Brisbane Chamber Choir, 26/07/2009

Sarah Collins writes:

“The world premiere of Paul-Antoni Bonetti’s Requiem Lux Aeterna occupied the majority of the second half of the program. Opening with a static unison E in the strings and the requisite expectation of a sombre first section, the music quickly slides upwards to an A major chord and follows on with some entirely surprising and beautiful string quartet writing. Bonetti achieves a feeling of momentum, though one underpinned by an uneasy stasis, by such techniques as maintaining the underlying E minor tonality while luminescent shifts continue to occur over the top, and by extending a single note beyond the life of a given cadence (similar in a way to Leek’s technique above, though seemingly for a different purpose) to operate as a linking device to a more complex gesture. This latter technique has the effect of continuously thwarting expectation as dense textures of detailed writing are constantly interchanged with static simple textures which allude to the plainsong basis of the work. In the cathedral, the impact of this interchange was really rather surprising – the aural persistence of the simpler sections seemed to become tangibly disturbed by the entrance of complexities (an effect which was heard in passing in the Pärt and fully realised in Bonetti’s work). The listener had the impression, from the concert notes, that Bonetti was to attempt a harmonic re-contextualisation of the plainsong melody, and with the inclusion of instruments such as mallet-synthesiser and electric bass guitar, it seemed clear that some type of fusion of old and new was to be presented. In the final product, however, the integration of these disparate elements was complete – each timbre was used only as far as necessary and never for anything other than the conscious and deliberate intention of the composer. The close of the work was no less unexpected with the chorus forcefully concluding on an inconclusive, interrupted cadence, after which the strings quietly sounded the final resolution, achieving an effect rather like the extra harmony one sometimes hears from the pipes of an organ for a moment after the keys are released.”

for the complete article, please see

http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/brisbane-chamber-choir