|
‘There are some performances that you know will be etched on your memory forever, such is their intensity and power. EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, a group of young singers conducted by their founder James Weeks, sang Brian Ferneyhough’s 1969 Missa Brevis with thrilling commitment and immediacy, revealing this masterpiece of modernism to be among the great settings of these archetypal texts.’
The Guardian
‘As for [Ferneyhough’s] Missa Brevis (1969), the chamber choir EXAUDI’s superconfident rendering under James Weeks at Orford Church was a bang-smash hit and left me feeling that this wildly uninhibited but cannily calculated work is as much a 1960s icon as Stockhausen’s vocal Stimmung from the previous year.’
The Sunday Times
‘Since their founding in 2002, EXAUDI have boldly gone where no other vocal ensemble has gone before… Under Weeks’ immaculate direction, they appeared so technically assured that they almost risked sounding mechanical, but their polished performance was inflected with a thrilling sense of bravado and immediacy.’
Financial Times
‘EXAUDI’s programme in Orford Church featured stylishly sung Monteverdi and Gesualdo pieces alongside music by their modern Italian successors. James Weeks directed deftly convincing performances of dizzyingly complex works from the last few decades by Castiglioni, Nono and Scelsi.’
The Guardian
‘James Weeks’s small vocal ensemble always appears in capital letters – and for good reason. Theirs is an exceptionally robust, high-fibre way with both plainchant and the music that grew out of it. After relishing the emotional extremes of Gesualdo’s Three Tenebrae Responsories, EXAUDI gave the British première of Salvatore Sciarrino’s compelling take on the dark, pre-Easter service: his Responsorio delle Tenebre… This was vocal experimentation of the highest expressivity: hypersensitised wails and sighs bending the line and providing tortured individual commentary on the formal plainchant verses.’
The Times
|
|
‘The highlight of the evening...an innovative, impressive work, composed by James Weeks with his 'abiding interest in the bleak landscapes of the English coast' in mind.’
Tempo on TIDE
‘Conveying a compositional rigour worthy of Ockeghem, Weeks builds a busy foliage (yet another nod to the flora imagery of the text) of canonical textures out of strikingly simple melodic gestures. Like the earlier man, Weeks directs these abstract procedures towards the expression of an emotional intensity that results both from the obvious pleasure that can be gained from the exercise of the discipline of musical grammar in itself, and from the poetical density that results from the careful shaping of that grammar into complex sonic events. And so it was the case here; the outwardly punctilious technique of composition gave way to fervency in procedure and affect.’
Musicalcriticism.com on Mala punica
‘James Weeks’s The Peckham Harmony was quite unexpected: a primordial stomp, with half a dozen instruments each confined to a single repeated phrase, but cumulatively ecstatic in impact.’
The Times
‘Ravishing. In unfolding an extremely sparse series of rocking intervals between the two instruments it recalled Feldman but – and this seems like an odd thing to say about Feldman’s music – with somehow less stodge.’
Johnson’s Rambler on Wie soll ich meine Seele halten
‘An arresting application of the principles of the medieval Winchester Troper.’
BBC Music Magazine on Sint lumbi
‘Like a realisation of Satie’s musique d’ameublement, just happening to happen...Enchanting.’
The Spectator on The Open Consort
‘James Weeks is a composer with a gift for holding an audience charmed, even enraptured, for an evening. We were a select bunch gathered at the intimate church of St Anne & St Agnes for James Weeks’ self-organised composer portrait, a Selbstbildnis that hardly seemed arrogant but perfectly in keeping with the initiative of this industrious young man: his vocal ensemble EXAUDI is flourishing, and this new group, Kürbis, co-founded with Claudia Molitor, already has two concerts under its belt and more planned.
‘The concert began with brave simplicity: Sophie Appleton’s solo violin performance of First Steps. Within seconds Appleton had so overwhelmed me with the beauty of this subtle piece that I put my reviewers’ notebook down and just enjoyed the music. Appleton’s impeccable technique was not tripped up by Weeks’ mischievously simple “building-blocks” music…
‘…The main half of the concert comprised the hour-long Schilderkonst (“Art of Painting”, after Vermeer’s eponymous painting). One can understand Weeks’ interest in the Dutch Realists of the Seventeenth Century, given his description of them: “calm, contemplative, undemonstrative, optimistic and serene”. Weeks’ music fitted these characteristics perfectly.
‘The first movement throws a lot at the listener: above an aurora of layered sounds in winds, organ and vibes, evoking the church-interiors painted by Saenredam, was a florid duo of guitar and oboe d’amore (exquisitely played by Alan Thomas and Christopher Redgate). The second movement evoked the Low Country, with a string quartet playing disparate fragments with the translucent tone of baroque bows. In the third movement, Weeks himself soloed delicately at the piano before a final brief appearance of the vibes. It takes quite a vision to make a moment of silence the main point of arrival in an hour-long work, but that’s just what Weeks achieved. Gradually the piano playing stops, everything is still, and Holland’s vast sky seems to be stretching above us. Then the piano resumes, and Weeks lets us breathe again. The return of the vibes at the work’s conclusion brought our minds back to the Saenredam church interiors, echoing there in the real church interior of St Anne and St Agnes, as if Weeks were slowly returning us to reality out of the frames of the painting — just as he surely intended.’
New Notes
For more EXAUDI reviews, click here
|
|
