'The tintinnabulation that so musically wells'

Sergei Rachmaninoff is a composer whose instrumental music often seems wandering and overlong to me. Not unlike his compatriot Tchaikovsky, whose ballets and operas suit me much more than his symphonies and concertos, Rachmaninoff seemed to benefit from the restraint of a text or story. This is likely why Kolokola, a choral symphony based on Edgar Allan Poe's evocative poem The Bells, is so effective, a grand Rachmaninoff work that never oozes into Rachmaninoff's saccharine sound and does not overstay its welcome. For some reason, the National Symphony Orchestra had only performed the piece once in its entire history, back in 1977, in a concert led by the late Norman Scribner. Vassily Sinaisky made his NSO debut with a spirited rendition of the work, heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

The veteran Russian conductor, who resigned from the Bolshoi Theater in 2013 "to avoid conflict" with the new director, came with three fine Russian-trained soloists and a sure hand on this work less familiar outside of Russia. Norman Scribner's choir, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, engulfed the hall in sound in the opening movement ("Silver Sleigh Bells"), well prepared by Scott Tucker. Tenor Sergey Semishkur, after an uncertain and slightly off-pitch introduction, had a more heroic sound in the full parts of this movement, with its lovely parts for celesta and every metallic percussion instrument Rachmaninoff could get his hands on. The slow movement ("Mellow Wedding Bells") had oozing strings and a smoldering melody in the cellos, cushioning the ample tone of soprano Dina Kuznehtsova, wavering only when she had to float that high A toward the end of the movement.

The whole ensemble was most secure in the loud and fast third movement ("Loud Alarum Bells"), with groaning deep woodwinds and the chorus, seated in sections for security, beautifully schooled in swelled crescendi and -- more importantly -- decrescendi. A moody English horn solo introduced the funereal finale ("Mournful Iron Bells"), led by baritone Elchin Azizov with a menacing, dark sound to his imposing voice. Of course, Rachmaninoff here turned again to a quotation of the Dies irae sequence, although in a much more hidden way in this score, contributing to the work's solemn conclusion.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Debuting conductor offers experienced path through ‘The Bells’ (Washington Post, April 17) Terry Ponick, NSO, Choral Arts Society ring in Rachmaninoff’s glorious ‘Bells’ (Communities Digital News, April 17)

The evening opened less auspiciously, with a somewhat messy, not quite fully digested performance of the overture to Borodin's Prince Igor, in the form reconstructed by Alexander Glazunov. This brought to the fore some of the more inscrutable qualities of Sinaisky's conducting style, although the musical ideas, especially the dynamic shading, were generally effective. The accelerandi and other tempo changes were not unified, and overall the piece, never before played by the NSO, needed more seasoning.

By contrast, Mozart's clarinet concerto (A major, K. 622) felt almost too familiar, too cozy and comfortable. Principal clarinetist Loren Kitt was authoritative in the solo part, equally beautiful in phrasing and tone, if perhaps a little too easygoing, certainly by contrast to the playing of Jörg Widmann, who last played the piece with the NSO in 2012. The Adagio here could have been slower, and the concluding Allegro was on the tame side, but Sinaisky and the NSO provided a warm, well-scaled envelope of sound for Kitt. It is hard not to like this piece, one of the most perfect concertos ever composed, not least because it lacks any cadenzas or any over-the-top virtuosic displays.

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow.

Choral Arts Chamber Singers Go Finnish

E. Rautavaara, Works for Mixed Chorus, Finnish Radio Chamber Choir, E.-O. Söderström (Ondine, 1996)

Charles T. Downey, Choral Arts Chamber Singers perform ‘Under the Midnight Sun’ (Washington Post, October 20, 2014)

Scott Tucker was appointed artistic director of the Choral Arts Society of Washington in 2012. As the ensemble nears its 50th anniversary next year, Tucker has instituted the Choral Arts Chamber Singers, a small chorus within the chorus that gave its first concert on Friday night at Falls Church Episcopal. The new series allows the musicians to explore a different repertoire beyond the big choral chestnuts with orchestra that are their normal bread and butter... [Continue reading]

Choral Arts Chamber Singers
Under the Midnight Sun
Music by Finnish composers
Falls Church Episcopal

Christmas Blah Blah Blah

Charles T. Downey, Choral Arts Society Christmas concert at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, December 21, 2011

Norman Scribner, who has led the Choral Arts Society of Washington since founding it in 1965, has set the date of his retirement for next summer. Scribner’s leadership of this mammoth volunteer choir has certainly been consistent. The ensemble’s current season, offered in tribute to Scribner, is recapitulating his legacy down to the annual Christmas concert, heard Monday night.

