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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
Paul Flight November 18, 2006
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Poised to Blossom By Thomas Busse
Saturday’s well-attended concert at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church witnessed the inaugural performance of the aptly named Chora Nova. The origin of this group requires some background information. Most were former members of the Cantabile Choral Guild, formerly known as the Baroque Choral Guild. This group had the odd practice of alternating rehearsals between Palo Alto and the East Bay. Anyone who has driven on a Bay Area bridge knows that the situation couldn’t last. This year, Cantabile dropped the East Bay rehearsals. Many of the East Bay members bundled together to form their own group, and they hired the extremely capable choral conductor Paul Flight to take control. Saturday’s concert, featuring a rare performance of Michael Haydn’s Missa Sancti Heironymi, included members of the Haydn Singers, an ad hoc ensemble of semiprofessional singers Flight has assembled for self-produced concerts since early this year.
The resulting 46-voice, mixed community chorus had a pleasing, well-blended sound that was consistently in tune. The women cultivated a clear, vibrato-free technique appropriate to this music. With time, the ensemble could mature into a fine addition to the pool of Bay Area choruses.
The real strength of the concert was Flight’s well-conceived 60-minute program, performed without intermission. The centerpiece was the Haydn Mass, performed with a band of three trombones, three oboes, two bassoons, and a continuo group supporting the chorus. Timete Dominum, a setting of excerpts from Psalm 33, was performed as an offertory. An astonishing setting of the Marian antiphon Ave Regina Caelorum for double choir was also presented without continuo. Such music is extremely appropriate to a community choir of this caliber, and kudos to Flight and Chora Nova for favoring adventure and not resorting to the same list of tired choral warhorses. Johann Michael Haydn was the younger brother of the now much more famous Franz Joseph. Like his brother, he sang in the men and boys choir of Vienna’s St. Stephens cathedral at a young age, and from there he received training as an organist. Michael Haydn has been known primarily for his church music, as the bulk of his career was spent in church postings in Salzburg. He was a friend and competitor to both Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Missa Sancti Hieronymi dates from its performance in the Salzburg Cathedral in September 1777 — the same month W.A. Mozart left for Mannheim and petitioned the archbishop of Salzburg for release from his appointment. Michael Haydn’s masses fill several volumes, the best of which are better than the average of W.A. Mozart’s. Michael Haydn died in 1806, so 2006 is also a major anniversary year for him. It’s a shame so few groups have used this as an excuse for exploring his works from the beautifully edited German editions.
Chora Nova is still growing into its voice, and Flight often played the performance safe, such as when he chose to have the solo quartet (Rita Lilly, Ruthann Lovetang, Barrie Cowan, and John Bischoff) reinforce the lines of the chorus. With the quartet standing at some distance from the ensemble, the solo voices became disassociated from the full ensemble — a real loss in such contrapuntal music. Quartet entrances were occasionally frenzied and not unified. Soloists had to catch their breath quickly and switch to a more soloistic timbre in order to project over the wind band. Sometimes they were successful, and at other times, barely audible. Chora Nova came into its own in the Ave regina Caelorum, with the soloists integrated back into the chorus. The motet is written in the traditional “Palestrina style” that remained in currency alongside modern styles of church music throughout the 18th century (think of the opening Credo chorus from J.S. Bach’s B-Minor Mass). It is a fantastic piece, and the chorus clearly expressed its passion for the music. The choice also gave the audience a chance to hear the singers' real sound without accompaniment. First Congregational is an extremely live acoustic, and choruses must work especially hard to achieve clarity and audibility over the instruments. Chora Nova’s diction needed exaggeration to become intelligent in the space, as well as some fine shaping to shed legato and add brightness for the sake of clarity. Flight did a nice job of delineating points of imitation and fugal entries, but running lines of music often bled together. For example, the Sanctus contains a somewhat bizarre, running-bass figure in "pleni sunt coeli." In First Congregational, these quick notes became mush. The only way to fix such a situation is to cultivate a detached and articulated sound in the organ and instrumental bass. A chorus of this size would also benefit from more editorial intervention in dynamics. At the end of the Sanctus, Flight indicated a long-held "cel" in excelsis at the final cadence, but he won no bloom from the ensemble. However, in the Ave Regina immediately following, the chorus showed what was possible when it gave more shape to the contrapuntal lines, and departed from its monodynamic. These are nitpicky comments, however. In all, Chora Nova showed the will, ability, and resources to blossom into one of the Bay Area’s finer community choruses. Its first season promises future programs of part-songs and of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers. Let us hope it succeeds.
(Thomas Busse is the founder of San Francisco's City Concert Opera and formerly was employed as the assistant conductor of the San Francisco Bach Choir. He has performed with over 20 professional choruses in the western United States. )
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Paul Flight
