Reviews

Extracts from selected reviews:

Coached by music director Mark Dorrell, the Orpheus Choir met the often-fearful demands of the score with fortitude and, given the speeds conductor Marc Taddei called for, accuracy and clarity which verged on the virtuosic.

Lindis Taylor's review of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis

The choirs begin to sing, like angels singing halos of tones...

Peter Mechen's Middle-C review of "On the Transmigration of Souls", 11 September 2011, is here.

Fortunately, Michael Fulcher directed a performance with a superbly just feeling for temp; never too slow and never – it would have been fatal, too fast. And he was given, as the underpinning to the performance, marvellous singing from his choir.

There was marvellous clarity and great certainty about the singing, either as a whole or when divided, and there was, too, a similar quality from the orchestra – divided into two groups – who showed an understanding of baroque style that would have been unthinkable not that long ago.

Click here for the full review of Bach's St Matthew Passion on 10 April 2011.

Peter Mechen's Middle-C review is here.
 

With good reason, for this was not only the most polished Messiah to have been heard for some time, it built to its second half climax with great skill, and a tremendous sense of release at the final chorus Worthy Is The Lamb. ...The choir sang superbly. The singers know the work inside out, but that alone does not explain the clarity and weight of the singing... More...

Michael Fulcher had rehearsed them very thoroughly and it paid off with singing of clarity, rhythmic verve and great precision.

Click here for a full review of Bach's Mass in B minor on 22 August 2010.

Also, click here for a review from Peter Mechen, Middle C, online classical music reviews.

The choral singing, too, was out of the top drawer; wonderfully rich and expansive in the climaxes and superbly controlled in the important hushed passages.

Click here for the full review of the Mahler Eighth Symphony concert in the New Zealand Festival of the Arts

Victor Young's When I Fall In Love, sung by the choir a capella with the utmost refinement, showing the beauty of a pure choral sound, capitavated the audience. 

Click here for the full review of our Anything Goes concert