The Armed Man / Nelson Mass

Haydn: "Nelson" Mass (Missa in Angustiis) in D minor, Hob. XXII:11
Karl Jenkins: "The Armed Man" (A Mass for Peace) (Melbourne Premiere)
Sunday 4 October 2009 at 5 PM, Melbourne Town Hall

High resolution flyer: front and back

Conducted by Andrew Wailes

Soloists:
Jacqueline Porter (Soprano)
Sally-Anne Russell (Mezzo-soprano)
Paul McMahon (Tenor)
Christopher Tonkin (Baritone)
Jonathan Bradley (Organ)

Featuring Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Melbourne University Choral Society, Australian Catholic University Choir

Tickets are now available! You can get them by contacting bookings@mucs.aicsa.org.au, 0423 784 182, or any MUCS members. Alternatively, you can book the tickets through Royal Melbourne Philharmonic.

YET again, the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic gave a substantial program to its Sunday patrons. The organisation's artistic director/conductor Andrew Wailes brought in singers from two of his other choirs - the Melbourne University Choral Society and the Australian Catholic University Choir - to swell numbers, initially for Haydn's Nelson Mass; the results were impressive with respect to carrying power and a dynamic vitality emerging from all four vocal strands. An augmented RMP Orchestra also came across with a refreshing power and accuracy of articulation.

Of the four soloists, soprano Jacqueline Porter gave a ringing account of the high tessitura in the work's Kyrie, while mezzo Sally-Ann Russell and tenor Paul McMahon made their marks with less difficulty. Bass Christopher Tonkin seemed under-powered before his careful Qui tollis solo, while Jonathan Bradley's organ support was every so often improbably loud.

The event's main work, Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man - A Mass for Peace, attracted a large audience. It has some fine passages but is packed with cliches. In fact, its most effective moments in this performance came during Jenkins' imaginative setting of Hiroshima victim Toge Sankichi's Angry Flames, and the simple candour of Now the Guns Have Stopped by the work's commissioner, Guy Wilson. Throughout, you come across impressive rhetorical pages alongside superficial effects, but any comparisons drawn with Britten's War Requiem are wide of the mark.

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