Ite O'Donovan has been making her mark on Irish music for 25 years, first with the Palestrina Choir and, most recently, with Dublin Choral Foundation. That's worth celebrating, writes Arminta Wallace.
'It's 250 years of him and 10 years of us," says a beaming Ite O'Donovan of the double celebration due to take place at the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, next Saturday. "Him" is Mozart. "Us" is Dublin Choral Foundation, which O'Donovan established in 1996. Actually it's a triple celebration, for the concert is scheduled for the night of O'Donovan's 50th birthday - although she prefers to focus on the evening's all- Mozart programme. "We'll start with the Te Deum, a big hymn of thanksgiving which he wrote when he was only 13. Then a Regina Caeli, the third of three he wrote, with four soloists. Then the D Major concerto with the Orlando Chamber Orchestra and Gillian Williams as soloist. And what could we do for the second half but the 'Great' C Minor Mass? A marvellous piece. As soon as you hear the opening bars you just go, Wow. It's like the sense you get when you hear the overture to Messiah. You know there's going to be something spectacular to come."
Something spectacular is about right. For an amateur choral group of 10 years' standing to be performing one of the greatest choral works in the classical repertoire at the NCH with full orchestra and an accomplished group of soloists - let alone to be releasing Mozart 250, its fifth CD and the first Irish-produced disc to feature three Mozart Masses - is pretty good going. But then a glance at last year's schedule shows that, for Dublin Choral Foundation, big occasions are nothing new. From Fauré's Requiem at St Audoen's Church to carols at Farmleigh, from evensong at Christ Church to a reception to mark the 100th aniversary of the Abbey Theatre, from Benjamin Britten to Palestrina: you name it, they've done it.
It has also been a spectacular career curve for O'Donovan, who began her working life as a primary teacher because she didn't have the confidence to go into music full time. "So I thought I'd go into teaching and do music on the side," she says. "And I did enjoy teaching at primary level. But the music bug wouldn't go away." So eventually she enrolled at Trinity to study music as an extern. Then she saw an advertisement for the directorship of the Palestrina Choir, at the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, and applied without hesitation - perhaps because she assumed that, being a woman, she wouldn't stand a chance of being placed in charge of the all-male cathedral choir. But she got the job and, combining it with first part-time work and then a full-time teaching post at Dublin Institute of Technology, stayed for 14 years. "When I was 40," she says, "I felt that if I was going to do something different, it was time to do it. So I left in December 1995 and started Dublin Choral Foundation."
O'Donovan took the unusual step of forming not just an adult choir - The Lassus Scholars, named after the Renaissance composer Orlando de Lassus - but also a junior choir, Piccolo Lasso. The idea was to have a pool of singers to choose from, and thus develop the choir on an ongoing basis. "Quite a number of the current Lassus group came through Piccolo," she says. "It means I don't have to worry about things like: Can they read music? Do they undertand ensemble? Will they know how to interpret? They can pick up a new piece very quickly and get on with it."
One measure of the group's improvement over the past decade, she says, is the annual Christmas concert at the NCH. "For the first few years we did a main work of about 20 minutes long, plus all the Christmas bits and pieces. But the standard has improved so much that we've been able to grow the programme. This year we did Haydn's Nelson Mass, which is a good 45 minutes. It's part of the whole expansion of DCF that we can tackle bigger works. In fact," she adds, with a chuckle, "I must have a look at the Verdi Requiem and see by how much is that too big for us. We might need a few more men . . ."
A shortage of suitable men has always been a problem for Irish choirs. "I find I lose a lot of boys at first-year secondary-school level," says O'Donovan. "Rugby and other things take over. But you don't want every kid, anyhow. You get the few special ones who discover music inside themselves - like I did, at the age of nine or so. But for a lot of them it's down to parents who realise the educational importance of it and who decide that this choir thing is going to happen - and that it's going to happen twice a week. And, also, help them through the rough days. Because there are rough days. Boys, especially, get slagged at school for being in a choir. There are days when they need to be helped through it: brought to the door by the parents, come in and do the hour of rehearsal. And they generally go home delighted with themselves. Kids may come in saying: 'Oh, I'm not really in the mood today.' But I've never had one go out saying: 'Oh, I wish I hadn't come.' "
How does a freelance choral group carve out a niche? Dublin Choral Foundation has done it through a combination of clever sponsorship - an early three-year deal with BMW got the group off to a good start - and, as the core of its repertoire is still liturgical, through association with a network of churches. At present it is luxuriating in an airy rehearsal space on Coppinger Row, courtesy of St Teresa's Carmelite Church, on Clarendon Street in Dublin, and is regularly found at Adam & Eve's, on Merchant's Quay; St Joseph's in Terenure; St Anne's in Milltown; Christ Church; the University Church, on St Stephen's Green; St Patrick's Cathedral; and St Audoen's - a list that crosses happily from Catholic to Anglican and back again. "Oh, that's no problem," says O'Donovan. "The choir is nondenominational as a matter of policy. Of course, a lot of the children happen to be Catholic. That's just the way the population works. Piccolo learn all the Latin plainchant and can sing all the way through a Mass, which I think is very important. We sing the Tridentine rite in St Audoen's, so we're going way back to the 1962 Catholic rite. In the Anglican Church you can use a certain amount of crossover Catholic liturgy, but there's also all the lovely Magnificats that you don't get in the Catholic tradition. It's great to hear the kids singing Anglican psalms. They take it in their stride, and the parents take it in their stride."
