The New Zealand National Youth Choir brings to Salt Lake City certain refreshing qualities that are increasingly hard to find among America's street-wise and television-immersed youth.
That these hand-picked musicians ages 16-24 sing from the heart is apparent from their intent and expressive faces. Under their excellent conductor, Karen Grylls, the choir has developed a tone that is clean and clear, simple and sweet, rounded and full, yet somehow a little naive and unadulterated by artificiality.It's the sort of tone you want and expect to hear from this intriguing land down under, mellowed by a certain island mystery, warmth and gentleness. But youthful as they are, these singers proved capable of every technical challenge that their varied, unhackneyed program presented.
Saturday's program began with a traditional Maori challenge, the singing of both countries' anthems, and reading of a greeting from Mayor Dee Dee Corradini, declaring Saturday New Zealand National Youth Choir Day in Salt Lake City. The Youth Choir will appear on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast this morning, beginning at 9:30 a.m. on KSL-Ch. 5.
The choir, 1992 winner of the youth division of the "Let The Peoples Sing" competition, sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union, is about midway in a five-weeks' tour of Canada and the United States, which began with participation in the World Choral Symposium in Vancouver, B.C.
For those who hold a nostalgic Shangri La fixation for New Zealand, the program featured a gratifying amount of Maori and other island music, including the rhythmic "Kua Rongo," in which the singers welcomed the audience, and the tender lullaby, "Hine e Hine." Also in evidence were several worthy New Zealand composers.
Hence the singers opened their program with two settings of the Beata Virgo, created almost four centuries apart. The first, by Auckland composer David Griffiths, was dissonant and challenging with its tone clusters, but somehow suitable to the celebration of the Virgin Mary. Well designed to show the choir's versatility and expertise was the polyphonic setting by Vincenzo Ugolini for three choirs, handled with a balance of authority and musicality.
How many have heard of Georg Schumann? Not as many as should have, judging from his three programmed motets, which are far closer in spirit to 19th century Robert of the same name than to modern composer William Schuman. Most notable of these conventional, dignified anthems was the gentle, joyous "Es ist ein koestliches Ding" (It is a wondrous thing).
Sufficiently contrasting was a series of four motets by Durufle, including the familiar "`Ubi caritas" and the granitic "Tu es Petrus." An extended anthem by Mendelssohn, "Warum toben die Heiden" (Why do the heathen rage), highlighted some of the choir's ingratiating talents - a youthful fresh sound, flexibility, and ability to cast a certain luminous sheen over its music.
However, if a fault may be found, the program was long on sacred works. It needed more such lively secular as those at the end - selections from "Landscapes" by Griffiths with poems by Brasch, which graphically celebrated the scenic nature of New Zealand, and some appealing little songs from a cycle, "Childhood," by Jenny McLeod, another native composer.
Turning to American folklore, the choir did well by the spiritual "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel," and sensitively interpreted the spirit and nature of "Shenandoah" in a good arrangement.