A Weekend of Music - The Vancouver Cantata Singers and pianist Federico Colli

What a musically rewarding weekend in Vancouver this has been: the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ performance of what was probably the Canadian premiere of Amy Beach’s Grand Mass in E-flat Major, and a sensational recital by the wonderful pianist Federico Colli!

 

With all the attention given to women composers these last few years, the music of Amy Beach has not received quite as much attention as that of Florence Price. I know of some of Mrs. Beach’s beautiful piano music, and a piano concerto which gets occasional performances. Certainly, her compositions deserve to be heard, and I am very grateful to Paula Kremer for programming this very beautiful and moving setting of the Mass.

 

Not knowing anything about the composition, I was at first quite surprised to learn (from the excellent notes) that it was composed as early as 1886/1887. To my ears, this would explain the relatively conservative harmonic language of the work, with hints of Mendelssohn in the choral writing, and Schumann in the writing for orchestra, especially the strings. Curiously, the orchestral introduction to the Agnus Dei was harmonically extremely advanced, with passages that even almost foreshadows Wagner’s orchestral writing in the later Ring operas. 

 

I found it intriguing that such a grand work would have no brass instruments, but I subsequent learned that for practical consideration, the orchestral parts had been re-written for chamber orchestra, with the organ very effectively taking over what would have been played by the brass section. 

 

Saturday’s performance was outstanding in every respect. Paula Kremer conducted the choral and orchestral forces with authority, and a palpable sense of commitment and love for the music. Members of the Allegra Chamber Orchestra acquitted themselves more than admirably in the demanding orchestral writing. The solo quartet of Benila Ninan, Melanie Adams, Andy Robb and Peter Alexander, drawn from the choir, delivered performances, both individually and as an ensemble, of great musicality. The Vancouver Cantata Singers is certainly one of the city’s finest choral ensemble. Beach certainly gives equal attention to both soloists and choir, and members of the choir delivered a performance that lived up to their usual very high standards. Particularly memorable and moving for me was Andy Robb’s singing of the Graduale, as well as the performance of the “Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto” section of the Credo.

 

At the Vancouver Playhouse Sunday afternoon, Federico Colli gave a truly scintillating performance of a demanding programme – both performance and audience - of works by Ligeti, Couperin, Prokofiev, and Ravel. Even at his Vancouver debut, it was evident that Colli is one of today’s most original thinking musicians. His performance last Sunday confirmed this initial impression. 

 

Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata was a first hearing for me, and without the aid of a score, I cannot really say more than the fact that he gave a pianistically impregnable and musically committed performance. I am grateful to Colli for this first hearing of the score.

 

In the works by Couperin that followed, Colli dispelled any suggestion that such pieces should be the exclusive domain of the harpsichord. His performance was elegance and musicality personified, with every note like a droplet of water projected to the far reaches of the hall. Prokofiev’s Vision fugitives, Op. 22, presents a wide range of colours and emotions, and Colli very effectively highlighted the distinctive characteristic of each piece within the set. His performance of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin – Ravel’s artistic effort to create something new by returning to the old - was simply sensational, and showed his towering command of the piano, with an infinite palette of colours under his fingers as well as a shimmering sound that emanated from the Steinway. The word that came to mind at the end of the concert was - effervescent.  

 

Perhaps to dispel the mood created by the “serious” programme, Colli played an encore that was pure fun, as well as a pure display of musical showmanship, in the best sense of the word – pianist Fazil Say’s transcription of Mozart’s Rondo alla turca – playing that brought the audience to its feet. It was, as they say, just what we needed. Certainly, Colli is a pianist I would go and hear anytime and anywhere.

 

With summer just around the corner – even though it does not feel like it yet – and the impending conclusion to the current concert season, we can be justly grateful for the many indelible musical experiences we have had this year. I was sad to see that Colli did not have a bigger audience at the Playhouse – this was a performance that deserved to be heard by many. It appears that many arts organizations have more difficulty filling halls since the global pandemic. Perhaps too many people have become too used to enjoying their music at home. I do hope that more and more people would begin to venture out and experience the magic and excitement of live performances – for me, there really is no substitute.

Vancouver Cantata Singers - Christmas Reprise 2022

The Vancouver Cantata Singers’ Christmas Reprise is always the highlight of the Season of Advent. This year, the choir’s 19^th offering of this wonderful tradition, was for me, a real highpoint in the years I have been attending these concerts.