Many people love concerts of Christmas music, certainly enough to fill most of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Much of the program was aimed at the group’s strength, which is full-bodied, strongly articulated singing, an ethos put clearly into words by Scribner when he instructed the audience for the inevitable carol singalongs with the gruff words, “Stand up and sing. LOUD.” This was true of both the rather unsubtle rendition of “Jauchzet, Frohlocket!,” from Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” and a lusty waltz scene from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” made forceful by the sheer number of singers. [Continue reading]

It may be difficult to take seriously the idea of a war on Christmas, given how pervasive the holiday’s trappings are in the marketplace. In any case, it remains unclear on which side the forces of trivialization would be fighting.

Olli Kortekangas: Sounding a Barbaric Yoik

See my first piece at Washingtonian.com, a preview of this Sunday's world premiere of Seven Songs for Planet Earth by Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas:

Finland’s Musical Talent Comes to Washington (Washingtonian, May 19):

Finland is home to a prodigious musical life, including in contemporary classical composition. Two local choral groups, the Choral Arts Society of Washington and the Children’s Chorus of Washington, have joined forces to bring a piece of the Finnish phenomenon to the Washington area this week. At a concert this Sunday -- Northern Lights: Choral Illuminations from Scandinavia and Beyond -- in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, the two groups will perform the world premiere of Seven Songs for Planet Earth, a new work by Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas.

The premise of this symphonic cantata, about how “respect and love for nature should be seen as a fundamental element of human life,” falls somewhere between touchy-feely and downright preachy. Four of the texts were written by environmental activist and poet Wendell Berry, a choice that seems to endorse the local food movement and other environmentalist views. [Continue reading]

Christmas in May: El Niño Raises Temperatures

El Niño: CD DVD

Most critics have been impressed by El Niño, the Nativity oratorio by American composer John Adams premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2000. One can only congratulate the Choral Arts Society of Washington and its director, Norman Scribner, for finally performing the work in this area. The group's earnest but slightly shaky concert on Sunday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, for all that it was welcome, confirmed many of my doubts about the successes and failures of this modern take on a central Christian story. The main problem is in the basic distrust of Christian traditions, which also tainted Peter Sellars' direction of Handel's Theodora. Central Biblical texts relating the Nativity narrative are supplemented, brilliantly, by sincere devotional poetry by Hildegard von Bingen, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and anonymous medieval authors. Texts are also introduced from apocryphal infancy narratives (Gospel of James, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew), stories that are not accepted as scriptural but that nevertheless have informed Catholic tradition, especially through the medium of art.

Truly muddying the waters was the modern poetry (Rosario Castellanos, Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro -- suggested to Adams by Sellars) that not only has little to do with the story of Christ's birth but actually undermines it. At the Paris premiere, Sellars further subverted the Biblical story with a danced staging and insipid video (the latter relating a parallel account of a contemporary young woman having a baby). The Choral Arts Society laudably reunited that video with Adams' music, if for no better reason than so that we could appreciate just how badly the concept had dated in the period of only eight years. When compared with the timeless appeal of the Nativity story, the Sellars video, with its images of cops staring up at street lamps in parking lots and those perennial show-choir hand movements, became lamentably ridiculous. Either you want to tell the story of Christ's birth or you don't -- make up your mind.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Choral Arts Society Weathers 'El Niño' (Washington Post, May 20) ---, 'El Niño's' Transcendent Genre (Washington Post, May 17) Tim Smith, Choral Arts' concert (Baltimore Sun, May 20)

Those reservations aside, El Niño has remarkable musical appeal, much of which came across in this performance. The role of the Evangelist, as far as there really is one, is carried by a trio of amplified countertenors, otherworldly astral triplets who narrate and also incarnate the voices of Gabriel, the wise men, and others. Brian Cummings, Paul Flight, and Steven Rickards made impeccably tuned clustered harmonies together, with a few weaknesses in solo moments. Baritone Christòpheren Nomura sang with ferocious clamor, especially in the I Will Shake the Heavens number, matched unfortunately by the video's images of cops at a burger joint (the words "I'll have a shake!" came to mind). Soprano Sharla Nafziger and mezzo-soprano Leslie Mutchler did just fine (all of the singers were amplified) but paled in comparison to the creators of these parts, Dawn Upshaw and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

Much of the score percolated with activity and delightful cross-rhythms, shimmering colors from harp, clanging percussion, celesta, and synthesized sounds (not so much the scratchy, arpeggiated solo violin at the opening of the second half). The brass swelled the sound with vast crescendi, matched by confidently square blocks of sound from the mostly entirely volunteer chorus (not all of the group's roster of singers). There was audible discomfort in the ensemble in several movements, as particularly complex textures pulled apart at the seams. That sense of labored, anxious struggle was also visible, in Scribner's nervously tapping foot and the furiously nodding heads of the chorus at ragged entrances. The Children's Chorus of Washington, superbly trained by director Joan Gregoryk, waited patiently two hours to perform only in the final number, and they sang with angelic, radiant sound, as the vast orchestral fabric evaporated to just a single guitar.

