Music / Wanderlust: Music to Take You There and Back Again, Canberra Choral Society. At Wesley Uniting Church,  September 26. Reviewed by DAVID WHITBREAD.

Starting with unison sopranos and altos that split into parts, Canberra Choral Society was in fine voice in a program full of delights.

The opener was Sally Whitwell’s first composition She Walks in Beauty from 2007. What a lovely and joyous composition for women’s voices it is. Perfectly shaped by conductor Dan Walker. The supportive piano played by Anthony Smith is light and lilting here.

The tenors and basses then completed the choir for works by Elgar and Lili Boulanger. Elgar’s fun Bavarian dance with waltz-like melodies demonstrated a rich full choral sound.

The complexities of Boulanger’s harmonies and choral lines showed uncertainty in some inner parts and questionable tuning at points. Despite being sung in French, pronunciation needs attention.

The sopranos and altos left the stage for The Vagabond by Vaughan Williams in a three-part choral arrangement for tenors and basses by Dan Walker. This returned to firm parts and tuning.

In her instrumental interludes Canberra flautist Sally Walker performed with Anthony Smith on piano.

Whitwell’s gorgeous Road Trip is a musical evocation of a train ride from Sydney Central via the picturesque Hawkesbury River line, it features repetitive travelling figures on piano, developing harmonies against a flute solo using Walker’s warm low register and glittering high register. A perfectly shaped cadenza and we were back to momentum for our arrival in Newcastle.

Mystery of the Pine Cone was written for Sally Walker by Elena Kats-Chernin as a gift to mark the loss of Sally’s botanist mother. The tender playing here featured duet lines with the piano, circular harmonies in the piano with impeccably detached solo flute lines. A sublimely controlled memorial.

For the second choral set, Dan Walker explained the thinking behind distributing voices randomly throughout a choir. Due to the universal reluctance of choir members to stand on their own without their singing colleagues around them, it was an experiment. It absolutely worked here.

Audrey Snyder’s The Road Not Taken is a beautiful work, performed with impeccable tuning and a lovely round tone throughout.

Arthur Sullivan’s Fair Daffodils – yes, that Sullivan (without Gilbert) was the first in a set of three unaccompanied choral works, including Bruckner and Eric Whitacre.

They worked beautifully in Wesley’s acoustic. Stable pitch, some lovely swells and dynamics from the choir. They are very responsive to Walker’s clear direction, with a beautifully controlled fade to nothing in the Whitacre.

The world premiere of Arboretum concluded the recital. Composed by conductor Dan Walker who also wrote the text. The three movements are the Bonsai Garden, the Forest of Remembrance and the Wide Brown Land.

Each is a very attractive work for full choir, flute and piano. They are great contrasting works for a choir to perform and show its skills. From swooping the word “Hachi” in the first, to a humming chorale and later big choral sound in the second, to the rhythms and triumphant flourish that completes the third.

It would be nice to commission more movements, as the set currently feels like parts of a larger work. It has a conclusion, but not a clear beginning. The set could usefully add a prologue, an eagle’s nest movement and possibly a kite festival.

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