The first act of the Taipei International Choral Festival was the Xinxiang Bunnun Children's Choir, which performed four short Aboriginal-themed pieces to open for Rajaton, a six-member Finnish acapella group at last week's opening concert.
While the Xinxiang choir artificially oversold the Aboriginal aspect of some of its songs and there were one or two sour notes, the children's choir really was moving.
After seeing a small army of young Taiwanese boys in traditional Aboriginal clothing shuffling bashfully off the stage, the six Scandinavians in suits and gowns looked larger than life.
Rajaton had the audience eating out of the palms of its hands from the outset. In the end, the group was called back for two encores by a crowd that seemed ready to riot.
Rajaton started with nine Irish and Finnish folk songs, which they carried off with a poppish, Loreena McKennitt-like sensibility, using their voices to imitate pseudo-mystical sound effects that are usually left to sound technicians.
CKS station was swarming with people on Saturday evening, most of them headed to Totally Board, but a fair number, dressed slightly more conservatively, on their way to the choral festival's seventh concert in the National Concert Hall.
The featured group was the Winnipeg Singers, with the Formosa Singers as the opening act.
As everyone settled into their seats, an announcer informed us of a switch in the program: the Winnipeg Singers would be doing the first set, followed by the Formosa singers' set, and then Winnipeg again after the intermission.
This might have been due to a lack of preparation, or it could have been a shrewd act on the part of organizers, who realized that Winnipeg's first set was dull.
The pieces (almost all sacred songs) were clearly chosen to show off the professionalism of the choir members and their conductor.
They succeeded in doing this, demonstrating the velvet softness of the bass voices and the choir mem-bers' ability to blend seamlessly, even when the sopranos were singing high notes and the basses were low, and especially when conductor Yuri Klaz brought the volume down to pianissimo.
The songs also succeeded in boring the audience with music too subtle to move a crowd that had just braved the crowds, flashing lights and very loud rock music outside in CKS square.
Thank goodness the Formosa Singers came on before it was too late. With a selection of crowd favorites from their concert a month ago (reviewed in the Taipei Times on Monday, June 27) Taiwan's choral pride and joy got the energy flowing in the concert hall.
Vivacious arrangements of folk and tribal songs from the Hakka, Taiwanese Aboriginal and Japanese traditions were infectious, and even one of the Latin songs they performed, a dramatic and naughty Daemon Irrepit Callidus by Gyorgy Orban, made Winnipeg's sacred selections sound like elevator music.
Fortunately, the Winnipeg Singers were saving their best for last. They reemerged from intermission with a set of far more playful music, inclu-ding several Canadian folk songs.
One highlight was Salish Song, arranged by Derek Healey, whose long, pulsing notes resonated throughout the hall in a way that makes your chest tickle, as the accompanist reached into the guts of the piano to strum across the strings for added effect.
The other highlight was Wasps, by Stephen Chatman, which was a very literal piece. The rhythmic chorus zums, zings, vurrs and so on delighted the audience. The final piece on the program was a medley of folk songs from Canada 's various provinces, and went on a bit too long. The audience, embarrassingly, started to clap before the medley was over.
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