San Francisco Classical Voice

CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW

Masterly Ensemble

August 23, 2003

Wendy Hillhouse

Kirk Eichelberger

Robert Geary

By Michael Zwiebach

Choral singing — fortunately — is a community effort. We take that for granted at birthday parties and baseball games. But to see the San Francisco Choral Society, more than 200 singers supported by friends and well-wishers, troop onto the Davies Symphony Hall stage Saturday and hear them sing the Verdi Requiem Mass, was to understand that great art can be made by ordinary humans. The performance benefitted from an excellent quartet of soloists, outstanding contributions from the California Chamber Symphony, and the organizational genius of Robert Geary on the podium. But the chorus was the focus, as it should be. By turns earthy and refined, they embodied Verdi's conception of a worldly community hymning the spiritual and universal.

Verdi dedicated his Requiem Mass to Alessandro Manzoni, an unwitting hero of Risorgimento (Revolutionary) Italy, whose novel, The Betrothed, finally established Tuscan Italian as the main literary language of the peninsula, thus removing one of the roadblocks to national unification. So the piece, with its large choruses, does have a nationalist purpose behind it, and the oft-repeated charge that it is opera in disguise has some truth to it. The Requiem did the work in Italy that the Handel oratorios did in England, or that the performance of Beethoven's Ninth did at the fall of the Berlin wall a decade-and-a-half ago. But that's not the whole point.

Not destined for liturgical use, the Requiem Mass still does embody religious feeling remarkably well. The Dies Irae movement, of course, has many operatic associations, but the preceding Requiem and Kyrie has almost none, and exploits resources that have been tied to religious music for centuries, like a-cappella points of imitation, chanting, and ground bass. All of the later movements, especially the Sanctus and the reprise of the Requiem, require a delicacy that is totally non-operatic and can be ruined by musicians thinking in histrionic terms. If an audience is to experience the full magnitude and power of Verdi's conception, the performers have to get these parts right.

Subtle dynamics

Thanks to Geary and his attentive choristers, even the massive tuttis in the score were managed musically. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the dramatic outburst of the Dies Irae, for nothing is easier to oversing — with the resulting faulty intonation and loose enunciation. Here the Choral Society's numbers really told, and the basses, who lead the way, sang through the heavy orchestral doubling with only enough strain to make the fearful words palpable. As the cries of terror boiled over into melodic sequence, we clearly heard rhythmic and phrasing details which often are passed by with barely a nod. Geary and his basses managed the ritard, which articulates the repeat of this melodic sequence perfectly — just a slight gathering of strength before hurling themselves back into the fray.

Geary obviously had to break his choristers into smaller groups, occasionally, which came through with some expert singing. Particularly memorable were the “huic ergo parce Deus," where the lead women's voices emerged from the general lamentation with a shimmering appeal for mercy, and the Sanctus, where the subsections and the full chorus merged in an uncommonly delicate and clear account of the double fugue. In the Requiem movement, the chorus delivered a range of color and dynamics, progressing from a hushed, hollow sound, through the sudden forte and heavily marked rhythm of "te decet hymnus" to the full warmth of the Kyrie with as much drama as any professional chorus.

Among the evening's soloists, mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse sang with gorgeous tone and appropriate expression. She not only enunciated, but paid attention to the meaning of the words so that, for example, the "Liber scriptus proferetur" did not seem detached from the previous "Dies irae," but rather was the eye of the storm and maintained the energy of the opening. Hillhouse was quite imperious with her authoritarian consonants, full portamento, and forceful gaze and demeanor. By the final majestic descending line of the solo, she seemed as if she were the witnessing Sybil. She was quite a good collaborator, heard what her soloist colleagues were doing, and responded to them.

Able assistance

Karen Anderson took the soprano part and negotiated all of its scariest, exposed moments with aplomb. Her dynamic control in the Libera me was especially fine, and her phrasing was supple and natural. Tenor Richard Johnson showed a well-rounded tenor voice, although he lacked attention to detail and there was not enough contrast in the "Ingemisco," which was too strenuously sung. He was also too heavy in the beginning of the "Hostias." Kirk Eichelberger, the bass, was much more attuned to the words and feelings, though he is soft-voiced and not truly commanding. But he made up for it with finely-spun legato singing and excellent work supporting the ensembles.

The California Chamber Symphony played with beauty of tone throughout, showing that strength is not always in numbers. I found myself wishing for more strings in the tuttis, but at other times, such as the violins' ascent at the end of the Agnus Dei, the sound was simply gorgeous.

It might seem that opening the evening with a short program of Estonian folksong would not be appropriate, but the Tartu Academic Men's Choir, as befits its name, is quite a serious group, with a richly complex and beautifully blended sound that filled Davies Hall. This distinctive sound is so specific that it actually seemed like a separate animal from the sound produced by American choirs.