Salut Printemps: A Recital celebrating Spring with the members of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir on Tour, conducted by Karen Grylls with Pianist Rachel Fuller and Narrator Catrin Johnsson

Abstract

Voices NZ Chamber Choir is delighted to present Salut Printemps! a concert welcoming Spring, which brings the beauty of trembling flowers, the fresh green growth, the animals awakening, the enchanting evenings, and the season of youth, love and light. (The recital was first presented in October 2016 in Auckland.) We begin with Debussy’s Salut Printemps for women’s choir written in 1882 with its vibrant outburst of the joy of Spring. “Greetings to you, Spring, season of youth... the bubbling sap rises, breaking its bands.” In direct contrast, Belgian composer Jean Absil’s collection of animals brings the dromedary, the crayfish, the carp and the cat into our choral bestiary. These wonderful a cappella settings of texts by Guillaume Apollinaire will be heard for the first time in NZ. The tambourine calls us to the Northern Hemisphere Spring in May in the second of Debussy’s Trois Chansons and in the last piece, he calls Winter, a villain! Written in 1898 and 1908, these settings are a masterpiece of early the 20th century chanson. At the centre of the programme are the three settings by Lili Boulanger, the lesser known sister of Nadia Boulanger, who won the Prix de Rome in 1913 These settings are Les Sirènes, Hymne au Soleil and Soir sur le Plaine, written during Lili’s years of apprenticeship as a composer. Les Sirènes sets a text by Charles Grandmougin, the beauty that charms the strongest; Hymne au Soleil invokes us to celebrate the rebirth of the sun every day and in Soir sur le Plaine, a magnificent setting of Albert Victor Samain’s text, we see the golden sky in the West, as the sun sinks beneath the horizon and the heart’s voice stops for the day. These works are at best are scintillating and alluring. Two works, Petites Voix for women’s choir and the Prayers of St. Francis, patron saint of animals for men’s choir, bring us a wonderful French colour and harmonic inflexion, which at once identifies Poulenc’s musical language. We are delighted to welcome the boys from Choralation who will join our tenors and basses in this performance. We conclude with some French Canadian repertoire. Mark Sirett’s delicate and haunting setting Ce Beau Printemps, a song that celebrates the coming of Spring and young love. Patriquin’s lively song sets a French text that is a game of rhymes and has a teasing sense of call and answer. The “tique tique tacque,” the sound of the mill, is essentially nonsense yet evocative. Most importantly, it is with the greatest pleasure we perform this recital with accompanist, Rachel Fuller, recently arrived from London. Rachel is known for her remarkable sense of orchestral colour and interpretation as the recitals have demonstrated. Boulanger together.