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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
March 16, 2008
Ensemble Laude advertises itself as Western Canada's only all-woman vocal ensemble specialising in medieval repertoire and meeting on alternate Tuesdays. So the comparison class is small (actually I made up the part about alternate Tuesdays).
Comparisons are odious, however. Suffice it to say that Laude has struck a chord with Victoria audiences. The first thing I was told when I arrived for this afternoon's performance was that the ushers had run out of programmes. Fortunately, more were printed and I am able to tell you what I, and the rest of the large audience, heard.
And, believe me, a programme was necessary to keep track of the varied, seldom heard and interesting pieces of music performed. We heard a fair bit of plainchant, a 13th century troubadour lyric by Giraut de Bornelh, dances from the medieval French court, a sequence by Hildegard von Bingen, polyphony by Guillaume de Machaut and Guillaume Dufay (the only composers on the programme with any claim to be household names), an ancient piece of chant from Georgia (the republic of, not the Southern U.S. state), 16th century dances from England and Italy, a monophonic composition by the early 14th century French composer Jehannot de L'Escurel and a couple of Cantigas de Santa Mara from 13th century Spain.
As I noted in my previous review of Ensemble Laude, MacIsaac does wonders with her amateur singers. The choir pays careful attention to varied dynamics and otherwise carefully suits the music to the text. To my mind the highlights included an enchantingly rendered plainchant Sanctus, Shen khar venakhi (the Georgian number), hauntingly beautiful in its limpid simplicity.
Some of the polyphony was, I thought, a little less successful. Dufay's "Ma belle dame souveraine" works better when sung one to a part. The viola da pendola and harp were overwhelmed by the two dozen voices. Dufay's works were designed to be sung by a small number of professional musicians at the court of the Duke of Burgundy. I might have used a subset of the choir for this and similar pieces. (Nine singers were used to perform the motet Veris ad imperia and that worked well.) That said, some of the big ensemble pieces gave the impression of a medieval festival.
Readers of my last review of an Ensemble Laude performance may remember that I was not whole-heartedly enthusiastic about the dancers on that occasion. The phrase "whiff of Monty Python" was employed. I am happy to report that I was much more favourably impressed by the dancers on this occasion. (Not that I could have brought myself to criticise children, who made up the bulk of the dancers.)
The costumes for the medieval dances were, by themselves, enough to win me over: they were truly wonderful. The choreography was playful and pleasing. (The third dance featured a boy juggler and a girl who wanted to disrupt his performance.) The renaissance dances, in the spirit of the comedia dell'arte were, perhaps, a little over the top.
Particular mention should be made of the musicians. Doug Hensley is an amazing multi-instrumentalist - where does he get all of his instruments, only a fraction of which he used on this occasion? More to the point, how can an early music specialist living in Victoria afford all of them? Babak Mehr is a fine percussionist whose work enlivened the proceedings no end. Molly Janz, Marilyn Rummel and Cyler Page all turned in solid performance. The ensemble playing was not always tight to the point of perfection, but I enjoyed the instrumental numbers and the instruments were often the garnish that made the performances so delicious. Hensley composed a striking, stylistically appropriate Introit for the two Cantigas da Santa Maria. He then went on to really wail on the barbat in Cantigas No. 37, Miragres fremosos. I was impressed when Elizabeth MacIsaac put her hand to the (modern, not renaissance) violin in the 16th century dances, displaying yet another facet of her impressive musicianship.
This concert was a tribute to the late Hilary White-Nunn, the founder of Movemento, a former member of Ensemble Laude and the maker of the gorgeous costumes used on this occasion. It is a shame that she could not have been present on this occasion, and a more fitting encomium would be hard to imagine. The number of cities in North America that have the opportunity to see a performance of this sort is vanishingly small.
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