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Reviews
OPERA
Tasty Trio
By Michael Zwiebach
Berkeley Opera
Il Trittico
(1/29/05)
SYMPHONY
Concerti Graziosi
By Charles Barber
San Francisco Symphony
(1/27/05)
SYMPHONY
A Musical Mountain, A Prodigy
By Robert Commanday
Berkeley Symphony
Nigel Armstrong
George Thomson
(1/26/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Odd Sandwich
By David A. Lawrence
Daedalus Quartet
(1/26/05)
RECITAL
'Delicate Songs' Sung 'Operatically'
By Janos Gereben
Schwabacher Artists
(1/30/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
The Inimitable
By Jeff Rosenfeld
Juilliard Quartet members
Heinz Holliger
(1/25/05)
EARLY MUSIC
A Master Well Served
By Rebekah Ahrendt
Magnificat
(1/29/05)
SYMPHONY
Strong Performance
By Anatole Leikin
Santa Cruz Symphony
Jon Nakamatsu
(1/29/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Two For Three, With Grace and Depth
By Robert Commanday
Santa Rosa Symphony Piano Trio
(1/30/05)
CHORAL
Brilliant Debut
By Loretta Notareschi
AVE
(1/30/05)
EARLY MUSIC
Outdoors, Indoors
By Michelle Dulak Thomson
Ciaramella
(1/30/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Music With Momentum
By Jeff Rosenfeld
Broderick Ensemble
Leon Wang
(1/30/05)
MUSIC NEWS
Gunn To Retire From Conservatory Opera
By Janos Gereben
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 1/25/04 Question of the Week
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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Speaking of boxed CD sets, as we were last week, another interesting one of more than historical interest has come over the pike: the Cleveland Orchestra's Robert Shaw Legacy (1956-1997) available from the Cleveland Orchestra ($145). The seven disks span his association there: Bach's St. Matthew Passion recorded in Severance Hall in 1960; Handel's Semele, the complete opera, recorded in 1967; Brahms' German Requiem (1990); and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1995) — the last two works recorded at the Blossom Festival. None of these have been previously released.
His was an extraordinary career, unlike that of any other conductor who rose to prominence, and certainly he had an influence in American choral music more profound and lasting than any other. He had a natural feel for the medium and for music, coming from an unlikely background. Born in Red Bluff, California, the grandson and son of ministers in an evangelical church, Bob Shaw initially headed for the ministry, a religious commitment that informed his lifelong focus on the texts of the choral works he conducted, so that the meaning was felt by the singers and projected. With that, of course, an insistence on clear diction was uppermost.
That comes through most intensely in the set in the Brahms' Requiem performance, given in English, curiously enough, given the late date. It was a work to which he was devoted, having recorded it first in 1947 and then again late in his career with the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus. For me, no major choral work cuts to the core as deeply as this, and Shaw makes it telling. It has the stamp of his conveyance of the spiritual idea, the strength of his personality and sense of shape, line, expression. Dawn Upshaw and William Stone are the soloists, the very large Blossom Festival Chorus at the center of the performance, the Cleveland Orchestra playing with the richness and warmth the work desires.
At Pomona College, Shaw started in conducting with its glee club, where Fred Waring found and hired him to conduct his Glee Club on his radio show (1938-45). Now largely forgotten except by elder choral conductors and singers, Waring had a music publishing business that produced choral arrangements for schools, a big trade then — arrangements in which the texts were underlaid with phonetic "translations" so that, when pronounced as written, the singers would produce a diction that insured both a smooth legato and a rhythmic unison that encouraged a consistent tone on the vowels and diphthongs. Not that system but the choral results remained in his ear when Shaw founded the Collegiate Chorale in New York, 1941, a milestone and perhaps the most important single influence on American choral music.
For the first time, American audiences heard what a choir of trained voices (they were volunteer singers) could sound like, and it was this model that led orchestras — the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and others — to form their own choruses. He introduced the practice of having the singers stand not in sections, but individually mixed, men and women in alternation. The resultant blend and effect that the increased singer independence gave the sound was a jolt to the choral world. He had a way of animating rhythm that drew singers and listeners into the beat and produced propulsive performances. Shaw's Chorale was unlike any of the received traditions, oratorio style singing, or the styles of the British cathedral or Scandinavian choirs. It was distinctively American. Shaw led that Chorale until 1954, and from it founded and directed the Robert Shaw Chorale of 40 professional singers. In 1946, he began preparing choruses for Toscanini and the NBC Symphony broadcasts ("I have at last found the maestro I have been looking for,' Toscanini said at the time) and directing the choruses at Juilliard and the Berkshire Music Center.
