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19 October 2010
The Sydney based six member Song Company, which has been around since 1984 and directed by Belgian Roland Peelman since 1990, is an extraordinary group.
Mixing vocal qualities of the highest order with a superb sense of both the dramatic and the comedic, they here turned what could have been merely a high-quality concert into a cohesive dramatic experience.
Each of the singers has a very distinctive vocal quality and under the very individual direction of Peelman, we heard singing that was both precision itself but also singing imbued by the personalities of the singers themselves.
The programme was superbly designed. The first half gave us a journey through the widely spaced polyphony of Byrd and Wilbye, the humour and close harmony of Weelkes and Vautour and the florid richness of Monyeverdi and his madrigals.
It finished with an unusual "entertainment" from the time of censorship in Siena around 1600.
The second half could not have been more different.
Beginning, with imaginative lighting, Sculthorpe's haunting Maranoa Lullbay, the singers moved straight into Jack Body's 1989 Five Lullabies, interspersed with the premiere of a new Body work, Three Dreams and a Nightmare.
With great skill, Body and his characteristic wit and individual sound world managed to seamlessly interface two works composed over 20 years apart.
The concert ended with a Jewish Lullaby, leaving the audience to reflect on a concert experience that revealed some of the most polished singing, and some of the most completely convincing mixing of styles that they would have ever experienced.
No wonder The Song Company is seen as one of Australia's national treasures.