On track: Youth choir towers on wings of song

By WILLIAM DART

It had to happen. Someone has finally put Bill Hammond's anthropomorphous birds on a CD cover - in the hope, perhaps, of alerting a new audience to the latest recording by Tower New Zealand Youth Choir.

Gaude/Rejoice is a souvenir of an inspirational Youth Choir concert in Otahuhu's Parish Church of St Joseph's in February, extremely welcome at the end of the usual culturally lean Kiwi summer.

On disc, the choir can't quite manage its very theatrical audience-surround tactics, but that's not an issue because this Christchurch recording is so vivid. The fullness of sound reveals the hand of veteran producer Murray Khouri, the man responsible for Trust's recent disc of Farquhar symphonies.

If it was thrilling last year to be encircled by singers during Lotti's Crucifixus, the skin still tingles when you are outside listening in to the piece, as it were. You come away with even more respect for the phrasing and vocal blend that conductor Karen Grylls draws from her choristers.

Francisco Guerrero's Duo Seraphim is mind-blowing when cool harmonies suddenly shift to vast choral walls.

For many, the drawcard will be the Baltic music the choir has made so much its own. Rautavaara's Suite de Lorce is hypnosis in sound and, without the formality of the concert situation, its first song sounds uncannily like a gentle haka.

On the local side, Anna Griffiths' Naseby creates its own special harmonies with James K Baxter's poem.

But some murmurs of discontent need to be voiced.

The men, at their best in the more robust numbers of Elgar's From the Greek Anthology, are submitted to one of the unkindest cuts of all, losing the opening notes of their second song - gross negligence on the part of the production team.

In concert, I had reservations about the last bracket of songs from the light side. On disc, Bob Chilcott's arrangement of Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen seems to have floated in from another world and recording venue, and Albert Mataafa's guitar seems an unnecessary distraction in Wairua Tapu.

* Tower New Zealand Youth Choir, Gaude/Rejoice (Trust records MMT 2048)