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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
March 16, 2007
It was during Episode Nine - "The ant, an introduction" - of Series One of Monty Python's Flying Circus that the appalling Arthur Name ("Name by name, but not by nature, that's what I always say") poses the following riddle:
Q; What's brown and sounds like a bell?
A: Dung!
I was (involuntarily) put in mind of this truly frightful pun on Friday evening, as I read the programme note concerning R. Murray Schafer's Gamelan and discovered that, in Bali, the five notes of the pentatonic scale are known as ding, dong, deng, dang and - you guessed - dung.
Schafer's piece is commendably short - you have already read the entire text - and to the point: the point in question being the imitation, by vocal means, of a gamelan. Schafer is far from the first Western composer to be inspired by the sound of the Indonesian percussion orchestras - one can cite music as different as Debussy's Pagodes and Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians - and the piece served as a lively and - naturally - superbly sung introit to the second half of Friday's concert.
The concert opened with Leonard Bernstein's Missa Brevis, hardly the composer's best-known work, but one which should certainly be heard more frequently than it is.
Scored for two countertenors, choir and percussion, the music occasionally confounds one's expectation of the Mass - I am thinking of the very lively settings of the "Benedictus" and "Dona Nobis Pacem" - while at others - the bells which introduce the exuberant "Gloria", for example - it is clearly firmly in the tradition.
Bruce More and his choir gave an excellent performance of the Mass; diction was so good that one could have transcribed the text perfectly, intonation similarly commendable. There were moments of considerable beauty, such as the lovely fugato on "Quit tollis peccata mundi", but the lasting impression is of a infectious vivacity.
I must also mention the splendid contributions of the two countertenors, Jeremy Notheisz and Cairan Ryan, both temporarily stepping outside their normal vocal range (tenor and baritone, respectively).
According to John Waterhouse, in the New Grove, Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia (Songs of prison), constitute not only his "first piece of overt 'protest music'" with an effect "powerfully symbolic of humanity clinging to life amid menacing destructive forces."
Preghere di Maria Stuarda (Prayer of Mary Stuart) is impressively weighty music, but, like the rest of the canti, is rarely heard. One reason is presumably its unusual forces - apart from the choir, Friday's performance included two pianists, seven percussionists and harp; another is doubtless its difficulty.
More directed a marvellous performance of what was, for me, the most satisfying music of the evening, whether it was the slow, inexorable tread of the Dies Irae in the harp and piano, the huge choral climax (almost overwhelming in such a relatively small space) or the haunting fugal treatment of "O, Domine Deus".
Serialism with a human face.
I had not encountered the music of Eric Whitacre before and it is easy to see why it appeals to both choirs and audiences.
Cloudburst, a setting, for choir and percussion, of a poem by Mexican poet (and Nobel laureate) Octavio Paz, closed the programme proper. Its crystalline (when sung this accurately) harmonies were particularly attractive and the onomatopoeic central climax, in which the singers also become percussionists by clapping their hands and snapping their fingers, superb. The final diminuendo - the work ends with gentle finger snaps - was most memorable.
For their (very substantial) encore More and the choir gave us another vivid piece by Whitacre, Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine.
Although measured by the objective face of a clock, the concert was not long, the intensity and the quality of the music-making meant that one did not in any way feel short-changed.
More feels that this is the best-ever incarnation of the Chamber Singers; while I've not heard them all, I am certainly not about to argue with him.
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