The Age, Wednesday January 24th 2007 - Clive O'Connell
Alongside the Gombert'e Scarlatti work, the weekend's other near-unqualified success came from soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley and pianist Brian Chapman. These musicians have recently released a CD of Schubert's Winterreise song-cycle, and on Sunday afternoon they performed it. They showed how much is gained from a pure-timbred and young voice in well-worn extracts such as Der Lindenbaum and the concluding Der Leiermann, as well as new shadings brought to a baritone's delight in Der dreise Kopf. The soprano enjoyed an ideal counterweight in Chapman's unfussed, controlled accompaniments, the work's minor-flavoured fabric a rich gift for all present in the excellently appointed new Wendouree Centre.
The Age, Saturday January 6 2007 - Clive O’Connell
This recording of Schubert’s second song-cycle, a 24-part winter journey mapping the dark progress of unhappy love, is usually the preserve of male singers. Written originally for a tenor voice, many baritones have relished its dark-flavoured content, while few women have attempted the work in its entirety. Melbourne soprano, Louisa Hunter-Bradley has added the Winterreise to her extensive repertoire and makes a new creature of its familiar pages through her clear and youthful sound-colour, the inbuilt tragedy less heavy but coloured by a vocal athleticism and touching vitality, particularly in coping with Schubert’s abrupt changes of mood and tempos. She is partnered with sensitivity and a mirroring precision of attack by long-time Australian resident Brian Chapman.
The Age, Monday August 14, 2006 - Clive O’Connell
Concluding activities for the foreseeable future, Past Echoes and its offspring Buxtehude Consort presented Charpentier’s opera-masque Les Arts Florissants on Saturday night: a high baroque enterprise, performed in full Louis XIV costumes and make-up with period instrument support. It was preceded by a Jacquet de la Guerre violin sonata and a tombeau for Jean-Baptiste Lully by Jean-Fery Rebel – both solid excercises, especially for violinist Julia Fredersdorff.
Soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley took the pivotal role of Music and, with Caitlin Noble’s Poetry and Matthew Champion’s Discord, produced some well-negotiated passages of play. But Kerry McManus made an incomprehensible figure of Peace, Dean Sky-Lucas was vocally awkward as Painting, and Leoma Dyke, as Architecture, had pitching problems.
Cameron Menzies directed his octet of actors-singers with moderate freedom, using the galleries and aisles of the BMW Edge space, although some would have been better served by a consistent full-frontal delivery.
Despite inevitable comparisons with the last Melbourne performance of this work, by the brilliant ensemble named after Charpentier’s work, this performance often showed coherence of ensemble and purity of delivery, its successes compensating for several vocal and instrumental near-misses.
Limelight, May 2006 - Stephen Snelleman
Triptych Vocal TMS 201 lllll
Gorgeous Gregorian sacred music, some sensitively adapted by Triptych soprano, Helen Thomson, received exquisite, near-flawless performances by this highly talented vocal trio, occasionally accompanied by recorder and hurdy-gurdy. Whether in blissful unison, full-throated harmony or intricate polyphonic filigree, this Australian ensemble will surely lift you to a higher plane.
The Age, Monday July 17, 2006 - John Slavin
“Welcome to opera history,” declared director Richard Gill, as he launched the newly formed Victorian Opera. What followed was a musical version of a degustation, one of those wine tastings with appropriate tidbits to encourage diners to become more adventurous. The program’s various items had been cunningly chosen to display some of the fine talents who will be the company stalwarts, but I suspect there was also a hint of a future repertoire.
At another level, we were given an exhilarating ride through an opera theme park. The evening began with the love duet from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, sung by Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Dean Sky-Lucas. Here is the wellspring of opera and from threr the stream flowed to Purcell: Kirsti Harms sang Dido’s Lament.
There were also fresh young talents such as Christopher Saunders who sang Tamino with sweet lyrical clarity. The Mozart in fact, demonstrated that Victorian Opera has a company that can already mount a vocally splendid Magic Flute.
As the evening progressed, Orchestra Victoria, too, grew in size. It has been part of Melbourne’s operatic life for years and it is appropriate that its fine playing under an energetic conductor like Richard Gill should be applauded. The evening whet the appetite with hints of feast to come.
