”(moon) and woven his magical sound-tapestries about the double five-part choir vocalises, with two horns (the players unnamed in my booklet) adding the romance of their solo lines to the stratospheric ambience. Hamilton uses vocal pedal points, whispered unisons and glissandi, all of which the choir delivers with the utmost intensity and assurance, as well as bringing off with absolute steadiness some wonderfully written clustered chords towards the end.

As for Jenny McLeod’s “Childhood”, the cycle of poems (also by the composer) take the listener through a child’s day, as experienced from the child’s point of view. Like Mussorgsky’s “Nursery” song-cycle, the collection’s more psychological than pictorial or narrative, very much an adult’s “dropping-in” on the fleeting impressions of the world that a child might receive and distil and try to make sense of. From the arresting rhythmical mixture of “rap” and nature noises that begin the first song, “Cocks crow” through vivid evocations such as “Hear The Great Ocean roll and roar” with its “Full fathom five” whisperings over tolling bells and other sea-sounds, to “Night again” where the child’s brain entertains sleep along with images, impressions and feelings that drift in and out of focus in no particular order, the choir enjoys itself enormously. Nowhere is the skill of singers and conductor more evident than in the wonderfully surreal “Sometimes things just disappear”, the voices forming sounds out of nothing and dissolving all substance as easily and elusively. The cycle concludes with a lullaby, a richly-endowed one harmonically, rather like Delius in “Appalachia” mode, and complete with a hummed “amen” at its conclusion - very satisfying.

Turning to the organ recital disc, one encounters first of all THE Widor Toccata, which admittedly makes for a rousing beginning, and gives a kind of ambient reassurance that all’s going to be well with both performances and recordings. Then, with the Franck Prelude, Fugue et Variation comes a complete contrast of mood, a gentle, oboe-led atmosphere throughout the Prelude, which in turn gives way to a grand statement of fugal intent, whose Variation boasts a magnificently sonorous accompanying pedal point. Philip Walsh’s registrations succeed in capturing that inexplicably “Catholic” atmosphere pervading this composer’s organ music.

From Franck to Messiaen brings another shock, as much musical as aural - having been lulled into a kind of spiritual sonnambulance by the Franck piece, Messiaen’s opening jagged statement may well cause palpitations for the uninitiated! A central section retreats into a kind of echoed remembrance, before the triumphant final section concludes with an upward rush of notes capped by the same jagged rhythmic fragment that began the piece - “transports de joie” indeed! Walsh’s lovely, limpid playing of the Vierne “Berceuse” which follows brings out all the delicacies of the “miniature” high treble section, before the piece slowly gravitates back to the sounds of deep, rich earth. By contrast, the finale of the same composer’s First Organ Symphony is a thrilling toccata-like affair whose rhythmic thrust accomodates the movements gentler moods, but keeps a powerful underlying momentum stoked and primed.

Alain’s “Litanies” have all the insistence, power and vehemence that the human soul requires when making supplication to the deity - at least the piece does in this recording! - while Maurice Durufle’s homage to Alain the composer is expressed in his “Prelude et Fugue sur le nom d’Alain”, which uses a theme based on the younger composer’s name - mercurial music which alternates between half-lit scamperings and illuminated melodic lines before solemnly quoting Alain’s work, and leading to an incredibly complex fugue that makes severe contrapuntal demands on the player.

Needless to say, Philip Walsh meets all of these demands with relish, as he does those of the Saint-Saens, Franck and Langlais pieces which make up the rest of the recital. Of these, the Franck Choral No.3 in A Minor is most impressive, from its agitated, toccata-like opening, through the plaintive, reedy chorale sections leading to the multi-layered textures and improvisatory dealings with the chorale itself, to a final section whose build-up of previously-quoted rhythmic and thematic figures give rise to an amazingly powerful peroration for full organ. Here, player, instrument and recording collaborate to create a frisson of tonal weight and rhythmic power that’s truly satisfying to experience.

The sound on both of these discs seems very good indeed, that on the choral recording particularly so considering that two venues were used. A pity that the excellent presentation of the organ recital disc’s booklet isn’t matched by that of the Youth Choir’s, partly through poor proof-reading (phrases, lines and whole verses of songs omitted, titles and headings placed incorrectly, and names mis-spelled), and partly because of what hasn’t been included, such as the Maori and Spanish texts for the respective items. However, despite these minor drawbacks, people shouldn’t deprive themselves needlessly of the chance to hear such magnificent singing and playing as these two discs offer in abundance