S.F. Choral Artists

(A review that got lot in a data migration failure at SFCV_

Review of San Francisco Choral Artists

Saturday, March 27, 2004

St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church

San Francisco

By Lisa Hirsch

What season could possibly be more appropriate than Spring for a concert entitled “Love: Sacred and Profane”? The varieties of love – spiritual, physical, marital, obsessive – were all well-represented in an imaginatively-chosen, challenging, and very beautifully sung program presented by San Francisco Choral Artists, under music director Magen Solomon, on Saturday, March 27, 2004 at St. Gregory’s in San Francisco. 

The 21-voiced group has a special focus on 20^th century music, and 19 of the 25 works performed were written or arranged in the century just past or the century just started, including three world premieres. Some of the modern works reached back to earlier styles: Poulenc’s “Exultate Deo” and Paul Crabtree’s “Mandorla Mea” (one of the premieres) both drew on Renaissance choral writing. William Hawley’s beautiful “Vita de la mia vita” (“Life of my life”), setting a Tasso poem, might be an homage to Monteverdi. Halsey Stevens’s “Go, lovely Rose,” with its loose sense of the bar line, parallel-motion harmonies, and speechlike rhythms, had some of the improvisatory feel of plainchant. 

The concert covered an enormous musical and linguistic range, with works dating back as far as the 16^th century and nine languages from Latin to Basque to Chinese (ten if you count Old English as separate from Modern English!). I wish I’d been able to see the concert twice, considering the breadth of the concert and the complexity of many of the works. The only criticism I could make of SFCA itself – and it is a very small one -- is that their purity of sound and great skill in the classical choral style don’t lend themselves ideally to the languorous sway of Cuban music or the full-throated passion of American spirituals. The group sings with good diction, rhythmic precision, and a well-blended sound in which the listener can nonetheless pick out the individual sections with ease.

The program opened with the plantation song “Gwine Up,” sung with warmth and spirit as a Processional. There followed sections entitled Looking Upward, Heavenly Love, Kissing, Bridging the Sacred and Secular, Earthly Love, Song of Songs, Light and Darkness, and Praise. Solomon provided informative and entertaining commentary on the sections and the composers whose works were in each -- and her commentary provided a sort of aural palette-clearing that allowed the audience to take in the whole program with maximum attention on each work.

The opening sections featured works dedicated to purely spiritual matters. Looking Upward  featured the jaunty, down-home Shaker hymn “Brethren, we have met to worship,” ably arranged by chorister John Kelley; Britten’s “St. Godric’s Hymn,” a fanfare-like prayer to the Virgin Mary; and the rich and compact “Aufblick” (“Looking Upwards”), Hugo Wolf’s setting of an Eichendorff poem. Heavenly Love focused on the more transcendent aspects of humanity’s relationship with God. Russell Burnham’s “The Angels,” a premiere, is lovely setting of a Rilke poem; Messiaen’s “O sacrum convivium!” (“O sacred banquet”) a passionate setting of a metaphorical antiphon relating Christian experience to a feast. The section closed with “Exultate Deo” (“Sing aloud unto God”), Poulenc’s joyous song to God. 

 Religious ecstasy isn’t far removed from physical and emotional love, and that was one of the overarching themes of the evening, particularly in the sections Song of Songs, Kissing, and Bridging the Sacred and Secular.

A mandorla is a symbol of wholeness, and composer Paul Crabtree noted in comments during the concert that “Mandorla Mea” is about experiencing the spiritual through the physical. In Bridging the Sacred and Secular, “Mandorla Mea,” an intense setting of  “Surrender,” a poem by Amelie Rives, was joined by Carlos Surinach’s remarkable “Noche oscura del alma” (“Dark night of the soul”). Surinach sets a central text of  St. John of the Cross in which yearning for love and the beloved plays off yearning for the Beloved (Christ). The music itself is yearning, sometimes mystical and sometimes agitated.

Kissing opened with the brief madrigal “Let him with the kisses of his mouth,” by Richard Allison, setting Song of Songs 1:1-3, and then moved on to the Cuban bolero “Dulce Embeleso” (“Sweet Elation”), by Miguel Matamoros, arranged by Electo Silva. Jonathan Miller’s gorgeous and austere “Let him kiss me” was juxtaposed, brilliantly, with Monteverdi’s famous “Si ch’io vorrei morire” (“Yes, I would like to die”); Monteverdi has never sounded more radical and arresting.

Earthly Love interposed “Vita de la mia vita,” Javier Busto’s “Lurra ama jainkosa” (setting a poem by the important Basque poet Jose Angel Irigarry), “Go, lovely Rose,” and an arrangement of a Chinese song, “Kangding Love Song.” Busto created a surprisingly delicate setting, full of close intervals and chiming ostinato, of an earthy and explicit text. “Kangding Love Song,” arranged by Shi Weilang, acknowledges the reality that a man might want his lovely bride to also be a skilled housewife.

Song of Songs brought two of the evening’s most remarkable settings, with Healey Willan’s efficient but faceless “Rise up, my love, my fair one” in between. “Du bist aller Dinge schoen” (“Thou art above all things fair”), by Melchior Franck, is a most remarkable setting, for sheer beauty and for the repeated statements of “Wie schoen” (“How beautiful”) in reference to the breasts of the beloved. Franck is not far from his great contemporary Heinrich Schuetz in style and quality, and ought to be heard more often. The set ended with Francisco Guerrero’s “Surge, propera, amica mea” (“Rise up, hasten, my love” – the same text as the Willan), a magnificent motet with much polyphonic activity built around five descending and five ascending statements of  the short, repeated phrase (the cantus firmus) “Veni sponsa Christi” (“Come bride of Christ”).. 

After the richness of the Franck and Guerrero, the rest of the works, in the sections Light and Darkness  and Praise, were lighter-textured and less complex in musical design. Barber’s “To Be Sung on the Water,” to a poem by Louise Bogan, murmured along gently and “Yo m’enorami,”a traditional Ladino song set by Paul Ben-Haim, swung with Spanish/Hebrew rhythms. The last of the premieres, by Susan Pierce (a member of the choir), is a lovely, blossoming setting of “Last Poem,” by Robert Desnos; it is written with much assurance, but ends too abruptly – one more musical phrase would balance the whole better.

To close the concert, Solomon chose two settings in praise of God, one from the Jewish tradition, one from the Christian. These were Aharon (cq) Harlap’s muscular “Shiru l’Adonai” (“O sing unto God a new song” and Moses Hogan’s near-spiritual “Elijah Rock.”