The Music Shines Through

If thoughts of nonprofessional community choruses make you cringe, rest assured: The San Francisco Choral Society is something else. This 200-person chorus, in which people pay for the opportunity to sing in such venues as this concert's Davies Symphony Hall, may not perform on the exalted level of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, but it is nonetheless capable of making beautiful music. Much credit goes to Robert Geary, the society's artistic director since 1995. As the founder of Volti and the Piedmont Boys and Girls Choirs, as well as director of the Golden Gate International Choral Festival, Geary has the ability to nurture the voices of both young and old, which goes hand in hand with his commitment to new music. Hence the impressive number of awards his choruses have received for exploring new repertoire, the 16 high school juniors and seniors who joined the chorus' regular members onstage, and the unique nature of the Choral Society's audition process. Even when singers are not accepted immediately, they are often welcome to perform once they take voice classes or musicianship classes or both. Of course, Geary can do little about the reality that far more women than men have chosen to participate in the enterprise. Even after fleshing out the 28-person tenor section by including at least seven women, neither tenor nor bass sections — not even the sizable alto section — can hold its own against the chorus' 63 truly fine, pure-voiced sopranos. This is not a major issue when the sopranos sing the melody line. But in the case of the Brahms German Requiem, when they hand the melody over to the light-voiced tenors, or when each section enters at a different time singing a different line, only so much of Brahms' intent comes through with clarity. That Geary, with the able assistance of the California Chamber Symphony, was mostly able to transcend such limitations served as ample testimony to both his skill and Brahms' genius. The evening's warm-up, so to speak, came in the form of a short chat between the affably pleasant Diane Nicolini and composer Kirke Mechem. In it we learned that the composer/librettist's two-act opera, Pride and Prejudice, completed just two weeks ago, consists of seven scenes, completely devoid of opera's usual blood and gore. The fresh music we heard in the concert premiere of Act 1, Scene 1 may have emitted the sweet scent of crocuses in spring, but it hardly qualifies as new in the harmonic or rhythmic sense. Indeed, its short, upbeat orchestral introduction — far too short to qualify as an overture per se — brought to mind countless Broadway musicals of the 1940s and '50s.

Promising Soloists

After a somewhat ragged start, marked by unclear enunciation as the tenors went in two directions at once, chorus and music quickly came together. Vocal opportunities for many of the eight gowned and tuxed soloists were too short for fair assessment, but the strikingly agile, free top range and poised confidence of soprano Anja Strauss (Mrs. Bennet) left me eager to hear her tackle the Governess in Oakland Opera Theater's October production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw. The light sweetness of handsome tenor Fernando Tarango (Mr. Bingley) and the verve of mezzo-soprano Alexandra Mena (Elizabeth Bennet) also left me hoping for more. Opportunities for two of the soloists, soprano Nancy Cooke Munn (Charlotte Lucas) and baritone Kenneth Goodson (Mr. Darcy), came with the Brahms. Goodson, who devotes most of his time to serving as an engineering professor at Stanford, has a superbly focused voice of considerable strength and conviction. What he may not possess in resonance and weight down low is more than compensated for by the fineness of his upper range. He is also more than a bit of the showman, transforming his initially dour stage persona into a smiling, confident transmitter of the Lord's word. What saved this quasi-bipolar histrionic transition, complete with outstretched arms, beaming face, and a helluva lot of heavy breathing, from hurtling over the top was the sheer beauty of the voice. After a nervous start, the visibly pregnant Munn quickly got her breathing together. The voice sounds somewhat thin, naive, and soubrettish on the low end, but quickly fills out with impressive volume and maturity as it ascends the scale. What her basically straight tone failed to provide, however, was any sense of the nurturing consolation and light so vital to her solo and the structure of the requiem. If my companion could only think of Schwarzkopf during the soprano solo, he also noted that he had never before been so aware of the beauty of Brahms' instrumental writing in the work. Although the inability of all choral sections to ring out with equal volume played its part, much credit goes to the California Chamber Symphony. Thanks to cellist Elaine Kreston for the eloquence of her short solo, kudos to the violins for their beautiful initial entry in the soprano solo, and a note of caution to curb the searing edge heard at the start of the concluding chorus.