The Age, Tuesday July 11, 2006 - Clive O’Connell
The early music ensemble Past Echoes will present a major undertaking next month in a staged production at the BMW Edge of Charpentier’s opera Les Arts Florissants and will then suspend operations while founder/director Louisa Hunter-Bradley continues her career in England.
For a small-scale body that has only been in operation for 10 years, the group has made a considerable impact in an expanding area of expertise, the Past Echoes members notable for wearing their obvious scholarship lightly.
With guests Victoria Watts on viola da gamba and Rosemary Hodgson playing theorbo and baroque guitar, Hunter-Bradley oscillated between playing recorder and using her clear soprano in music by Frescobaldi, Strozzi, Gabrieli, Caccini and Kapsberger, with Castello’s Sonata settima giving the 14-part program some weight. In fact, this instrumental quartet lasted as long as some of the brackets in Sunday’s recital, which attracted a considerable audience despite the cold weather.
Like her vocal work, Hunter-Bradley’s instrumental delivery is light, deft and makes a mobile complement for David Macfarlane’s spry harpsichord and clear-speaking small organ. Assisting in about half the works performed, Watts’ gamba made a determined contribution with a vivid prominence in a Frecobaldi canzon.
Hodgson’s participation was less obvious, surprisingly muted in this resonant chapel; only in the later stages did her skill emerge with any dynamic power. In fact, the afternoon’s highpoint came in Kapsberger’s lullaby came in Kapsberger’s lullaby Figlio, dormi which was well suited to Hunter-Bradley’s lucid articulation. It acquired rich depths of colour as I moved forward, the instrumental forces gradually added to the mix in a florid, emotionally convincing picture of maternal devotion.
Libretto, June-July 2006 - John Worcester
On first playing this CD my response was one of excitement – a unusual combination of three female voices, mostly unaccompanied, blending beautifully, presenting music that mellifluous and melismatic, from the 15th century and earlier, and graced by two contemporary composers, neither of whose music is out of place in this lovely recital.
The three singers comprising Triptych are all Melbourne-based, all with overseas experience and all remarkably accomplished – Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Helen Thomson, sopranos, and Christina Jonas, Mezzo-soprano.
As well, they’re all instrumentalists, although there is very little on this recording, only Louisa Hunter-Bradley playing a recorder and Helen Thomson a hurdy-gurdy, both in Alleluia Pascha Notrum by Leonin. Judging by the two instances, a recording adding more of this instrumentation would be delightful.
The performances are excellent, whether in unison singing, part-singing or solos, although some of the soaring soprano solos (towards the end of the recital), have a slight edge to them; whereas for most of the recital these work superbly.
The Age, Tuesday April 11, 2006 - Clive O’Connell
Sunday afternoon brought a chamber version of Handel’s Messiah to Newman Chapel, the Buxtehude Consort and Past Echoes ensembles presenting a cut-down version lasting about 90 minutes. Director Louisa Hunter-Bradley conducted nearly everything and sang the Nativity sequence.
With only eight singers, everyone took on a solo recitative-and-aria, alto Christina Jonas giving a vivid He was despised, and the tenors, George Liakatos and Christopher Nye, sounding remarkably similar and happy in their work. A hard-working body of five strings, led by Zane Grosa, played with clean-limbed determinatio, David Macfarlane providing a substantial organ foundation and John Collinson emerging for the occasional trumpet solo.
In the main, this reduced version worked surprisingly well, Hunter-Bradley cutting out any Victorian-era dynamic and tempo excrescences, maintaining a steady pace and giving us the substantial benefit of hearing every line in those stirring choruses that tower over the oratorio’s structure.
The Age, Tuesday March 28, 2006 - Clive O’Connell
Early Music ensemble Past Echoes began operations with a short program of German Baroque music: Handel, Telemann, Bach, with Buxtehude bringing up the rear. The group’s composer-in-residence, David Bartholomeusz, kept to this framework with a setting of Christ lag in Todes Banden verses used by three of these baroque masters.
Soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley carried out all the program’s vocal requirements – two of Hanel’s German arias, a aTelemann and a Handel cantata, the jaunty Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab of Buxtehude, and the new work. Her calm, carefully honed voice remained fresh through the afternoon, quite at ease in telemann’s busy recitative and a vigorous Handel Flammende Rose.
Zane Grosa provided a reliable, shapely baroque violin; cellist Fiona Furphy partnered David Macfarlane’s keyboard in solid continuo work. Guest oboe/ recorder performer Kirsten Barry made uninteresting work of the top line in a Telemann trio sonata, but compensated in another by Handel.
The new Bartholomeusz work uses tape and live-performance soprano. The piece made a positive impression: instantly assimilable, no distracting additions to the uniformly textured taped sounds, a straightforward treatment of the words, even some refined jubilation in the concluding Alleluia.
Libretto, October-November 2005 - John Barnes
In the last decade or so there has been a remarkable proliferation of ensembles specializing in the presentation of the music of the Baroque era and earlier. One of these groups is Past Echoes which, although it has been in existence for only six years, is clearly among the finest in terms of excellence.
This splendidly-balanced CD is sure to yield immense pleasure to lovers of early music. Soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley and countertenor Dean Sky-Lucastreat the vocal lines with finesse, elegance and purity of tone. Interpretively, they penetrate to the heart of the music, so that the meaning of each song is graphically realized and delivered with excellent enunciation. An excellent example is Monteverdi’s duet Cantate Domino, sung with appropriate vigour and sense of jubilation at the wonders worked by God, while the singers cope with the subtle dissonance reposing in the title track, Strozzi’s Begli Occhi (“Beautiful eyes”), with aplomb. Handel’s Mi palpita il cor has been recorded a number of times, including the likes of Emma Kirkby, Yvonne Kenny and René Jacobs, yet Sky-Lucas’ singing of this delightful little cantata does not pale into insignificance when compared with these more established luminaries.
The multi-talented Hunter-Bradley plays the recorder part of the Handelian gem and Cima’s Sonata I dexterously and throughout the recital David Macfarlane’splaying (harpsichord and organ) complements the singers’ artistry perfectly. He delivers Frescobaldi’s keyboard piece, Toccata settima, with verve and panache.
Herald Sun, Wednesday September 14, 2005 - Xenia Hanusiak
Soprano and recorder player Louisa Hunter-Bradley is one of the more enterprising and industrious young musicians around town. She does not wait for opportunity to knock.
Her company, Past Echoes, gives lovers of early music a chance to savour the repertoire of the renaissance and baroque periods.
In the third concert of the 2005 series, Hunter-Bradley’s artistic escapades led her to the music of the early French baroque. In her mid-concert commentary, she spoke of this time as an intellectual mini-duel between the virtues of the Italian baroque style on the one hand and the French persuasion on the other.
The works she chose clearly illustrated these juxtapositions. The concert proceeded with a series of cantatas and suites, with like-minded cohorts contributing to the engaging exercise.
Gary Ekkel (baroque flute), Fiona Furphy (baroque cello) and David Macfarlane (harpsichord) helped to make cogent arguments for the scores at hand.
Vocally, Hunter-Bradley has an appealing voice that is highly palatable. She showed spirit in her opening motets by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, summoning a fresh timbre especially for the buoyant Motet pour L’Ascension. In Rameau’s Pieces de clavecina, Macfarlane clearly defined each dance style of the four-movement suite, offering a flourishing response to the final gigue.
The Age, Monday September 12, 2005 - Clive O’Connell
Part I
Singing two choral masterworks in St Paul’s Cathedral, the Ormond College Choir, under Douglas Lawrence, enjoyed mixed success on Saturday night with Bach’s Magnificat, but achieved an excellent demonstration of choral power in Haydn’s Nelson Mass.
Part of the problem with the happy Bach work stemmed from the Australian Classical Players, which scored points for a pretty reliable trumpet trio and a lightly springing string group but showed flaws in the woodwinds’ exposed passages. While the full-blooded sections such as the opening and closing choruses sounded engaging and bright, some of the soloists’ passages were not so happy.