During the forties, he began working closely with the musicologist Julius Herford, studying musical styles and history, and in 1950, with Pierre Monteux and Artur Rodzinski, studying orchestral conducting. Curiously enough, if Shaw had any training or command of an instrument, that never came up, although he must have had some piano. 1956 to 1967 was the period of his association with the Cleveland Orchestra memorialized in this CD set; he was was associate conductor to George Szell, whose insistence on thorough knowledge of the score doubtless had a lasting effect on Shaw. From 1967 until 1988, he served as music director of the Atlanta Symphony, and thereafter kept pursuing his lifetime work conducting choruses at workshops and festivals all over. Bob was always a magnet for singers and inspiration like none other. Before he died (January 25, 1999), he had become probably the most honored American musician (forty honorary degrees were just part of it) and likely the one who directly influenced more individual Americans in making music than any other.
A work to which he was committed as deeply as the Brahms, Beethoven's Ninth, is heard in this CD collection in a strong performance that projects a deep expressive commitment and of course, a glorious choral finale as you might expect. The acoustics in the Blossom Music Festival venue for this recording were fairly dead however, there is little room resonance and it sounds like a studio recording of the forties. The St. Matthew Passion is an historical performance in the sense that it represents the full symphonic version that was the norm in 1960, full-fashioned with all the sonority the Cleveland Orchestra can muster, and sung in English. It was certainly not that Shaw was not aware of the performance procedures of Bach's time. His performance of Bach's B minor Mass in New York in 1946 was the first to be given there with a small chorus and orchestra. Also, the recording is incomplete because only one tape machine was used and there are gaps where the tape was changed!
This St. Matthew is authentic in spirit, however, Shaw's feeling for the drama in all its meaning and sense of the pace carrying it powerfully. But the performing forces were set up on the Severance Hall stage; the recording does not convey the effect of the division between Chorus and Orchestra I and Chorus and Orchestra II. The soloists were splendid — the late Adele Addison, soprano; Florence Kopleff, contralto; John McCollum, tenor (somewhat forceful); Herbert Beattie, bass; Blake Stern as the Evangelist, and Calvin Marsh as Jesus.
Handel's Semele is a rarity in that Shaw seldom conducted opera, a restraint the program booklet ascribes to his feeling uncomfortable with "public expressions of emotion." This also uses the symphonic forces, and so goes back to the early days of the modern Handel opera revival. Also, the choruses do make it sound like more of an oratorio. Nevertheless, the recitatives and arias are stylish and finely sung. Beverly Sills, in the title role, was still at her peak in 1967, and she sings beautifully. Others are excellent: Helen Vanni and Elaine Bonazzi, mezzo sopranos; Jill Weller, soprano; Thomas Paul and Ara Berberian, basses; Seth McCoy, tenor; and the weak one, Mark Deller, who would not make it among the countertenors active today.
The program booklet gives a live account of Bob Shaw's working style, his approach, his viewpoints, anecdotes, and leaves a good sense of an irrepressible and vital personality. There is, to be sure, a significant discography of Robert Shaw recordings, but this is a special and unique part of the legacy.
The Bay Area, with its 500 choral groups, reflects the health and vitality of the American choral situation as well or better than most metropolitan regions. And there are composers here feeding the repertory with fresh music. One of these is Herbert Bielawa, professor of music (retired), San Francisco State University, whose 75th birthday will be celebrated with a concert at the Unitarian Church, Kensington at 7:30 p.m. Sunday , the program including his Piano Concerto, Stone Settings song cycle, Feedback Organ Duo, Cloning Around for Horn and MIDI and Choral Prayers.
Voices, a recent CD of Bielawa's choral and vocal music, features Magen Solomon's San Francisco Choral Artists, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Sharon Paul conducting, and in a set for soprano solo and piano, The Snake and other Creatures, the estimable Susan Narucki (Albany Records, Troy 653). In "Five Rants," to word play poems by Jeannie Pool, Bielawa exploits whimsically the word patter in the scherzo, "A Critical Success." He goes pictorial in a lovely misty piece, "Face to Face" reflecting the mirror image in musical mirroring. He creates a sonorous harmonic continuity in "Life in All" and spins the chorus around and around five words, "You Can't Tell Me Why" against Brooke Aird's active violin obbligatos and winds it up in a fast expostulative domestic litany, "You Drive Me Crazy."
Five animal poems by Emily Dickinson inspired the Bielawa songs that Susan Narucki sings, with Christopher Oldfather at the piano. Charming, lively pieces, the piano writing is distantly allusive of the particular creature without being pictorial, the vocal writing is bright and inventive, Narucki bringing the songs off keenly.
"Earthshine" (to a poem by Diane Ackerman) is a lyrical, descriptive piece, for bass-baritone (Eric Howe) and mixed instrumental quintet. The writing for the instruments I found more inventive and captivating than the vocal line, the setting rather too narrative. Finally, "Dreams," sung by the SF Girls Chorus to five poems by girls from the chorus, accompanied by the eloquent viola playing of Geraldine Walther with Dwight Okamura at the piano. The melodic lines are finely wrought, appealing, the writing for the girls' voices mellifluous and graceful, their singing clear and true. I wished only for a variety in the register, less dominance by the soprano part. Warmth and shading, nuancing were lacking, too straight at you, compromising the charm that should be there.
Withall, Voices is a fine portfolio of fresh and original choral music.
(Robert P. Commanday, 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.)
©2005 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved
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