Members of the Choral Arts Society of Washington will perform next month in a rare program of Liszt's vocal music (part of the meeting of the American Liszt Society) at the National Gallery of Art (June 1, 6:30 pm). The group will also take part in the London Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mahler's eighth symphony, under the baton of Valery Gergiev (June 9 and 10), in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

The Washington Choral Arts Society in Dvořák’s Stabat Mater

Thanks go to Robert R. Reilly, music critic for CRISIS and author of the delectable Surprised by Beauty, from whom comes this review of The Washington Choral Arts Society's performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater.

Dvořák, Stabat Mater, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Sawallisch / Benacková, Wenkel, Dvorsky, Rootering (released September 30, 1992) Supraphon

The Washington Post advertisement for the 3:00 PM Palm Sunday concert at the Kennedy Center enticed us with “unforgettable melodies and lush orchestration” in Antonin Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, performed by the Choral Arts Society Choir and Orchestra, under conductor Norman Scribner. And that is what was delivered.

But is that what the music is about? This hour and a half work is one of the greatest of the many musical settings of the medieval poem depicting Mary’s pierced heart on Good Friday and the pleas of intercession made through it. Dealing with the death of his three children in less than two years, Dvořák drew upon a nearly unfathomable well of grief to compose this work in 1876-77. In the orchestral introduction, I missed the sense of stabbing pain and stunned grief with which this music should grab us. (Admittedly, my gold standard is the Wolfgang Sawallisch recording with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus on Supraphon.)

However, any lack of feeling fled upon the entry of the galvanized chorus, which immediately caught the emotional pitch of the work. In the first and longest movement, Scribner and forces captured the shock, horror, and nearly inexpressible grief of Mary at the foot of the cross. They recaptured it in the last movement, as well as the triumph of faith in the great concluding Amen.

The occasional problems came in the intervening eight movements. While the chorus excelled and sang with heart, the soloists, who are key in five of the eight middle movements, were having difficulty projecting the emotional content of the work. The notes were all there but, as I repeatedly asked myself, did they believe what they were singing? Did they mean it? To say the least, a sense of conviction is essential in a work like this. With the exception of the some of the gorgeous, committed singing by soprano Kelley Nassief, it did not convey. “Let me weep beside thee . . . Let me be wounded with his blows . . .” are lines that demand a great deal of expressivity. It is in the music, but it has to be performed. Getting the notes right is not enough.

Other Reviews: Ronni Reich, Choral Arts Society (Washington Post, March 18)

I also have to wonder at the strategic error of placing an intermission after the fourth movement. How is one supposed to sustain the sense of elemental sorrow with a trip to the concession stand? Surely, it is not too much to ask an audience to sit for an hour and a half for this masterpiece.

Only a competent performance is needed to deliver the “unforgettable melodies and lush orchestration” promised by the advertisement. However, despite the tepid – and partial – standing ovation it received, this was not an unforgettable performance. The chorus deserved better.

In 1882, Leoš Janáček conducted the Stabat Mater in Brno. Try to imagine that event and perhaps you will know where and how this music should go. In the interim, try to find the 1982 Sawallisch-Czech Philharmic recording, made at a performance commemorating the Nazi massacre at Lidice. They believed. You can hear the difference.

Seven Difficult, Impressive Words From James MacMillan

The United States, country of paradoxes and riddles, has a funny (sometimes sad, at other times perplexing) way of dealing with its religious history. There are politicians who rule as if this were a Christian country when, politically, it isn’t… who are only too happy to exploit religious sentiment; pander to prejudice over reason. There are cultural administrators who develop paroxysms pretending this isn’t a Christian country, although given its cultural history, it is. Easter, however, the drive towards religio-cultural sterility stops for a while – and we can listen to works like Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (as we did last Thursday--and, unlike last year, thankfully without the political-correctness disclaimer) or, intriguingly, the native Scot James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross last Friday at Strathmore.

Although a dozen years old, MacMillan’s work received its premiere performance in the region by Norman Scribner and the Choral Arts Society of Washington (ChASo). Composed for a BBC television series for Holy Week, it has recently gotten a shot in the arm with an – upon second hearing – excellent recording by Polyphony under Stephen Layton on hyperion. The work and the recording have received highest of praise; responding to it in ways I admittedly could not, after an initial hearing. All the more exciting to hear the work live then. If the ChASo and Scribner did not outright deliver the answer to the question as to why (or whether) MacMillan’s Seven last Words is indeed a great work, they handed over the key to it.