Dean Sky-Lucas produced an attractive alto timbre for the Esurientes movement but here, and later with sopranos Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Kate McBride in the Suscepit Israel trio, the winding oboe/flute/recorder accompaniments came over as bland in texture, laboured and not quite on pitch. George Liakatos lent his gentlemanly tenor to the spiky Deposuit and bass Christopher Tonkin trod an accurate path through Quia fecit, a solid and evenly spread voice that also came into its own after interval.
This came over from all forces with much more power and clarity of purpose; even the slender tenor line sprang into something approaching animation. At the core of the work, a typically expanded Benedictus,Hunter-Bradley found excellent form, as piercingly accurate and sinewy of line here as at the works startling opening and ebullient conclusion.
Part II
Louisa Hunter-Bradley was hard at work the next day, leading her ensemble Past Echoes and guests in a program of mainly French Baroque music. Harpsichordist/organist David Macfarlane and Hunter-Bradley collaborated with Gary Ekkel’s baroque flute and Fiona Furphy’s cello in a pair of bracing motets by de Boismortier that set up the sound-world for the afternoon’s music-making.
Ekkel’s flute took some time to warm up in the chapel, although his supple and sweet account of Leclair’s Sonata VII was pleasant listening. But the recital’s main works were a pair of rapidly moving cantatas by Monteclair, Hunter-Bradley showing her versatility in the first by both singing and providing a finely spun recorder line.
The Age, Tuesday May 31, 2005 - Clive O’Connell
A Victorian Government Initiative curated by Richard Gill, the Winter Opera Celebration comprises four consecutive Sunday recitals and a mid-June production of Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
In the second event, last Sunday, the focus turned to the baroque era. All participants were members of the Past Echoes ensemble, headed by soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley who, on this program, enjoyed the support of harpsichordist David Macfarlane and baroque cellist Fiona Furphy, and shared vocal honours with countertenor Dean Sky-Lucas.
The group sang six Monteverdi excerpts as well as works by Pergolesi (not exactly baroque), Scarlatti, Strozzi and Luzzaschi. Both vocalists are expert in this style and shone particularly in solos – Sky-Lucas in the Prologue to Peri’s Euridice; Hunter-Bradley in a stylish account of Caccini’s Amarilli.
But the best came last in a carefully paced and finely spun duet that concludes Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppaea – a great baroque moment brought to life with admirable refinement.
Herald-Sun, Tuesday May 10, 2005 - Chris Boyd (co-production with Lyric Opera of Melbourne)
The Lyric Opera of Melbourne does something wonderful with space. That’s inner space, by the way, not outer space. The Lyric Opera fills it. Only two years old, Lyric Opera is the new kid on the block. But if this Orlando is typical of the company’s output, then there is – at last – a classical opera fringe. …
As opera plots go, Orlando (1733) is even wackier than the average. A shepherd girl gets dumped by a scholar in favour of Queen Angelica. Dorinda (Louisa Hunter-Bradley) takes it on the chin. … As for the shepherd girl “ex”, she flounces on in a slit skirt and stratospheric Stevie Nicks-heeled boots.
Vocally, Hunter-Bradley is head and shoulders above the competition. She has a starry, thrillingly gorgeous, hi-revving soprano, all smiles and trills.
Herald-Sun, Tuesday April 12, 2005 - Xenia Hanusiak
Past Echoes, a Melbourne early music ensemble, began its 2005 season with a Tenebrae service. Tenebrae is the Latin word for shadows. The program brought together a rich array of material: vocal snippets by Hildegard von Bingen, Bach, Charpentier and Couperin, through to recorder and harpsichord solos.
Sydney soprano Jane Sheldon joined the multi-talented Louisa Hunter-Bradley (soprano/recorder player) with David Macfarlane on harpsichord and organ. Both Sheldon and Bradley possess clear, agile soprano voices. In consort, they discovered a creamy complexion and their portraits in Couperin’s Troisieme Lecon a Deux Voix were a highlight.
Every attempt was made to orchestrate and stage the music as a ceremony. Music was sung from the choir loft, behind the altar and in the aisle. This was a highly considered program.
