San Francisco Classical Voice

CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW A Bouquet of New American Choral Music

March 25, 2001

By Anna Carol Dudley

The San Francisco Chamber Singers were at the top of their form Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco, singing recent works by four composers, all of whom were present. Under Director Robert Geary, the Chamber Singers have a distinguished record of commissioning and performing new works, especially by American composers.

The premiere of Paul Chihara's Songs of Love and Loss, for chorus and viola, played by Geraldine Walther, was featured. Three folk songs in turn were woven into a pleasing whole, beginning with "Joseph lieber, Joseph mein." This German carol is the tune Brahms gave to the viola in a lullaby for alto. Chihara gives the tune to the chorus, in various permutations, as they sing his lullaby to an anonymous Elizabethan text, "Golden Slumbers," with viola obbligato.

An extended viola fantasy on "Sally Gardens" follows, leading to fragments of choral text and finally to "Barbara Allen." Starting with basses, adding tenors and then the women, the song gradually works up to the full exposition of the original folk tune, bouncing from part to part and subsiding into an affecting ending reproaching hard-hearted Barbara Allen. The choral sound was warm, and Walther played magnificently.

Feline Activity, Noisy Storms, &c.

Another collection of songs incorporating a solo string player was Jacob Avshalomov's Songs from the Goliards, with cellist Victoria Ehrlich. Four settings of 9th and 10th century Latin Goliardic poems, in English translations, encompass a variety of nocturnal moods, from quiet evening scenes by a river to feline activity to love by moonlight to noisy storms. It was fun to hear a translation of the poem about the cat Pangur that differs from the translation used in a solo song by Samuel Barber — fun also to see Geary's sure command of tricky changing meters and to hear various vocal textures as men alternated with women and then all came together, underlined by a lively cello part.

The chorus projected words well, especially in the first quiet song and the last stormy one. Text in the moonlit song was sometimes set so high in the soprano part that it was hard to project. Avshalomov uses the cello expressively, in combination with the chorus and in solo interludes, and Ehrlich played with generous sound and strong rhythmic support.

The concert began with Haiku Settings, the only a cappella group on the program, by Mark Winges, the Chamber Singers' composer-in-residence. Vowel sounds and word fragments alternate with bits of haiku texts. The mood is still, the movement slow, and the tonal framework complex but not dense, as various sections of the chorus are featured and then merge back into accompanying roles. In the absence of rhythmic variety, I would have liked occasionally to hear more articulation, for instance, of repeated consonant sounds, and more distinction between words and nonwords — probably hard to do in the resonant acoustic of this church.

A Rousing Close With Lauridsen

Morten Lauridsen's Mid-Winter Songs, accompanied by piano, brought the concert to a rousing close. Lauridsen set five poems of Robert Graves, each setting a jewel. The singers were moved out of their sections into a mixed grouping, an arrangement that works poorly for more polyphonic music but was used here to stunning effect.

The cycle begins with a choral outburst in "Lament for Pasipha”," which then moves in big blocks of sound. Lauridsen's striking use of rhythm in "Like Snow" is enhanced by a percussive piano part. The piano, under the sure hands of Sue Bohlin, became an equal partner with the chorus in "She Tells Her Love." "Mid-Winter Waking" is homophonic, with the chorus moving as one. "Intercession in Late October" repeatedly uses the striking choral device of starting on a unison and gradually expanding into more and more notes in dissonant chords. Throughout this finely crafted cycle, the composer makes wonderful use of word repetition, rhythmic variety, compelling buildup of chords, and varieties of vocal color.

It was a pleasure to hear four substantial choral works by four accomplished composers who were there to talk about themselves and their music. Robert Geary, his singers, and the guest players deserve high praise for undertaking this program and for doing it so well.

(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University [lecturer emerita] and director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)