Celebrated Grammy award winning American conductor/composer Eric Whitacre, known globally on YouTube through his virtual choir, made his conducting debut of his own music on Saturday night with the Sydney Philharmonia Symphony Chorus and the youth choir VOX, accompanied by the Synergy Percussion and the Acacia Quartet along with Christopher Cartner on piano and organ.
LIGHT AND GOLD- THE MUSIC OF ERIC WHITACRE proved to be a special night at the Concert Hall. Whitacre was a warm host and he gently introduced each piece, providing some background, in what turned out to be a very strong program.
Whitacre’s love of poetry and his wonderful musical arrangements of poems by E E Cummings, Octavia Paz, Greek poet Pindar, Israeli poetess Hila Plitmann (now his wife), and Charles Anthony Silvestri were highlights.
The piece HIGHER, FASTER, STRONGER, from the Olympic motto- Citrius, Altius, Fortius- composed for the 2012 BBC Proms came across strongly.
The evening ended on a high note with three wonderful pieces- a lovely rendition of COME, SWEET DEATH- music by Bach, conceived by Edwin London-, CLOUDBURST- a piece composed around an extraordinary desert storm that took place, and which featured the very effective technique of the entire Choir snapping their fingers together to simulate the sound of falling rain, and SLEEP, with the music originally set to Robert Frost’s meditative, end of life poem, STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING.
The program will be repeated next Friday at the St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parrammatta, this time however conducted by Elizabeth Scott and Anthony Pasquill. This represents the Sydney Philharmonia Choir’s first ever Western Sydney subscription season.
There will be a further Eric Whitacre Concert to be performed in Melbourne on Saturday 13th April at the Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton.
To explore his Whitacre’s music more visit his official website on http://ericwhitacre.com. And there’s the link to his extraordinary Virtual Choir work- http://www.youtube.com/EricWhitacresVrtlChr.
(c) David Kary