Recordings
SNAPSHOTS - The Viva Voce album
This second CD from Viva Voce was released in December 2001. You can listen to tracks from this CD using the music player displayed on our web site.
"... Nevertheless, our "Snapshots" programme in mid-2001 [, a] millennium-inspired retrospective of Viva Voce's work to date, ... was almost the antithesis of a theme concert, picking as it did unrelated numbers - choir favourites, or pieces that had some significance for us - from disparate performances across a decade and a half. ... [B]ecause the only criterion was what a particular song meant to the choir, this may seem a curious collection and an even more quirky order, but then juxtaposing works of very different hue is something of a VV trademark. And we'd still be happy to sing them all again in the future."
Track listing:
- Also Sprach Zarathustra, R Strauss arr Mark Rosser
- Matona mia cara, Claudio Monteverdi
- Si ch'io vorrei morire, Claudio Monteverdi
- Timepiece, David Hamilton
- The cloud-capp'd towers, Ralph Vaughan Williams
- L'homme armé, Robert Morton
- Though Amaryllis dance, William Byrd
- Dieu, qu'il la fait, Claude Débussy
- I hold your hand in mine, Lehrer arr Christopher Marshall
- Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, Glover-Kind arr Andrew Carter
- To be Sung on the Water, Samuel Barber
- The Lover's Ghost, trad arr Ralph Vaughan Williams
- I'm a train, Hammond/Hazelwood arr Peter Knight
- Great god of love, Robert de Pearsall
- Agnus Dei, Samuel Barber
- Three Spirituals, David Hamilton
- There is sweet music, Edward Elgar
From our musical director John Rosser
Making a CD of Viva Voce is for me like having a tooth pulled! Not that the choir members haven't asked (begged/badgered/bullied) me to agree to one often enough over the ten years since our first - and only other - recording; but the prospect has always terrified me. My worry isn't the planning or the preparation or even the musical result, it's the programme. And not so much what should go in the programme, but the fact that no recorded collection of songs by the choir can ever fully re-create the experience of a typical Viva Voce concert.
In our (fairly sweet) sixteen years of concert-giving, we've tried hard to push the boundaries of the traditional choral recital. The chamber choir repertoire, unlike that of choral societies or orchestras, is made up largely of short works, miniature gems that are often highly polished but need to be grouped with others to make much of an impression. Now, where most choirs will string together pieces of similar style or period, Viva Voce's solution has been (working the metaphor a little harder) to fashion a whole necklace - in other words, to choose each and every song around a single theme. That in itself can be portrayed on a sound recording. However, we then like to explain each concert item and link it to the theme with spoken, often light-hearted commentary, an approach our audiences respond very well to but which would soon pall on repeated playings of the CD!
What's more, we are a visual choir. That doesn't just mean we wear pretty uniforms (though we do), but that we also use interesting lighting and stage design, that we like to vary our stage positions to suit the piece, that we rarely stand in lines or rows, and that we - occasionally - even move during a song if the mood takes us. None of that shows up well on a CD.
Nevertheless, our "Snapshots" programme in mid-2001 did at least offer a less painful recording possibility. A millennium-inspired retrospective of Viva Voce's work to date, this was almost the antithesis of a theme concert, picking as it did unrelated numbers - choir favourites, or pieces that had some significance for us - from disparate performances across a decade and a half. A month after the concerts, then, we recorded these 22 songs over a total of twelve hours in Auckland's old television studios and set about writing the booklet notes, to substitute for what we might say about the pieces in recital. Naturally, because the only criterion was what a particular song meant to the choir, this may seem a curious collection and an even more quirky order, but then juxtaposing works of very different hue is something of a VV trademark. And we'd still be happy to sing them all again in the future.
So here it is: a Viva Voce programme without the lights, the razzmatazz and the jokes. Enjoy it anyway!
John Rosser
Musical Director