 

The concert opens with, appropriately, In the Dark Night, a Ukrainian Lullaby, featuring the men of the choir. Naturally, to hear this Ukrainian work evoking the beauty of the Christ child hits an emotional chord, considering the trauma and destruction that the country had been faced with this past year. Both in this work and the next, Judith Weir’s My Guardian Angel, featuring the women of the choir, remind us of the vocal excellence of this choral ensemble.

 

As ever, the VCS’s Christmas Reprise offers traditional Christmas works, albeit in new arrangements, as well as pieces that are heard less often. Mendelssohn’s Weihnachten, Orlando di Lasso’s difficult Bone Jesu, verbum Patris, and Sweelinck’s Hodie Christus natus est, were particularly euphonious, and truly demonstrates the choir’s sensitivity to text, and the ensemble’s absolutely uniformity in diction and enunciation. The fast-moving Ding Dong! Merrily on High and the Carol of the Bells show off the group’s virtuosity. In Carol of the Bells, the women of the choir especially sang with an exhilarating lightness, and uncannily evokes the timbre of the bells. 

 

There were of course timeless works that we know and love, like See Amid the Winter’s Snow, O Tannenbaum, and Silent Night, all in beautiful arrangements, in performances that truly remind us that “Christ is born in Bethlehem.” All these, and the two different arrangements of Ave Maria – one by Nathaniel Dett and the other by Franz Biebl (a favourite of the choir’s, I think), transport us away from the hustle and bustle that come with December. 

 

Saturday’s concert once again establishes the Vancouver Cantata Singers, under Artistic Director Paula Kremer, as the Vancouver’s premiere choral ensemble. What a treasure we have in our very own city!

 

The full house at Vancouver’s Holy Rosary Cathedral reminds me that, in spite of all we hear about living in a post-Christian world, in spite of the world’s every effort to push Christmas to the margins of our society and our consciousness, that people still want to be reminded of the love of God made manifest in Christ, the Trinitarian love of God, and the mystical body of Christ.

 

And that there has to be more to Christmas than finishing our shopping in time.

 

 

Light of Humanity

In spite of the horrors of finding parking in downtown Vancouver – an Iranian protest, Elton John’s concert and a hockey game were going on at the same time – the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ opening concert of their season reminded us that this group is truly one of the jewels in our city vibrant choral scene.

 

The programme is “ecumenical”, with music that drew inspiration from Aboriginal sources (The Gift by Russell Wallace), the great Catholic choral tradition (Versa est in luctum by Alonso Lobo and a Kyrie setting by Larry Nickel), and the Ismali heritage (Nur: Reflections on Light, by Hussein Janmohamed). In addition, there were music by Tracy Wong – Antara - drawing from the words of Malaysian writer Hohd Tauid, Benjamin Britten’s anti-war Advance Democracy, Craig Galbraith’s Lux humanitas, which draws from a variety of text sources, and the work that served as the centerpiece of the entire concert, as well as giving the concert its title. 

 

The final work, This is My Song, with lyrics set to Sibelius’ Finlandia, became for me especially meaningful and poignant, with so many displaced people everywhere in the world – Iran, Ukraine, China, and Hong Kong, to name just a few - persecuted because of their political or religious beliefs. 

 

Artistic Director Paula Kremer returned to conduct the choir, and brought to the music a depth, subtlety and flexibility of sound. The voices of the choir, as well as the solo singers featured, remain strong and blended beautifully from first note to last. 

 

We welcome back Ms. Kremer and wish her continuing good health, and many more years of music-making with this outstanding group of singers.

 

Resumption of Concert Life

It was with a tremendous feeling of excitement as I attended the first concerts in Vancouver since the pandemic. Even the smaller audiences and socially distanced seating could not detract from the experience of feeling the music as it was being made, without the aid of audio-visual equipment or computer screens.

 

I headed to Christ Church Cathedral to attend the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ concert entitled Silence and Music: Moving Stories and Remembrance, their post-COVID version of their annual Remembrance Day concert. Music Director Paula Kremer returned to lead this outstanding choir in a programme highlighting the emotions of loss and remembrance. 

