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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
March 17, 2007
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Celebrating 40 Years of Singing By Anna Carol Dudley
The Peninsula Women's Chorus is celebrating its 40th anniversary this season. On Saturday night in the Stanford Memorial Church it presented four song sets, each including pieces sung in a particular decade and a newly commissioned work, as well. The chorus had commissioned four works for performance during this season. Spoken reminiscences preceded each set.
From its beginnings with Marjorie Rawlins, the chorus has prospered under directors who demanded technical excellence and expressive commitment. It continues to be committed to performing music of its time, singing and commissioning new works. Patricia Hennings presided over the second and third decades and into the fourth. Martín Benvenuto is the capable current director.
Peninsula Women's Chorus The first decade: The chorus developed a tradition, which lasts to this day, of meticulous attention to musical details, memorization of its repertoire, command of several languages, and a strong group spirit. This decade was represented in the program by Schubert's Psalm 23 (sung in German) and Irving Fine's setting of "You are old, Father William" from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A large group of chorus alumnae came onstage from the front rows of the audience to join in the singing of these first two works. After the alumnae retired to the pews, the chorus sang a recent commission, Marta Lambertini's Acrostic, another Lewis Carroll setting — this time, of a poem in which the first letter of each line spells "Alice Liddell," the name of Carroll's original muse. The singers were accompanied by piano, percussion, piccolo, whistles, and even dancers in rustic costumes, choreographed by Mark Foehringer, director of the Teen Dance Company of Mountain View. The poem is ingenious but inconsequential, so it was no great loss that the chorus' tradition of clear diction was honored more in the breach than the observance (though all texts were printed in the program for the edification of the curious). Following this first group, the chorus was mostly off book, and often a cappella, and the words were more intelligible — not an easy feat in the church's reverberant acoustic. The second decade: Manuscripts from a women's "vocal orchestra," formed in a Japanese internment camp in Sumatra during World War II, had been donated to Stanford by a survivor. The Peninsula Women's Chorus took Songs of Survival on tour, singing from the wordless four-part arrangements of orchestra scores. For this concert the chorus sang an arrangement of the Largo from Dvorák's New World Symphony, and the alumnae again joined the current members in singing a song with words, The Captive's Hymn, by Margaret Dryburgh.
The chorus' long collaboration with Kirke Mechem was represented by a nice, unforced performance of a sweet song, "Lydia's Romance," from his new opera, The Newport Rivals. The commissioned work provided in this set, Looking at the Sea, by Chen Yi, was a graceful setting of a nature poem by Cao Cao, embellished with little mordents and moments of humming. The third decade: The chorus, again off book and a cappella, gave a moving performance of Bengt Johansson's setting of Examine Me, a modern translation of Psalm 139. I himmelen (In heaven's hall), a Swedish song arranged by Karin Rehnqvist, featured soloists singing from the balconies — a striking use of the Memorial Church space. Otherwise, Brian Holmes' setting of a poem by Jane Kenyan, was the third commission, an everyday, tonal celebration of quotidian pleasures enjoyed in the fleeting moment. The poet, more than the composer, was well aware that everything could at any moment be otherwise. The fourth decade: Two excellent songs by Veljo Tormis, combining tonality and dissonance, began this set. The fourth commission, Thou famished grave, Stacy Garrop's setting of a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was to my ear the best of the commissioned works, with its interesting counterpoint and its effective repetitions of the opening line. A piano part, played by Susan Soehner, supported the singers without overpowering them. Adding to the festive character of the anniversary concert, Mechem and three of the commissioned composers were in attendance. The concert ended, as it had begun, with the alumnae back on stage with the chorus, all singing Patricia Hennings' artful arrangement of Shenandoah.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculty of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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