|
CHORAL REVIEW A Paradigm of a Vocal Ensemble March 2, 2002
|
By Robert Commanday
The term a cappella, while still meaning choral music unaccompanied, has become fastened to a particular kind, the mostly volunteer groups of up to a dozen singers who specialize primarily in popular music in arrangements. The exemplar of the genre, the highly professional male sextet, known as the “king'singers” came and did their impressive thing at Herbst Theater Friday, under the auspices of San Francisco Performances. For their seventh visit, their program was highly polished, buffed to a shine.
The name refers not to a royal patent but to King's College, Cambridge University, where they were founded in 1968. However, they do have another kind of patent, by virtue perhaps of prescriptive rights, to a particular form of showmanship. Their “shtick” consists in establishing their musical bona fides in the concert pieces, the program's major part, then gradually letting their hair down, one joking move, gesture, expression or utterance at a time. The audience, especially their fans waiting expectantly to see what they'll do this time, crack up, and wind up in the king'singers' back pockets. It's a business old as the movies, old as Edna Mae Oliver, playing the severe maiden aunt role, then going comically mushy and kicking up her heels in the final reels.
The strategy works wonderfully, but in direct proportion to the excellence of their singing and artistry. The king'singers, with their exactness of pitch, blend, balance, nuance, variety of timbres and ensemble, is a paradigm. The programming, also artfully designed, does stop short of challenging the group's considerable skills with truly new music. This program, with the theme title, “Love's Philosophy,” offered some contemporary works, of which the most recent was Libby Larsen's A Lover's Journey. Written for the king'singers, this a cycle of four songs traverses love encounters from adoration (“In the Still Garden” — James Joyce) to passion (Shakespeare's “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?”).
Larsen's songs are romantic settings, capitalizing on the group's range, up to soprano, and its finesse with close-fitted harmonies. The part-writing is smooth and well-crafted, the pieces deftly done.“In the Still Garden” (to a James Joyce poem) uses the opening couplet (in Italian, “O bella bionda, sei come l'onda” ) as a recurring quasi-ostinato accompaniment to the English text. An arch, brisk piece about a cavalier seduction (“St. Valentine's Day”) and a busy whisk of a scherzo, playing rhythmically with one line from The Taming of the Shrew, “And will, you, nill you, I will marry you” are the middle songs of this charming set. Two compositions conveyed the idea of spiritual love, first the opening piece, an incantatory song of Marian worship, Henryck Gorecki's Totus tuus (1987). It was essentially an alternation of short, soft self-contained harmonic phrases, with one affectionate refrain repeated again and again, a private and mystical prayer. Its began on an outcry, "Maria!", the six men producing a sound of startling volume and drive at a level and a touch of drama they would not approach for the rest of this essentially lyrical and chamber program.
The other spiritual work was also intimate but more delicate, the British composer John Tavener's The Lamb," (William Blake's "Little Lamb, who made thee?"). Like Larsen and Gorecki, this British composer did not venture into a particularly contemporary harmonic idiom or rhythmic activity. This was a poetic treatment with serene modal melody treated in subtle two-part counterpoint, the grace of the poem reflected in the gentle fanning of the vocal parts out and then in. Despite the familiarity of Sibelius' musical language, his four little early songs in the set The Beloved, were fresh. It was the effect of the rhythm of the Finnish texts, folk poems of short, simple phrases, tumbling after each other, in an affecting play of temperaments, the persuasive tenor solos by Paul Phoenix. Typically, the king'singers sang a set of madrigals, two by Thomas Morley, Thomas Weelkes' "Four Arms, Two Necks, One Wreathing," sung twice too slowly for romantic effect, the exquisite "Valle che de lamente miei" by de Wert and Monteverdi's "Si ch'io vorrei morire." The play of the lines and tight points of expressive dissonance in the Monteverdi were gripping. The two countertenors, David Hurley and Robin Tyson, sing what are in effect soprano and high alto parts flawlessly, the purity of those lines crucial to the king'singers' excellence in such repertory.
The seriousness of this principal part of the program was leavened by urbane introductions of the music from the stage. A different singer spoke about each group of songs, the audience was gradually introduced to the personalities. By the time the king'singers got into the lighter repertory, "Chanson d'amour," "Plaisir d'amour," Hoagy Carmichael's "Lazy Bones" and "Up A Lazy River, and the serious "Walking Down That Lonesome Road," bass Stephen Connolly and baritone Gabriel Crouch could start acting up, the program ending on king'sfun for all. (Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.) ©2002 MRobert Commanday, all rights reserved |