The Age, Wednesday June 2, 2004 - Clive O’Connell
On Sunday, the early music group Past Echoes presented a brief recital at Fitzroy’s Anglican church. Along with founder-director Louisa Hunter-Bradley, violinist Zane Grosa and harpsichord expert David Macfarlane performed short works by Monteverdi, Handel, Vivaldi and Castello, with a rousing prelude by way of Uccellini’s Arie sopra la Bergamasca, and an equally invigorating conclusion in Nicola Matteis’ Ground after The Scotch Humour.
Along with four recorder contributions, Hunter-Bradley sang a pair of Monteverdi songs with a polished communication of their precious self-regard. Two short extracts from a Handel opera preceded the composer’s rarely heard German devotional aria Meine Seele hort im Sehen, a piece well suited to the soprano’s sound-colour.
Grosa was involved in much of the program, notably in one of Vivaldi’s Manchester Sonatas, with apure and secure line. Macfarlane accompanied with discretion, taking the limelight only in Handel’s G minor Suite, where he showed laudable efficiency in its popular concluding Passacaglia.
For security of performance and penetrating reading of Renaissance and Baroque idioms, this show ranked among Past Echoes’ most professional and entertaining.
The Age, Tuesday April 20, 2004 - Clive O’Connell
On Sunday afternoon, the Past Echoes ensemble launched its annual series with a program from Monteverdi to Handel, some parts of which have been heard before. Louisa Hunter-Bradley again partnered harpsichordist David Macfarlane in an arrangement of a Bach trio sonata movement, her recorder as placidly garrulous as ever. Changing hats, she used her pure-spun soprano in collaboration with countertenor Dean Sky-Lucas for duets by Strozzi, Handel and Monterverdi – the luminous Pur ti miro finale to the opera L’incoronazione di Poppea.
But the most impressive piece I was able to hear came in a cantata by Handel, Mi palpita il cor, the assertive alto line of Sky-Lucas making a graceful artefact of the work’s baroque structure and language, Hunter-Bradley and Macfarlane functioning as fluent support and complement to this gifted vocalist.
Past Echoes was noted as one of the two top early music groups and amongst the 10 most outstanding musical organisations performing in Melbourne in 2003. (Clive O’Connell, The Age, Dec 30 2003)
The Age, Wednesday September 24, 2003 - Clive O’Connell
A short recital from soprano Louisa Hunter-Bradley and lutenist Samantha Cohen marked the fourth concert in the Past Echoes ensemble’s series. With the large ait space in St Mark’s, both performers sounded ultra-refined from near the back of the pews, but their work showed a precision that rarely faltered.
Most of the duo’s material was British: a pair of Dowland songs, four by Campion and a brace of lute solos. These showed Hunter-Bradley’s pure Emma Kirkby-style soprano in fine flight with Cohen offering calm, measured support. A few cross-Channel excursions gave us an Ortiz ricercar, some Kapsberger and van Eyck miniatures, and a Piccinini chaconne for Cohen’s theorbo – that improbably long-necked form of lute with resonant bass strings.
But the most affecting performance came in a pair of Purcell songs, especially a lilting account of An Evening Hymn where the final Alleluias found an ideal, spirit-lifting realisation from these talented interpreters.
The Age, May 28, 2003 - Clive O’Connell
Past Echoes, a local ensemble specializing in period music, gave a short Gems of the Baroque program as the second in its five-part series for the year. Founder Louisa Hunter-Bradley collaborated with Greg Dikmans in a Telemann trio sonata for two recorders, underpinned by David Macfarlane’s harpsichord.
Dikmans also performed one of Blavet’s flute sonatas and Macfarlane played a harpsichord arrangement of Bach’s Oboe Concerto. Finally, Hunter-Bradley sang a sparse version of Clerambault’s cantata, Apollon, supported by her collaborators’ two instruments.
Of the four works, the Telemann sonata pleased for the sympathetic weaving of lines from the two wind instruments and the performers’ lightness of touch, notably in the concluding set of five musical images of female personalities. The cantata impressed.
But Macfarlane gave a solid account of the Bach concerto and Dikmans’ account of the French sonata/suite showed us this masterly performer at his clear-voiced and expressive best.
