The Song Company’s guest Program Director Huw Belling assembled an extraordinary program examining different composers’ conceptualisations of three familiar creative inspirations: songs built on the basic major scale; how the spiritual dimension – religious, secular and mystical – is expressed; and, the immutability of musical forms at the apex of classical traditions (through a study of J S Bach – or was it?).  

Frankly, the logic of the program became less important as the concert progressed, despite Belling’s entertaining narration between brackets. And that was because of its sheer brilliance and musicality in the hands of these masters of technique and interpretation. This was first-class ensemble singing, despite the very challenging repertoire, executed with a quiet confidence and attention to detail.  

Huw Belling introduces The Song Company’s Pairings & Odd Couples. Photo © Peter Hislop

The first four songs were a wildly contrasting progression (by Guido D’Arrezo, Orlando di Lassus, Arvo Pärt and Irish composer Gerald Barry), all demonstrating the use of the C-Major scale as spine and anchoring theme. The six singers were immediately in their element, with tone, balance and dynamic expression all stunningly good. Watching each other as if in conversation, lead lines were passed in effortless, unfussy relay.  

Barry’s Long Time is a prose meditation on sleep and wakefulness, examining the impressions we receive from each of our senses. Words are spoken in rapid-fire lines up and down the scale, and then crossing each other. The scales modulate to melodic and harmonic minor, and then shake their bonds altogether to become clashing and discordant, finishing with fiendishly high notes for the sopranos and a soft whistled final note. The work is almost unkind in its level of difficulty, but these vocalists shrugged it off. 

Pärt’s Solfeggio was more relaxed, but similarly employed long-sounded notes, building and clashing, moving to more difficult intervals and chords as the work progressed.

The Song Company: Pairings and Odd Couples. Photo © Peter Hislop

Moving to the ‘spiritual’ theme, Pärt’s Magnificat has an early music feel to begin, with simple repeated notes and harmonies not departing much from an anchor note (which felt like the drone of a hurdy-gurdy).  Becoming gradually more complex, voices headed off into polyphony, carrying off some magical discordant moments and a very challenging final chord. Roxanna Panufnik’s short Nunc Dimittis was a more recognisable, but modern expression of a liturgical classic.  

The pairing of Australian Mary Finsterer’s wrenching Omaggio alla Pietà (commissioned by The Song Company in 1999, here featuring percussionist Niki Johnson on drums and synthesised tubular bells) and her teacher Louis Andriessen’s calmer Ahania Weeping, was also fascinating in the stylistic similarities and differences exposed.  

The Song Company and Niki Johnson (percussion): Pairings and Odd Couples. Photo © Peter Hislop

The final two brackets brought different moods again, with an energetic and loose Spanish style in Mateo Flecha’s El Fuego (the fire) driven forward by Johnson on subtle tambourine and then snare drum, followed by Belling’s own Fuego Y Agua (fire and water) in its world premiere performance – surely the highlight of the program. Belling’s fascinating tuning changes, a pleading, raw and impassioned alto lead vocal line from Jessica O’Donoghue, and closely written polyphonic lines made the six singers sound like a much larger ensemble.

Not everything by J S Bach is magnificent, and BWV 230 Lobet den Herrn is standing proof. Or it’s an indication that it isn’t by Bach, but one of his sons or mimics. Perhaps Belling didn’t feel too intimidated writing this pairing (and second premiere work of the program), Partita Fragment: a mischievous take on Bach in Swingle Singers style.               

The Song Company performs Pairings and Odd Couples in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
20 September (2pm and 7pm) and at Blackheath Uniting Church, 21 September (2.30pm)