The Sublimity of Young Voices

Wow, are they real? That was my first impression when the soft tune of Veni Creator Spiritus filled up Esplanade Concert Hall at the eve of Hari Raya (Idul Fitri), 2 November 2005.

Minutes before, it was a mundane voice and now, the celestial one. After silence fell in the air following the announcement at the beginning of the concert; please switch off your hand phones and pagers, no photography and recording are allowed… suddenly the august (not refer to the eighth month of the year though) harmony of boys of 10-14 years of age’s voices suffused the hall and prevailed in our audio senses.

Wow, I couldn’t really believe that the widely renown Vienna Boys Choir are just meters away from me. And the fact that their angelic (not an overstatement here) voices are real, was just… unreal.

As a matter of fact, I am not a choral person, even to expect me to hum along with the famous choir is illegal. Among the 26++ (the ‘++’ refers to those songs performed upon “encore” request) songs in the concert, I could only catch one phrase: Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower), a Chinese song that they sung before concluding the concert (only because one character of my seldom-used Chinese name was taken from that). Apparently, none of the songs was in English. Majority was in Germany, as they came from Austria. Some songs are from India, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India (complete with Indian Percussion), Hungary, China (complete with the flutes), Austrian Folk Songs with some boys dressed in their traditional outfits and performed some traditional dancing. There was a violin player also. Nonetheless, my linguistic limitation was no barrier to enjoy the performance. All in all, it was really impressive, magnificent.

When the time for solo performance comes, you would be even more surprised by the power that they hide in their boyish and rather-small figures; their voices could easily filled up the vast concert hall. The main soprano was also very handsome, ouuuwwww…. My prime location in Balcony A gave me the advantage of having a good angle to watch him singing.

They have different timbre in their voices. Different intensity as well. But when they sang as one, they literally sang as one. Very clean and crystal-clear voice, and nobody (even the main soprano or alto – not tenor and bass yet as they are still boys) tried to outperform other voices.

But boys are boys. They were very relaxed when singing. Some even sneezed and coughed. Some smirked to each other during the interval. But it didn’t attenuate the quality of the concert. Perhaps for them, singing is as normal as breathing….