Choir graduates with excellence

Terence Maskell's Graduate Choir have been singing away some cobwebs in English choral circles, where they have been guest choir at the annual conference of the Association of British Choral Directors.

English conductor Janet Lince described them as "a wake-up call for the choral world" there, and the New Zealanders have had standing ovations at Guildford Cathedral and Exeter College, taking the haka to venues which usually resound to the tones of Tallis and Byrd.

The choir's first album takes its title from Finzi's My spirit sang all Day and I certainly could have listened happily for much longer than the 52 minutes of this CD.

The Graduates have always amazed with the diversity of their music, and the delicate sighs of Debussy's Dieu! Quil la fait bon regarder are worlds away from the infectious jollity of two Samoan folk songs arranged by Christopher Marshall.

Conductor Terence Maskell is a magician. He knows how to focus his singers on a single line, catching just the right light, shade and nuance.

It is impressive enough to make one forget the kitschy piano behind John Rutter's Afton Water and Down by the Salley Gardens.

The New Zealand composer is acknowledged with Richard Madden's rousing He is risen and Katherine Dienes' fervent Ave verum corpus, which positively glows in the acoustics of St Michael's, Remuera.

As with all the tracks on the album, they have been lovingly mastered by Wayne Laird.

If the polyphonic wall of Pearsall's Lay a garland doesn't always seem quite as solid as I have heard it in concert, Bruckner's mighty Locus iste is architectonic in its magnificence.

Two gospel numbers are standouts. City called heaven has the choir surging sympathetically behind soloist Maugapaia Ropeti-lupelli, and the swagger and swing of Ain-a that good news shows what an asset a solid Polynesian bass and tenor section is to a choir.

The Graduate Choir is much more than what you can hear on this CD. It is in the concert hall that you will see the almost symbiotic relationship and aroha between Maskell and his singers.

But as a souvenir of one of their inspirational concerts, it could not be bettered.

* The Graduate Choir, My spirit sang all Day (Atoll ACD 105)