CONTENTSCONTRIBUTOR BIOS: Evan Hause, 3 LIVE EVENTS
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Total Mischief/Total TriumphJohn de Clef Piñeiro 'SING NOEL.' Eleanor Daley: Missa Brevis No. 4* (1999) ~~ Jacob Handl: Mirabile Mysterium (16th Cent.); ~~ Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down (1927) ~~ William Billings: A Virgin Unspotted (18th Cent.) ~~ Thomas Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah, Part I (16th Cent.) ~~ Steven Sametz: Noel! (1995) ~~ György Orbán: Daemon Irrepit Callidus (2001); ~~Johann Sebastian Bach: Ich lasse dich nicht (18th Cent.) ~~ Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols (1942) ~~ Alla Borzova: The Ballad of Barnaby** (2000). Various vocal soloists and Emily Toll, Pen Ying Fang, and Susan Jolles. Clara Longstreth, Music Director. New Amsterdam Singers. Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and Immanuel Lutheran Church, New York, N.Y. December 6 and 8, 2002. (*New York première; **world première) Now in its 35th anniversary season, the New Amsterdam Singers, under conductor Clara Longstreth's direction since its inception, offered a holiday potpourri of mixed sacred and secular works of, mostly, the music of the Christmas season, spanning more than four centuries and from half-a-dozen countries. Beginning with the New York première of Canadian composer Eleanor Daley's Missa Brevis No. 4, the NAS gave an effortless performance of this work's successful "celestial" setting of traditional liturgical text in Latin and English. With Jacob Handl's Mirabile Mysterium, the NAS ratcheted the clock back to a sixteenth-century "motet of startling melodic and harmonic complexity," as noted in the program notes. Bethlehem Down catapulted listeners into the early twentieth century, with English-composer-critic-author-and-scholar Peter Warlock's virtual potboiler, which was written in jesting collaboration with his close friend and poet Bruce Blunt in order to finance their "immortal carouse" on Christmas Eve in 1927. Continuing in a more respectful spirit of merry-making, the NAS delivered an engaging rendition of the lively and multi-metered A Virgin Unspotted by noted eighteenth-century American composer William Billings. Strangely inserted in the catalog of works for these twin evenings of celebratory music was the rather somber Lamentations of Jeremiah, Part I by English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis. However, as if in acknowledgment that spirits required immediate lifting, Assistant Conductor Stephen Black led the NAS in a rousing performance of Steven Sametz's highly syncopated Noel! Another somewhat incongruous selection was György Orbán's Daemon Irrepit Callidus that, according to the program notes, "effectively pictures the devil's temptations in sinuous lines." Yet, again, as if to bring things back to where they should be, the first half of the program concluded with the exquisitely beautiful and rhythmically engrossing Ich lasse dich nicht by Bach for double chorus. A Ceremony of Carols, with Susan Jolles at the harp, is a collection of medieval and Renaissance texts set to original melodies by a 29-year-old Benjamin Britten. Harmonically rich and idiomatically fresh, the work presents the listener with a variety of short choral pieces - the most serenely soothing of which is the third, "There Is No Rose," with its almost continuous descending ostinato fifth in the harp's bass register, as upper voices progress through a series of angelic textures and attenuations. The featured world première work for these performances by the NAS was highlighted in a calendar listing of the New Yorker magazine, which noted provocatively that The Ballad of Barnaby was by Alla Borzova "a Russian-American composer with a gift for mischief." Largely based upon an absorbing, eponymous poem by W.H. Auden, Ms. Borzova's work definitively brings the text to life in a vivid musical portrayal of a tumbling artist who comes to recognize his spiritual dimension, gives the best of his performing talent as the best that he has to offer to demonstrate his sincere spiritual devotion, and finally dies doing so. This is the third important theatrical work of Borzova's that I have had the thoroughly satisfying pleasure to experience. Readers of NMC may recall this reviewer's prior rave reviews of Ms. Borzova's other recent theatrical successes (see the review of Mother Said in Vol. 9, No. 3; and the review of The Animal That Drank Up Sound in Vol. 9, No. 4). With Barnaby, Ms. Borzova has again triumphed with a work that is as vibrant in its vitality as it is breathtaking in its brilliance. Her "gift for mischief" is virtuosically displayed throughout this work, both in the musical devices employed and in the captivating sound effects elicited from the singers. Drawing upon the full resources of a large chorus and soloists, and with a seasoned sense for the precise elements that would achieve an integrated and fulfilling listening experience, Ms. Borzova has clearly demonstrated in this work that she has explored, in depth and to great effect, what would impart breadth and impact to what, on a cursory reading, might seem like just an interesting, nicely-constructed poem. As summed up by Ms. Longstreth: "The audience hears the clip-clop of horse's hooves, Gregorian chant, whistling (of a 13th century melody), the ringing of bells, angels, demons, medieval harmonies - even Barnaby's acrobatic leaps. And all this from an a cappella chorus! The piece is theatrical, exuberantly dramatic from beginning to end." And the audience's enthusiastic and sustained ovation was a testament to that assessment. Indeed, Barnaby is a technical and aesthetic tour de force, and much credit goes to the NAS and to Music Director Longstreth for devoting all the care and attention to detail in execution that this new work so richly deserves. |