Miserere
The Advertiser, 8th March 2008CARL Crossin and his super–cool Adelaide Chamber Singers took a quantum leap in pursuit of ever–higher standards with their performance of Miserere (1989) by Arvo Pärt.
Six soloists, 20 choristers and a mixed dozen band – no strings, wind, brass, electric guitar and bass, three percussion and organ – gave the packed and perspiring cathedral audience a choral celebration beyond anything in living memory – in Adelaide, and most other places too.
Their tasks were Herculean. Almost all successive notes were separated by silence, allowing the singers no opportunity to develop tone through a continuous line. Yet there was never a hint of unbeauty.
From the first sweet, solitary sounds from tenor Robert Macfarlane, interspersed with single comments from clarinet Mary Waterhouse, followed by soprano Emma Horwood, counter tenor Matthew Rutty, tenor Andrew Linn and basses Thomas Flint and Lachlan Scott sometimes solo, sometimes in ensembles so close that they would have clashed had the pitch been any less precise, we were utterly beguiled.
Fourteen top Cs for Macfarlane, about the same for Horwood. Lasting for 35 minutes, the 20 verses of pleas for mercy for all our sins, enhanced and intensified by the band, never let up on tension and gravity.
All this came after Lamentations for Maundy Thursday (1585) by Tomas Luis de Victoria; the stately legato mourning the decline of Jerusalem was superbly controlled, the voices blending in a rich mix. And for contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan’s Christus Vincit, Emma Horwood floated triumphantly over chord clusters, the choir splitting too many ways to count, and leapt a full ninth to a glorious, climactic Alleluia.
We can wonder and marvel at where all these outstanding voices are coming from. There’s no question about their training and technique. That credit goes to their caring, expert teachers, bless them all.