 

From the opening In Memoriam by Ruth Watson Henderson, the singing of this choir never fails to move one’s senses. Anton Bruckner’s Ave Maria was equally affecting, as was Vaughan Williams’ Silence and Music, with the composer’s unique blend of dissonance. Observing this season of remembrance, the choir performed two perennial favourites – Dave Rosborough’s arrangement of In Flander’s Fields and William Henry Monk’s Abide with Me, as arranged by Leighton, Worthington, Kremer and Rosborough. Soloists Emily Cheung and Sarah McGrath shone in Eriks Esenvalds’ O Salutaris hostia. As always, the acoustics of Christ Church Cathedral lends itself well to the sound of this choir.

 

Certainly, an auspicious beginning to the year’s concert season.

 

Then it was off to the Orpheum Theatre for a piano recital by Behzod Abduraimov, under the auspices of the Vancouver Recital Society. Things got off to a very promising start with two contrasting Scarlatti sonatas, B minor (K. 27) and D major (K. 96), highlighting Abduraimov’s beautiful sound and touch. The D major sonata was particularly effectively realized, evoking almost the sights and sounds of the changing of the guards at the royal palace in Madrid. I wasn’t sure if the repeats for each section was really needed, as the repetition did not really bring new ideas to what had already been so wonderfully played the first time around. 

 

Abduraimov launched into Schumann’s Kreisleriana (Op. 16) with a whirlwind of a tempo, but I was uncertain if that really added to the tension called for with composer’s instruction of Äuberst bewegt. Moreover, the opening tempo made it almost impossible to really observe Schumann’s Etwas bewegter in the Intermezzo II. For me, it was in the more intimate sections of the work, for instance, movement 2, 4, and 6. Paradoxically, the pianist’s facility at the piano took away some of the contrast and tension of the stormier sections of the work. It was a reading of Schumann’s luminous score that underscores the artist’s pianism and beauty of sound rather than the kaleidoscopic colours as well as the shifting between light and shadow that make this music so moving, or taking us into the composer’s inner world.

 

Abduraimov’s rendition of Mussorgski’s Bilder einer Ausstellung (Pictures at an Exhibition) was spectacular, stunning and superhuman, harking back to the interpretations of Horowitz and Richter. This young man is born to play this work. Although it is now difficult to erase from one’s mind the sounds of Ravel’s masterful orchestration, but the young artist somehow made the score almost more colourful than it would have been possible with an entire orchestra. Even with the number of outstanding pianists today, Abduraimov’s virtuosity is nothing less than astounding. In Bydlo, he achieved an incredible buildup and excitement, that the climax was simply overwhelming. But it was more than virtuoso playing, but his ability to bring out the unique character of each “picture” that made his performance so memorable. I would, however, have loved to ask the artist why he skipped the Promenade immediately before Limoges. His playing of Catabombae and Con mortuis in lingua mortua was positively spooky. The sound he got out of the beautiful Steinway (courtesy of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra) toward the end of Das Bogatyr-Tor filled the cavernous space of the Orpheum, no small achievement indeed. This was certainly a performance of Pictures at an Exhibition that would be difficult to top. 

 

The afternoon of Sunday, November 14^th brought us a very different kind of recital – guitarist Milos and mandolinist Avi Avital gave a joint recital on the stage of the Vancouver Playhouse. The unlikely combination of the two instruments made for a very effective and sometimes moving performance. I found that Avital’s mandolin playing had greater projection and musicality than Milos’. The pieces by Bach and Philip Glass worked particularly well for the two instruments. Giovanni Sollima’s rhapsodic Prelude for Mandolin Solo sounded soulful and moving under Avital’s hands. Indeed, it was a masterful performance of this relatively new work. I did, however, find Milos’ playing of Albeniz’s justly famous Asturiassomewhat dry and lacking in passion and projection. The real highlight of the afternoon was the premiere of Mathias Duplessy’s three-movement Sonata for Guitar and Mandolin, giving equal prominence to both instruments. The slow middle movement was particularly engaging. A very enjoyable reprieve from the rainy Vancouver afternoon.

 

Although I did have my share of concert at the just-concluded Chopin Competition in Warsaw, it is certainly a good feeling to be able to attend live musical performances in one’s hometown. This weekend’s (sold out) Vancouver debut recital by pianist Federico Colli, presented by The Vancouver Chopin Society, promises to be equally memorable. Looks like the concert season is off to a very healthy start in Vancouver.

 

 

 

A Glorious "Messiah"

Early Music Vancouver’s presentation of Handel’s Messiah was probably the most overwhelmingly spiritual, emotional, and musical experience in all my years of encountering this familiar work. Last Saturday, details I had never heard leapt out from the score under the imaginative and inspiring direction of conductor Ivars Taurins. The Pacific Baroque Orchestra joined forces with the Vancouver Cantata Singers (sounding great under their director Paula Kremer) and four outstanding soloists who delivered a truly indelible and moving musical experience.

