Peter Sculthorpe told an interviewer 20 years ago: “The way the world is going, we need all the Requiems we can get.” Sydney Chamber Choir’s former Music Director Paul Stanhope took this very much to heart when he composed his new 45-minute Requiem which featured as the centrepiece of the choir’s 50th anniversary gala concert earlier this year.
It was written before the pandemic hit and was first performed in 2021. This album, conducted by Stanhope’s successor Sam Allchurch, was recorded the year after. It is scored for solo soprano and tenor and choir with an instrumental quintet – harp, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, horn and percussion – and, like Mozart’s Requiem, is aimed at the concert hall rather than the church. Stanhope draws on the works of four female poets – Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Neela Nath Das, Mary Elizabeth Frye and Emily Dickinson – as well as fragments from the Latin Mass, for its nine movements.
The choir is in wonderful voice and the two soloists both shine brightly, Chloe Lankshear’s pure soprano soaring magnificently in the deeply affecting Tree Grave, a setting of an Oodgeroo Noonuccal poem about an Indigenous funeral procession. Richard Butler’s sweet light tenor is perfect for the same poet’s challenging song of grief, while Sanctus – Stanhope’s tribute to his SCC predecessor Richard Gill – makes for a joyful change of pace.
The chant-like Agnus Dei, coupled with Mary Elizabeth Frye’s Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep, is a stunning highlight, as is Euan Harvey’s weeping horn solo in the Dawn Wail for the Dead.
Composer: Paul Stanhope
Work: Requiem
Performers: Chloe Lankshear s, Richard Butler t, Sydney Chamber Choir/Sam Allchurch
Label: ABC Classic ABCL0119
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