Norine burgess biography channel

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Norine Burgess, sopranos.

Some information may no longer be current. The Talisker Players chamber ensemble, formed from the core of the Talisker Players Choral Music Orchestra, dedicates itself to presenting savoury programs of rich but seldom-performed works for singer and instruments. Its vocal guest Tuesday and Wednesday of this week was the remarkable Canadian mezzo-soprano Norine Burgess.

Burgess possesses a bright, steady, focused voice of pleasing timbre, and her sound and delivery were effectively varied to accommodate the three splendid but very different works we heard: R. Murray Schafer's Minnelieder , for voice and woodwind quintet ; Luciano Berio's Folk Songs , for voice, flute, clarinet, viola, cello, harp and percussion ; and a new work commissioned by the Talisker Players, Alexander Rapoport's The Song of Henry Pyne for voice, flute, viola, bassoon and harp , having its premiere.

Schafer has called his Minnelieder "the first work [of mine]that I would regard as a useful contribution to music," and his continuing regard is borne out by the superb recording of his orchestral version, with the wonderful mezzo-soprano Eleanor James. But the work is certainly one that yields fresh experiences every time we hear it. In its original chamber form played on Wednesday, Burgess and the Talisker group found both clarity and many dimensions in the 13 love songs in medieval German,.

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Intense emotions are crowded in these dense and potent vocal utterances, so fiercely contained within the spare fabric of Schafer's poignant instrumentation. Rapoport's suave new work came next, delivered in two parts, one before and one after the intermission. The work unfolds in four sections. In the first, the singer speaks without singing in the person of Pyne's beloved, Bess, refusing his proposal of marriage and sending him away for a year to discover and resist the corrupting charms of the siren Sybil.

In the second section, Sybil, after seducing him, sings to Pyne what she thinks of him not much and sends him off with a flea in his ear to "return to thy God and thy guilt" and to do penance guided by the Abbess at Minster. In the third section, the Abbess analyses Pyne's weaknesses ruthlessly and sends him back to his honest Bess.

In the fourth, Bess reacts to the humbled Pyne, first in a tart and humorous unsung speech, then in a grand, humane song. Rapoport's music, for all his Wagner worship, is attractively his own, much more succinct than Wagner, scored with both sweetness and vigour and with some particularly memorable effects from the viola and harp.