San Francisco Classical Voice

Daniel Lesur's Le Cantique des Cantiques closed the first half. It was a pleasure to hear this extended (7 movements, 20-plus minutes) difficult but lush work live. However, here the language did not work as well. The French sounded a little too undifferentiated. One could argue that this is a legitimate response to the music, which has a kind of ravishing sensual harmony (or as one of my companions put it: "You could tell he and Messiaen were buddies"). Or it may be that the choir needed to worry more about tuning and blend than words. The choir retuned between movements, a singer going to a nearby piano to play starting pitches.

These are minor quibbles. Musically, the performance was very strong. Tempos that were on the quick side avoided an obvious temptation to linger over the lush chords at the expense of musical line. The character of each movement was clear, and particularly "La Sulamite" ("Why should you dance at the Shulammite? / Dancing like two companies?") really danced. The accelerando at the end of the last movement into the final Alleluia was both musically and dramatically satisfying.

Choir placement choices were interesting and effective. For the entire first half, the choir was at the front of the chancel in two rows. For the Pärt, voice parts were mixed, which worked well for the choral writing in these pieces. For the Lesur, like voices stood together, enhancing the composer's section-against-section or male-against-female vocal writing. For most of the second half of the concert, the choir stood further back in the chancel, in a semicircle under the dome. This formation brought out a more-focused bass sound, as well as allowing soloists to be placed far in front of the choir. That spatial element also served the music well.

Two straightforward text settings opened the second half of the concert: Rakastava (Beloved) by Jean Sibelius, its text based on a Finnish legend, was the oldest work on the program, originally composed in 1893 for men's voices and arranged by the composer for mixed voices in 1898. A bujdosó (The Wanderer) by Béla Bartók, an arrangement of a Hungarian folksong, opened on a warm, slightly-covered alto section, a particularly striking sound.

Bo Holten's Regn og Rusk og Rosenbusk (Mist and Rain and Rosebush), written in 1991, had a great variety of texture. There were two "soloists": a soprano solo on one side, and a solo trio of soprano, alto and tenor on the other. Many different types of sounds (close harmony in the trio, soprano solo melismas, blended chords from the chorus, strident "laughing" from the basses) were put to the service of the Hans Christian Andersen text. Careful balance made this piece really work. The soloists were never overshadowed. The difference between foreground and background was always clear, whatever the vocal texture. Obviously this choir really listens.

Two works by Estonian composer Veijo Tormis closed the program. Both works are folk-influenced, especially in text choice, but demonstrate an individual approach and technique in using folk-like material. In the composer's words: "I feel the need to express the essence of folk music, its spirit, meaning and form." His music uses ostinato and repetition, clear melodic patterns, and harmony that is often simple or stark but never cliché. To this he fuses such modern choral technique as glissandi, spoken sound, dense clusters of notes. The result is powerful and dramatic music.

The musical idea behind A Thrall in Viru is simple: a tenor soloist (Toomas Tohert) declaims the text ; the chorus sings a repeated pattern behind the soloist. The choral pattern changes as the piece progresses. Other tenors join the soloist, one by one, until the whole section has come forward. They then return to the choir, one by one. The text is also uncomplicated: a slave and his master meet in the realm of the dead, where the slave has an easier life and the master a more difficult one.

What this description cannot convey is the effectiveness of the piece and its performance. Again, the blend of the choir and the way the text was delivered made the music convincing. Blend was especially important in the tenor section. As each new person joined the solo line, it seemed like there was a slight color change, rather than the perception of just a new voice added. That and the pattern changes in the chorus kept the music fresh and always drew the listener forward.

The final work, Raua needmide (Curse Upon Iron) was described by the composer as a sort of shamanic spell. The piece was sung again from the front of the chancel. There was a striking difference in vowel coloration in the different syllables of the ostinato. The soloists (Mati Turi and Allan Vurma) sang the long narrative superbly. Balance was always good between soloists and choir, even when loud. The constant underlying regular pulse was deftly handled by the composer so that it never became tiresome or boring. Tõnu Kaljuste's playing of the large, single-headed drum added an additional visceral and visual element to the final piece of the concert.

After richly deserved enthusiasm from the crowd, all that remained was for the choir to sing a simple partsong / folksong (unidentified) as the appropriate encore. This was done as if the preceding work (or indeed, the entire concert) had been no trouble at all.

(Mark Winges is composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Chamber Singers, and is also a free-lance organist. In a former life, he was also a rock 'n roll bass player.)

©2002 Mark Winges, all rights reserved