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Jenkins creates a surprising chorus

Chris Van Tuinen.

ORATORIO

UWA Choral Society and friends

Winthrop Hall

3.5 stars

Review: Neville Cohn

When encountering a new work by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, expect the unexpected.

On Good Friday last, for instance, in an extraordinary deviation from convention, Jenkins’ setting of the Requiem, incorporated Japanese haiku texts into the work.

On Sunday at Winthrop Hall, there were more surprises as Jenkins’ The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace unfolded to an accompaniment provided by the Royal Agricultural Society of WA Brass, a trio of percussionists and Dominic Perrisinotto at the organ. In its idiosyncratic way, Jenkins’ Mass is as much an anti-war statement as Britten’s War Requiem.

There’s not a dull moment. With Christopher van Tuinen presiding over events with skilled focus, section after section fell intriguingly and often movingly on the ear. It brims with novel ideas, many provided by the band which is trained by the Head of the School of Music at UWA Alan Lourens.

Conventionally, settings of the Sanctus tend to be gentle, serene and uplifting. Not here, though, coming across, as it did, in militaristic terms with implacably thudding drums and piercing brass utterances. Early on, there was the Muslim Call to Prayer by a white-robed Abdul Rachman Hamid.

Despite some strain by choral sopranos at the top of the range, the section marked Charge made for gripping listening. Simulated moans and groans prompted mental images of those dying on the battlefield. Then we heard The Last Post.

Angry Flames, featuring vocal soloists Naomi Johns, Amy Yarham and Andrew Sutherland, was profoundly moving, a meditation on the after-effects of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

A fascinating score included the Kyrie in waltz time – and a setting of Guy Wilson’s achingly forlorn Now the Guns have Stopped.

It is the saddest of ironies that the first CD recording of Jenkins’ Mass was released in 2001 on the day before the horror that was 9/11.