Far from being a self-explanatory, easily digestible piece of music (as suggested by a gushing American Record Guide reviewer), these seven words (the setting a choral tradition in line with Schütz, Haydn, and Dubois, who all found very different answers to the challenge of setting seven utterances coming to a total of some four dozen words) are purposely challenging, variously spiky and austere. At times even grating and harsh. But around every corner also lure beautiful and overwhelming moments. Whoever wouldn’t be moved by the outbreak of Pärt-reminiscent, crystalline beauty, showered with sudden rays of sunshine to the words of “Venite adoremus” in the third part, after “Verily, I say unto you…”? It follows and is followed by an ancient plainchant, two basses taking “Ecce Lignum Crucis” above a humming drone, then tenors repeating the same, then mezzos, and finally sopranos. All suggests the sound of what we think music in ancient Palestine might have sounded like. It is here that the music betrays its TV roots; it appeared, even without the knowledge of its first such use, a sophisticated soundtrack for The Passion of the Christ or somesuch other film.

J.MacMillan, Seven Last Words From the Cross et al., S.Layton / Polyphony Hyperion

Alas, here, as throughout the work, there are abrupt changes in vocal, choral, and sometimes orchestral line that don’t make for easy following of the music. Understanding what the composer aims for helps tremendously in appreciating it as music. (Much like you don’t understand a word if someone quickly spoke to you in English when you expected French but, knowing it to be English, naturally understand everything). The edges and corners MacMillan throws into the music ensure that repeated listening produces increasingly greater enjoyment. Rhythmically the work tends to be simple, the tension it builds comes from attacking tonality from all sides, never leaving it but rarely settling in it comfortably. In Bach’s Matthew Passion, Jesus loses his halo (in form of the first orchestra's strings that always accompany him) as he loses faith and utters the words “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani?” In MacMillan, surely influenced by that work, if less audibly so to my ears than other commentators, that scene is set to a dark, sharp-edged music, if not too different from most of the broodingly shimmering rest of the work.

Other Reviews: Grace Jean, Choral Arts Society Bears 'Cross' Nobly (Washington Post, April 17)

The basses growl “I thirst” in the fifth section, the high voices shriek out the Good Friday reproaches. Part six, “It is finished,” displays the kind of doom that every commentator and MacMillan himself, perhaps, hear Shostakovich in – I hear Bernard Herrmann in it and the jagged attacks from the Psycho soundtrack hacking away like scavenging birds on a corpse. It ends with barely breathed, many small whimpers after which the composer specifically asked that no applause take place. Still holding his hands up, Norman Scribner walked off the stage, ensuring only a few ill contained bursts of applause.

Despite its difficulties, despite some curious choices (most of which become more logical upon repeated exposure), despite its stark nature, this may well be the best Anglo-American large-scale sacred composition I have heard since Adams’ El Niño and Lauridsen’s (somewhat sweet) Lux Æterna (both of which The Seven last Words actually predates). Far more inspired, inspiring, and moving than the samba, mambo, salsa-influenced, maracas-touting, semi-mediocre, pseudo-religious Masses and passions that have been performed and recorded in the last decade. The whole being greater than the sum of its parts, the ChASo’s performance made me revisit and thoroughly appreciate the recording with its more precise, clean, and better-defined chorus than this (still very good) live performance offered. The largest quibble: if you have to ask people not to applaud (because it’s such a very meaningful work, so sacred, oh-so moving), it’s probably a sign that you have failed on that account. It’s easily good enough a work to be enthusiastically or quizzically applauded. It’s not good enough for silence, reserved only for the most spiritual of Bruckner or most searing of Mahler performances.

Following MacMillan came the mostly-Mozart Requiem, K. 626; myth-laden, ever popular. Backed by a nearly 200-throat strong choir, it got a smooth, well-oiled, supple, and moving performance from Introitus full circle to Lux Aeterna. The chorus was excellent, the orchestra did what it was asked to do and did it well: no more and, more importantly, no less. The soloists were a fine Elizabeth Keusch (soprano, big voice, pleasant, lightly veiled), an equally fine bass in Mark Risinger, mezzo Linda Maguire (faux-operatic, affected, ineffective), and the overtaxed, lost-sounding tenor John McVeigh, who presented his strapping good looks but sounded like the roasted swan in Carmina Burana. None of these shortcomings prevented Scribner and his forces to give an appropriately moving, beautiful performance to which the crowd gave an enthusiastic reception.