Gold
Australian Chamber Choir
Move Records MCD 660
Three stars
By Michael Morton-Evans
There’s no doubt whatsoever that the members of the Australian Chamber Choir are great singers, but listening to their recent release, Gold, I just wish they were a little more adventurous. Gold showcases the work of eight different Australian composers, ranging from Luke Speedy-Hutton to Sir Malcom Williamson, all of whom, apart from Williamson, are vaguely similar. The music tends to start pianissimo, usually with the sopranos, builds ever so slightly and then dies off again. The text for two pieces by Luke Speedy-Hutton particularly caught my notice as they were written by that most brilliant of Welsh poets, Dylan Thomas. Thomas, as the ACC describe him in the booklet that helpfully accompanies the CD, was a wild and brawling Welshman who burned through his life. I’m not sure where Luke Hutton added the ‘Speedy’ to his surname, but if ever there was a poet who deserved more speed, surely it was Dylan Thomas. Like the rest of the pieces on offer, the two sections of ‘Fern Hill’ were largely quiet, measured and not that exciting. As standalone works each piece is beautifully executed. But to my mind the collection fails by being too one-track. It’s not until we get to the very last track, Sir Malcolm Williamson’s witty piece ‘The Quacks’, from his collection English Eccentrics that we get a bit of liveliness, and then it’s only 63 seconds long!