Miriam Allan & Ironwood Adelaide Review

Adelaide Town Hall, Thursday 26th March

SOPRANO Miriam Allan, instrumental septet Ironwood, music by Purcell and Handel and the Adelaide Town Hall - all made for each other.

Allan's voice, sweet, pure, childlike in its flexibility, with just the merest touch of vibrato, is the perfect vehicle for baroque music.

Over a full hour of Purcell songs and dances, largely drawn from his operas and masques, Ironwood's Rachael Beesley and Julia Fredersdorff (violins), Nicole Forsyth (viola), Kirsty McMahon (double bass) Daniel Yeadon (cello, gamba), Neal Peres Da Costa (harpsichord, chamber organ) and Kirsten Barry (Baroque oboe, recorders) were as one.

Action and intimacy alternated in a program so carefully planned, so beautifully performed, so authoritatively delivered even the audience obeyed every signal.

Music for a While wrenched both the soul and the gut and Fairest Isle, Dryden's salute to England in better times, sparkled especially brightly in a glittering spread of jewels.

Then it was Handel's turn to be celebrated. Ironwood took every trick played by this eminently tricky composer in his Trio Sonata in G minor op 5 No. 4, five movements related to popular dance forms.

Although his cantata Silete Venti is textually sacred, the fine print and the music are frankly secular. With utmost good taste, Allan occasionally let fly with a spectacular vocal ornament, as if bubbling over with happiness.

The encore must be noted. Allan learnt Oh Had I Jubals' Lyre from Handel's oratorio Joshua when she was just nine.

The Advertiser
Written by Elizabeth Silsbury
31 March 2009