Joyful Voices Raised

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The San Francisco Lyric Chorus and its director, Robert Gurney, have a history of presenting programs both ambitious and unusual, so Saturday night’s concert at San Francisco’s Trinity Episcopal Church was unexpected only in specifics, not in quality. The 17th-century English first half might seem an unlikely pendant to the rarely performed, massive late-19th-century Mass setting following it, but both, in their fashions, were celebrations of the joy of making music.

Framing the first half around Henry Purcell’s well-known 1694 Come Ye Sons of Art, the SFLC in typically enterprising fashion paired it with a much less familiar work by his older contemporary and sometime teacher John Blow. Begin the Song, a St. Cecilia’s Day ode from 1684, was a delightful, compactly written paean to music, with a stunning, wide-ranging bass solo, “Music’s the cordial of a troubled breast,” at its heart. Bass Thomas Hart was excellent here, handling the two-octaves-plus span of the slow arioso with evident ease and dancing nattily through the succeeding triple-time aria with its whiffs of the ciaccona ground bass. Alto Katherine McKee brought a firm, penetrating sound to the opening number and the later duet “Hark! How the waken’d strings,” though at times her voice did not move easily through melismas.

Soprano Mitzie Weiner was bright, vibrant, and ever so slightly wayward of pitch. The solo tenors were two: Kevin Baum, a member of the chorus who sang from within the tenor section, and Colby Roberts, who sang up front with the other soloists. Baum was the lighter and more idiomatic of the two, inflecting his music deftly and taking evident pleasure in his words, while Roberts, despite some distinctly odd vowels, emerged the more powerful and more arresting voice. The chorus’ intelligibility was hampered by Trinity Episcopal’s boomy acoustics, but they, too, seemed to enjoy the words as much as the music, and sang with tight ensemble and firm pitch.

What were modestly billed in the printed program as “selections from” Come Ye Sons of Art proved to be the entire work, minus only the overture (which would have translated poorly to organ). The choral singing was full of lightness and gaiety, the dancelike numbers achieving an exuberant swing. The soloists fared well, Weiner being a standout in the extended “Bid the Virtues, bid the Graces” and in her subsequent duet with Hart, “See Nature rejoicing has shown us the way.” In the famous duet “Sound the trumpet,” though, neither she nor McKee seemed comfortable in all the rapid melisma, as though their voices were too large to be asked to maneuver so quickly.

Imposing Mass by Mrs. Beach

Amy Beach’s Op. 5 Grand Mass, premiered in 1892, seems to have been her first large-scale composition, as well as her first big public success as composer rather than pianist. It’s beyond question an imposing work, even when performed with organ accompaniment as it was Saturday night. (The band demanded by the orchestral version is rather large.) Not only is the scale large — Saturday’s performance ran to 75 minutes — but the choral and solo parts are harmonically tricky and, in places, physically demanding. Beach’s choral writing is generally smooth but occasionally cruel in a way that suggests either inadvertence or inexperience on the part of the 24-year-old composer. The soprano line in particular sometimes shoots up to the highest register with little warning and to no great purpose. The solo writing is grateful and at times showy; the tenor gets a Graduale all to himself, capped with (I think) an extended high B.

If the entire piece were on the level of its best music, this Mass would unquestionably have a more prominent place in the choral repertory than it now does. The opening Kyrie, for one thing, is masterly: serene and comforting and confident in itself, a little like the opening movement of the Brahms Deutsches Requiem in feel. (Beach brings this music back later on, first at the Sanctus, then for the “Dona nobis” of the Agnus Dei, so that it closes the work as well as opens it.) The choral high points, like the end of the Gloria and the “Et resurrexit” of the Credo, work up a good head of steam, while some of the solo sections, like the aforementioned Graduale or the bass’ Benedictus, are immediately attractive.

Elsewhere, though, there’s an inconsequent quality to the writing that becomes irritating over the long haul. Beach has a repertory of modulatory moves that she uses too fondly, moving rapidly from key to key with great skill but not always apparent point. Throw in a taste for sudden, flashy chromaticisms surrounded by much simpler harmonies, and it becomes difficult to grasp the music’s trajectory. Disconcertingly long stretches of the “wordy” Mass texts (the Gloria and the Credo) amble along without seeming to have an object in view. (I’m thinking especially of the long solo-alto stretch in the Gloria beginning at “Gratias agimus tibi” and taking us through to the “Qui tollis.”)

Some of the problems might be mitigated by Beach’s orchestral accompaniment; variety in color and texture could conceivably do a lot. I am now curious to see what her orchestration is like, both in those dilatory passages and in the places where the voices are silent, like the lovely passage in the Agnus Dei leading to the return of the opening music at the “Dona nobis.” The SFLC’s program note claims that the chorus “has chosen to use the keyboard version because it demonstrates Mrs. Beach’s awareness of the beauty and flexibility in the tone color possibilities of a single instrument accompanying a chorus,” which sounds like a transparent piece of bluff. The tremendous expenses of time and money involved in performing the orchestral version were surely (and understandably) the primary factor.

Electronic Organ Assumes Various Guises

Nor can I quite believe that the part that organist Robert Train Adams played Saturday night was meant as an organ part. Piano, possibly. A piano could manage a reasonable facsimile of a strummed harp in the many places it’s required, as an organ of Beach’s day could not. Adams, playing a Johannes electronic organ that is substituting for Trinity Episcopal’s fine Skinner instrument while the latter’s console undergoes repair, had the advantage of a sampled harp stop. It sounded audibly artificial but not bad, while the organ sound proper was quite realistic even at peak volume. And elsewhere Adams did his best to vary his part with inventive registrations.

The chorus was in fine form throughout, well-balanced and blended and almost always in tune with itself through even the trickiest chromaticisms. Overall pitch did drift south, persistently though slowly, but the chorus was good about catching and resetting itself whenever it had a good chance to hear its accompaniment. The soloists, particularly the women, sounded more comfortable here than back in the 17th-century first half, Beach’s lines giving them room to sing on a grander scale. Whatever the weaknesses of some parts of the score, as the consolatory “Dona nobis,” echoing that lovely opening Kyrie, brought the work to a close I felt most grateful to the San Francisco Lyric Chorus for having given me the opportunity to hear it. Terrific work, this, from all concerned.

Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.

Comments

A wonderful experience. I came in just as the music began and stayed in the back for the John Blow piece. The acoustics caused a wash of sound perfectly mixed to surround and engulf me. It was more beautiful than I could stand.

I moved toward the front for the Purcell and found a place where the voices were clear but the sound from the chamber was still rich and full. This venue and chorus made me (almost) want to get back into the grind of classical voice. I could tolerate anything for a musical opportunity like this.

I appreciate the selection of these pieces voiced together. The secular explosions of Blow and Purcell coupled with the near modern, highly secular (within a religious context), extraordinarily American expression of Beach made perfect sense. Each made commentary on the other; each informed the other and substantiated its existence.

I want to thank everybody for the effort to make this music come alive once more and me come alive in hearing it.

- RHR

Posted by R.H.Ray on August 28, 2007 at 5:45 pm