★★★★½ Edwards’ Mass of the Dreaming and Haydn’s ‘Nelson’ Mass made a moving pairing.

City Recital Hall
October 1, 2016

A chanting drone from the Sydney Chamber Choir’s bass section opened Ross Edwards’ Mass of the Dreaming: Missa Alchera, conducted by the choir’s Artistic Director Richard Gill. “My religious consciousness is more a Paleolithic one,” Edwards told me in an interview last month. “I can, as we all can, be aware of a force that binds everything together, which is totally mysterious. We’re all participants in a life force that we don’t seem to take much notice of.” This is the life force Edwards is attempting to tap into in Mass of the Dreaming, a work which draws on the Christian tradition, the Aboriginal concept of the Dreaming and Edwards own sense of spirituality and connection with the environment.

Intoned on the word “eleison” the murmuring drone could have been the sound of a didgeridoo or the throat singing of Tibetan Buddhist monks, continuing throughout the movement to support higher parts in a meditative recitation of the Latin mass.

Following the reflective Kyrie, the Gloria was more upbeat, Edwards playing on the accents and rhythmic properties of the name “Jesu Christe”...