This is not to suggest, however, that the chorus is fully up to the challenges. Heard Sunday in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, Chora Nova at times stumbled through a journey that began with the pastoral, folklike beauty of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52, and ended in the torrid territory of Orff’s Catulli Carmina.
The first of Brahms’ 18 settings of Georg Daumer’s poetry was a case in point. With the chorus arrayed in a large semicircle around two pianos, the tenors to one side, basses on the other, and the women in between, the men began “Rede, Mädchen, allzu Liebes” (Answer, maiden, that I love too well) in ragged form. Each male section’s massed voices were neither sufficiently strong to predominate over the pianism of Esther Archer and Nalini Ghuman, who were doing all in their power to play softly, nor cohesive enough to do the music justice.
The problems resurfaced in the fifth waltz, “Die grüne Hopfenranke” (The green hop vine’s tendrils), when the men’s attempt at conveying misery came across merely as dispirited vocalism. It was only when the far more convincing women joined in that the music began to convey its meaning. The sopranos had a particularly lovely, wispy innocence about them that complemented Brahms’ choice of Hungarian, Russian, and Polish folk tunes, and the altos balanced them nicely.
Matters fared considerably better in the solo department. Soprano Rita Lilly, who has performed with a host of early music groups, has a strong, cutting voice of considerable freshness that easily soars throughout the hall. She impressed both in her solos and in her considerate duets with mezzo Darcy Krasne (a replacement for countertenor Flight, who was not feeling well enough to sing).
In a curious reversal of vocal stereotypes, tenor Mark Mowry, who looks a bit like Hans Hotter, towered over baritone Paul Murray. While Mowry’s versatile voice, which is capable of endearing sweetness as well as forceful declamation, could also have reigned, he instead sang so softly as to allow Murray to dominate. The resultant imbalance did not give the music its due.
In addition, Flight’s tempos frequently lagged. Perhaps the problem was not the tempos themselves, but rather the chorus’ inability to infuse their singing with inner tension. For whatever reason, Brahms’ waltzes rarely rose above the level of pretty tunes.
Unlikely Goings-On
Did you ever wonder why Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is performed far more frequently than the other two works in his theatrical triptych, Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite? Besides the fact that Catulli Carmina’s implausible play within a play involves a heterosexual woman named “Lesbia,” perhaps the tasty little family-values exchange between the “young men and women” that comes near the start of the work has something to do with it.Dispensing with the Latin, whose translation would make a CD of the work unsalable at Wal-Mart and the object of derision among many Red statespersons, the words go:
O your breasts ... breasts ... supple breasts ... sweetly swelling, like twin apples! My hands are longing. O you thrusting nipples! My hands are longing to grasp them ...O your phallus, your phallus ... phallus ... longing to rise ... the penis, the little penis ... just like a little fish, which desires your little pond.
My hand is longing, Your tail, your little tail is eager, eager! My hand is longing to seize it!
Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.
Were those PG-13 morsels not embarrassing enough to be sung with conviction, choral members and soloists alike were occasionally required to shout out phrases, laugh lecherously, sing at the top of their lungs, and applaud (joined in this case by a few clueless audience members who may have been praying for the debacle to end). Is it necessary to say that the men of Chora Nova could not rise to the occasion? Most of the time, they sounded ridiculous. Whenever timpanist Ben Paysen and the other percussionists got going, their voices were buried. Nor could the men and women together ever produce sounds lusty enough to make the thing work.
Although tenor Mowry darkened his voice and brought impressive weight to his role, he is not the stentorian tenor that Catulli Carmina calls for. Lilly sang well, but looked uncomfortable in her role (who can blame her?). Shortly after she, in the persona of Lesbia, followed Orff’s directions to flee the house in despair by running down the aisle with a look of total consternation, I joined Lesbia and the “old men” who moaned “Ah, me!” and fled, as well.