As, needless to say, does O'Donovan. At 50 she is a woman of infectious enthusiasm, impressive energy and obvious dedication. She lives in a small house in Rialto with five cats and a great deal of sheet music, and when she's not running Dublin Choral Foundation or teaching at DIT she might be editing children's songbooks, sorting out her choir's latest CD or, in her spare time, researching a doctorate on music in Irish periodical literature. She makes a wry face. "I do far more than I should," she says. "I've always had a problem combining things. Keeping the balance right is hard, and as I get older it gets harder. There's no doubt about that."
For a moment she is almost wistful as she talks about the possibility of early retirement or the arrival of somebody who might help take over the burden of the foundation's administrative work, of which she still does a huge amount. But then I ask what it is that drives her to keep going, and her face lights up in an instant. "It's joy," she says without hesitation. "There's a great joy in looking at black dots on the page and turning that into a world of sound. There's great fun in choral music - and great transcendence. A really good piece of music transcends everything: time, space, the world. You get caught up in it, and it brings the spirit with it. When you conduct a Mozart Mass as a liturgy you can take people out of where they are and put them into a special world and know that they'll feel joyful for the day."
Dublin Choral Foundation's all-Mozart programme is at the NationalConcert Hall, Dublin, next Saturday
WORKING WITH ITE: JEFFREY LEDWIDGE Bass
"I joined the Palestrina Choir when I was eight. The main thing I remember about working with Ite is that she never treated us like kids. You were there to do a job, and you had to put the work in, and you weren't spoon-fed. Ite was always - and still is - very strict and very stern but very fair. Among the boys there was a great team set-up, which was her idea: you were put with an older boy, so you learned as you went along. It was terrific training, and you didn't realise how much you were learning. I went into the National Chamber Choir about six months after I left school, and I'm now a professional singer, and it's all down to the grounding I got from a very early age from the Palestrina Choir."
WORKING WITH ITE: GERARD GILLEN Organist, Pro-Cathedral
"Ite's appointment as director of the Palestrina Choir, in 1982, was a fairly radical thing for those days, when cathedral choirs were very male-dominated and the idea of having a woman director was almost unthinkable. And she was a great breath of fresh air, in many ways. Dynamic would be an understatement. She also gave the Palestrina Choir an outward-looking thrust which it hadn't had before, both in terms of where it saw itself going - giving public performances at the National Concert Hall, for example, or going on tours abroad, which she initiated and which are now part of the staple fare - and in terms of repertoire, introducing music of the classical Viennese period and also contemporary music. She certainly has left her mark, and a very positive mark. She's a tough woman and could be quite difficult to work with at times, but she ended up getting a lot of respect from those with whom she worked at the Pro-Cathedral. I also remember her as an organist - which was how she first came to musical notice - and a very good one."
WORKING WITH ITE: GILLIAN WILLIAMS Violinist
"I think she's a one-off: a great musician with unbelievable enthusiasm. A very big personality. It's difficult to pin it down in a few words, but I think everybody admires her commitment and her honesty. She has an incredible relationship with her choir - and she doesn't let them away with anything. She always has them reaching for the best. As an orchestra joining up to play with the choir, we find that no matter what music we're performing, or where, it always becomes a big occasion. She expects an awful lot from people, but that's because she always tries to get the very best out of everyone. And artistically she never stifles you. You always feel that your input is important. As for the young musicians of Piccolo Lasso, it's not just that they're beautifully prepared and very well behaved, but they actually seem to be enjoying themselves. I would also see Ite as a friend. She's tremendously active in DIT, and she does so much for people behind the scenes when she thinks they might be in trouble or difficulties."
WORKING WITH ITE: SARA SORENSON Head chorister, Piccolo Lasso
"I'm 14, and this is my fourth year as head chorister. I never really thought about music or singing until I joined the choir - I heard about it from some friends and decided to give it a go - but now it's my hobby. I really enjoy it, and I plan to join the Lassus Scholars after Piccolo Lasso. It's not like a school choir. It's quite different. The music we sing is very different. I like Mozart best. Learning the Latin plainchant isn't too hard: once you learn how to read it it's not that bad. We have two rehearsals a week. Christmas is the most difficult time of year. That's quite a test, but it pays off, because it's great fun, especially doing the Christmas concert at the National Concert Hall. That's really good. Ite is great. She teaches us a lot. She's not just a conductor. She teaches us sight-reading and things like that. And she's a great person as well."