Music / Musica Domestica, Oriana Chorale. At The Street Theatre 3, June 28. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Subtitled A Musical Diary of a Remote Worker in 13 Chapters, this unusual program of choral music was devised by Canberra composer Sally Whitwell and performed under the baton of Dan Walker by an invigorated, youthful-looking Oriana Chorale.

A musical response by Whitwell to her perception that choral concerts were becoming a bit too “Samey? Distant? Unrelatable?” she created a 21st-century song cycle inspired by the covid lockdown, which traces a day in the life of a busy, independent, creative person much like herself.

Divided into 13 sections, it begins at 7am in the kitchen with Whitwell’s own composition, Caffeine Kick – Round One. Two more follow.

After entering Street Three yawning, the chorus quickly engages with the words, depicting the coffee grounds going round and round. Then the caffeine hits and the music takes off.

By 8am it’s time to head to The Bathroom for the solemn, ritualistic treatment of a shower in Michael Nyman’s Miserere, based on Psalm 55, before a 9am date in the study with Samuel Barber’s famous The Monk and His Cat. The affable Whitwell tells us about her own cat (one of four), Lucky, a keen participant in the working day, but the enunciation of the Barber was not quite clear enough to hear all the words.

Back in the kitchen at 11am for another Caffeine Kick, things pick up place ready for an 11.30am session in the study. Here Whitwell reveals her deep hatred of “grammar Nazis”, before the choir happily drops the F-bomb as they perform Oxford Comma-Vampire Weekend, arranged by Patrick Baker. This was surely a first for Oriana.

It’s 12.30pm in the kitchen where the choir heads for the chopping board to perform Eat Your Vegetables by John Muehleisen. This involves vocalised sounds of slicing and chopping and an ode to the humble swede, a vegetable known in North America as the rutabaga.

By 1.30pm it’s time for the concert’s commissioned composition, One More Email: A Tragedy by Aija Draguns. Beginning softly with recurring words such as sending, pending, spinning, the female voices rise over the male drone to conjure up the endless waiting all email users have experienced as they see the “wheel of doom” rotating on their screens. This was a complex piece, beautifully performed.

After another Caffeine Kick, it’s housework time, seen in Three Ways To Vacuum Your House by Stephen Hatfield, performed by the female voices only in three movements. The first part included some delightful Indian-inspired, rhythmic counting, the second a little touch of Brazil while the final part had a traditional Scottish feel.

A blokier note was struck at 5pm session, when the hearty male choristers, down in The Cellar, sing Rounds and Catches On Drinking, attributed to Henry Purcell before the women descend to The Cellar for Whitwell’s own arrangement of the Christmassy Gloucester Wassail, sung in parts.

In the Dining Room at 7pm, members of the male chorus adopted  fake Maurice Chevalier accents to introduce Be Our Guest by Alan Menken from the musical, Beauty and The Beast. This began in happy unison, but broke into parts in a very pleasing arrangement.

At 8pm in the Living Room it was time for Sally Whitwell‘s own composition, The Great Pandemic Book Club, a reference to covid lockdown online book clubs and the commissioning of humming choruses for choir-starved singers during the pandemic.

This altogether original concert finished with a beautiful Eric Whitacre song, Sleep, in four-part harmony.

The composer has said that he wanted to create music that was “warm and lush, like a feather bed”. The quiet beauty of this conclusion, superbly sung and delicately conducted by Walker, shows that he was on the right track.