One of the most individual aspects of music in the Bay Area is the incredible number of choral organizations and the variety of repertoire they offer. As of Saturday evening in San Francisco's Trinity Episcopal Church, that pleasure was increased as Richard Sparks directed the premiere concert of Choralis. The choir of 17 experienced singers sang what amounted to a musical name card: a declaration of intent. The program opened with six short works: Javier Busto's setting of the Pater noster, sung in procession onto the altar platform. Then came Antonio Lotti's Crucifixus, Randall Thompson's Felices ter, a Kyrie by Josef Rheinberger, Johann Kuhnau's Tristis est anima mea, and Anton Bruckner's Os justi. Afterward came a highlight, the local premiere of the young Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's small cantata, Canticum Calamitatis Maritmae (Song of a maritime calamity). The program rounded off with John Rutter's Hymn to the Creator of Light, and two settings of O nata lux — one each by Thomas Tallis and Morten Lauridsen. That's a long list, but the performances took but an hour. Enthusiastic applause brought forth one encore: a choral arrangement of Henry Purcell's famous passacaglia, Music for Awhile.
Members of the chorus are drawn from assorted other Bay Area vocal ensembles, and indeed most of the best-known ones. Choralis' balances, musicality of phrasing, and dulcet timbres were first-rate under the experienced Richard Sparks. Sparks is an American who has made a distinguished career, largely in Canada, Seattle, and Sweden. Both in terms of programming and directing, I found his contribution most impressive. It all amounted to a memorable concert experience.
There was so much interesting and unusual music that this reviewer hardly knows where to begin. Easily the most fascinating piece was Mäntyjärvi's memorial to a historical tragedy, the wreck of the ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994. Caught in a storm while sailing from Estonia to Sweden, 852 lives were lost.
Set in Latin, the piece opened with a lyrical solo, a setting of the "May eternal light shine'' prayer from the Requiem Mass. Then came the text of a newscast broadcast over Finnish radio, in Latin. (Latin is so widespread in Finland that once a week an entire newscast is broadcast entirely in the language.) The news section was followed by a large segment of Psalm 107, "They that go down to the sea in ship," also in Latin, and finally a Lux aeterna (Eternal light), performed as from a great distance. The total was moving.
About the only thing in the way of comparison I can think of would be the larger Monteverdi madrigals. The music, while utterly modern, never wandered into extremes of radicalism. Over a tonal foundation, a considerable variety of textures emerged: soloists quietly soaring over soft drones, delicate contrapuntal sections, snippets of whispering words. Best of all, Mäntyjärvi avoided shabby shouting climaxes. His subject was too grieving for that sort of melodramatics.
Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago American and the Asahi Evening News.