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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
Coro Hispano
January 14, 2007
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Music With a Mission By Laura Stanfield Prichard
Under the soaring dome of Mission Dolores, Coro Hispano de San Francisco celebrated the 20th anniversary of its Music for Three Kings Day concerts with five centuries of Latin American and Mediterranean music for Epiphany. Founded 33 years ago, the community-based choir and its professional counterpart, the Conjunto Nuevo Mundo, are led by Juan Pedro Gaffney.
Begun as a collaboration between Coro Hispano and the Parish of Mission Dolores, the Dia de los Reyes concerts celebrate music from all over the Spanish-speaking world. Sunday evening’s concert concluded six Bay Area performances. The concert's musical framework was provided by contemporary Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez. Known mainly for his Misa Criolla, Ramírez has explored the connections between the folk idiom of his native country and impressionist harmonies. The six movements of his cantata Navidad Nuestra, for soloists, chorus, and chamber orchestra, were woven through the concert.
Coro Hispano Acoustically, Mission Dolores was particularly well-suited to the a cappella portions of the program, from the sinuous delivery of the Communion antiphon Vox in Rama to Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Christmas responsory O Magnum Mysteruim. The opening votive hymn in the Nahuatl language, Dios Itlaçonanziné, has become a staple of Coro’s repertoire. Led by soprano soloist Jillian Picazo, this late 16th century hymn, by Aztec nobleman Don Fernánado Franco, combines harmonies of the Spanish Renaissance with the language and rhythmic syncopations of the New World. Gaffney has continued to enrich Coro’s repertoire with Latin masterworks, and it is refreshing to hear the language treated appropriately for composers from Spanish-speaking lands. The softened c and voiced s of Spanish Latin are clearly preferable here to the more percussive sounds of standard Italianate pronunciation. It is ironic that many people in the Bay Area musical community consider Coro a folk choir, even though the most substantial pieces included a beautiful three-part Baroque cantata from Lima Cathedral and works for multiple choirs from the cathedrals of Puebla and Valencia. The cantata was influenced by the Venetian cori spezzati, or separated choirs style, with its emphasis on contrasts in dynamics and size of alternating groups, was a typical sound around 1600 in St. Mark’s Cathedral under the Giovanni Gabrieli dynasty. Gaffney placed the largest chorus in the center of the ensemble, surrounded by smaller groups and ably accompanied by a mixed consort of bowed strings, guitar, and bajo drum. The two works by Juan Gutierrez de Padilla (1590-1664), maestro de capilla in Puebla, Mexico, carried the same challenges as a work by Gabrieli, but the hall's acoustics sometimes blurred their complex textures. Gutierrez incorporated contemporary dance rhythms and sudden changes of meter throughout the works, not reserving a simple switch to triple time for symbolic moments in the texts. These are truly Baroque works based on villancicos rather than Gregorian chants, with florid ornamentation of rhythmic, as well as melodic, materials. Standouts among the Conjunto soloists included alto Claire Giovannetti and soprano Cecilia Engelhart López. The most intimate chamber work on the program was a solo cantata for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception by Roque Certi (1683-1760), whose service as maestro for the Vice Royal Court and Lima Cathedral, was contemporaneous with Handel's time in England. Soprano Mimi Ruiz and her small continuo group presented De Aquel Immenso Mar, two Spanish recitatives and da capo arias setting a remarkable Spanish meditation on the metaphorical connections of Mary’s name (Pues para hacer feliz su ierarquia aun las aguas apelan de Marías/Even the ocean’s tidal flow moves by her name: It’s maritime). Cascading scales and arpeggios permeate the work, and Ruiz masterfully ornamented the delicate melodies in a voice described by her text as “su instante puro … de cristal más claro” (so singly pure … of the most clear crystal).
A highlight of the program was a hilarious 17th century villancico for virtuoso men’s trio. Conjunto members Mark Ramon, John Kendall Bailey, and David Varnum raced through Templa, Bras, Ese Psalterio, taking advantage of constantly shifting rhythms and adding pantomime to represent elements of the Nativity story. David Dueñas provided continuo on guitar, alternating chordal accompaniment and deft melodic playing to underscore the humor. Each half of the concert concluded with celebratory, communal music-making, as the audience was invited to sing refrains from some of Gaffney’s best-known arrangements: the festive Nicaraguan villancico Christo de Palacagüina, and a delightful posada setting featuring Aurelio Viscarra as the hesitant host and John Kendall Bailey as José. Gaffney asked the audience to withhold its applause during movements that treated the feast of the Holy Innocents, the most profoundly poignant of the 12 days of the Christmas festival. Gutierrez de Padilla’s Quien se busca las Penas and Ramírez’s La Huida brought tears to the eyes of many audience members. Coro’s future looks bright, both as a community-based folk ensemble and as a leading force in the Bay area’s early music community. Gaffney announced that Coro has been invited to tour Southern California's mission cities in 2008 through the NEA-sponsored American Masterworks series. Upcoming performances include chamber music celebrating the early February festival of Calendaria and the seventh in a series of dance-inspired concerts titled "Fandango!"
(Laura Stanfield Prichard is a faculty member and program editor for the Berkshire Choral Festival and assistant to John Oliver, the conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. She taught musicology and dance history for eight years at CSU-Hayward and San Francisco State University and speaks regularly for the San Francisco Symphony. She currently lives outside Boston.)
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