Interview: Sara Macliver
“I’m really lucky,” says soprano Sara Macliver. “I’m always quite busy.” This is an understatement. Perth-born Macliver is one of the most popular and in-demand voices in Australian classical music. She has sung with every symphony orchestra and all the major choirs and chamber outfits in the country and many overseas.
She’s a favourite soloist with baroque specialists the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and has appeared with other top early music specialists as well as Pinchgut Opera company. She has toured extensively across the country for Musica Viva; her recordings routinely become topsellers and she regularly figures in the ARIAs. Oh yes, and she has three children: in other words raven-haired mother of three Sara is a very successful classical artist.
She is undoubtedly about to hit the best-selling heights again with the first-ever wholly Australian recording of Joseph Canteloube’s fabled Songs of the Auvergne. (Chants d’Auvergne).
“I’m so happy to have been able to do this,” Macliver says. “They’re not only popular - people do love them - but they’re musically challenging and wonderful to sing.”
The project (there are 28 pieces in the full Chants, Macliver has recorded 25) is the inspiration of ABC Classics’ producing and creative team of Robert Patterson and Lyle Chan.
“The decision was made by Robert and Lyle,” says Macliver. “I loved the idea and it was their enthusiasm that got it over the line. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple of years, so it’s very exciting to be the first in Australia.”
The story of the songs is as romantic as the music, says Macliver. “Cantaloube used to go for walks in the mountains with his father when he was a little boy. He saw the dances and he heard the folk songs of the region - the Auvergne - and years later, he remembered them, adapted them and created what we have today.”
What we have is music that Macliver describes as having “so many different colours and characters. You can get a real feel of the countryside - rippling brooks, birdsong, rustling trees, lush meadows. They’re tonal paintings.”
Part of the learning process for Macliver has included a crash induction course into the dialect of the songs.
“The language is interesting. It’s not French, of course,” says Macliver. “Auvergnese is a real challenge because so few people in the world speak it. As you listen you realise it’s a language that will eventually die out.”
ABC economics being what they are, the recording has a fresh, lively quality that comes - ironically - from the necessarily tight schedule.
“It was a very swift process, we recorded them in a week,” Macliver says of her sessions with the Queensland Orchestra and conductor Brett Kelly. “Actually, I think it benefits from the spontaneity because the music has a naturally lively feel and I don’t think it’s rewarded by labouring over it.”
Not that Macliver spared any effort, but the labour is all but invisible and was already done by the time she arrived in the studio.
“It’s not necessarily easy to sing, even though they sound uncomplicated,” she says. “Because they’re derived from folk melodies they have a real simplicity but it’s deceptive. I had a fairly intensive time learning them!”
Unfortunately there are no plans - as yet - to tour Songs of the Auvergne. It takes time to get such a leviathan underway (suitable orchestras and conductors are booked up years in advance as is the soprano).
“I’ve done some of them within the context of recitals with Bernadette Balkus and David Wickham (pianists) and that was wonderful, because they’re fiendishly difficult for piano,” says Macliver. “You need the very best pianists and they’re both wonderful. They do it with such ease. We have been toying with the idea of touring in NSW, but there’s nothing fixed as yet.”
Meanwhile and typically, Macliver’s 2007 is already diarised to the hilt with Richard Mills’ new opera Love of the Nightingale for the Perth Festival, a series for Pinchgut, recordings and appearances with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and then there are her own brood’s music lessons.
“I like to think they all had a good time in utero,” Macliver laughs - she sang while pregnant right up to just before the birth of each baby. “I know I looked liked a beached whale but I had a wonderful time. I loved it, I found I sang really well funnily enough, even though I didn’t have much room for air by the end.”
Sophie (9) and Tess (7) have been learning violin since the age of four, Macliver says. “They wanted to and they do seem to love it. Sophie especially loves the whole notion of being on stage. Charlie is three and he’s beginning to pay attention too. And I think they believe it’s a given that their mum sings away with them when they’re practising.”
Sara Macliver - Songs of the Auvergne, on ABC Classics, available now.