The opening Sinfony was played with great energy and a wonderful sense of occasion. When the A section was repeated, rather than merely playing it softer, as is the usual custom, Taurins varied the dynamics and colours a great deal more in the repeat.

I have rarely heard a performance where there was such a merging of the words being sung and the orchestral colours. In “Comfort ye”, tenor Thomas Hobbs mellifluous voice was resting on a sort of cushion of string sound. I liked the conductor’s tempo choice in the aria, “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion”, giving the music a wonderful sense of movement. In the brief prestissimo introduction and the accompaniment to “For he is like a refiner’s fire”, conductor and string players conjured up with those rapid 16^th-notes an effect like flickering flame. In the recitativo accompagnato and aria that follows, the string colours and the way the musicians played those two-note slurs matched perfectly bass Peter Harvey deeply-felt singing of “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth” and “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”. 

In the aria, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd”, the tempo set by Taurins and the way the strings were coloured created a real sense of repose. As well, the brief postlude was truly beautifully played, and echoed the emotions of the words just being sung. In the aria, “He was despised”, the strings played the descending figures with a sense of real sorrow and vulnerability, matching perfectly the strikingly poignant singing of alto Krisztina Szabó. For me, the feeling of the aria was even more deeply felt in the repeat of the A section. There was an incredibly hushed quality in the music at the words, “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. With the words “He gave his back to the smiters”, the attack of the dotted-rhythmic figures made a sound like hitting, evoking the image of Christ’s scourging. Then in the introduction to the bass aria, “Why do the nations so furiously rage together”, Taurins whipped up a real sense of urgency in the orchestral playing. 

The solo voices were uniformly excellent. Joanne Lunn’s singing of the recitatives conveyed a sense of wonder that I found incredibly moving: 

And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them… / And the angel said unto them: Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy… / And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host.

Her singing of the aria, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion” was exhilarating in its lightness as well as its sense of musical pulse. Lunn’s singing of the aria’s many melisma passages was breathtaking. In the aria, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace”, Lunn handsomely handled the subtle shift from G minor to B-flat major in the opening phrases. Kirsztina Szabó’s singing of “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd” truly brought across the overwhelming compassion of the words. Tenor Thomas Hobbs has an acute sense of the timing of the music. In the brief recitative, “He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision”, he delivered the lines with an incredible sense of urgency. Peter Harvey sang the aria, “Why do the nations so furiously rage together” with wonderful energy and a resounding virtuosity. In “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”, he sang this great bass aria with real drama, making use of the brief eighth-note rests (for instance, at four measures after B) to great effect. Yet, in the recitative, “Behold I tell you a mystery” was sung with a confiding tone. 

The players of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra played with their usual high standard. In “The trumpets shall sound”, solo trumpet Alexis Basque shone with his beautiful shaping of phrases as well as its musicality. Having the two trumpets playing from the side of the choral loft during “Glory to God” was an inspired idea - Handel’s instructions are for the trumpeters to play “from a distance and rather softly.”

Last month’s Remembrance Day concert confirmed the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ status as one of the city’s finest choral groups. In that concert as well as for this past weekend’s Messiah performance, the group sang with their usual musicality, but also with intelligence and imagination. The singers responded to the lively tempo in “And the glory the glory of the Lord” and sang with amazing lightness and agility. In “And He shall purify” and in “All we like sheep”, the melismata were sung with a silken smoothness. In “And He shall purify”, there was a purity of sound and a lightness of texture.  There was a genuine feeling of exhilaration in “For unto us a Child is born”. The chorus “Surely, surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” was delivered with great energy and power. In “And with His stripes we are healed” the choir sang the music with varied, almost instrument-like, articulation, and a wonderful flexibility. There was an appropriately mocking quality and a suitable disjointedness in the vocal line, in their singing of “He trusted in God that He would deliver Him”. This disjointed quality of the vocal line also worked to wonderfully dramatic effect in “Let us break their bonds asunder”.  

The justly famous “Hallelujah” chorus was sung with a real sense of occasion, and certainly with the requisite majesty and grandeur. The varied dynamics in the phrase, “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords” added to the drama of the music. The choir sang the opening of “Since by man came death” (Grave) with beautiful blending, an organic wholeness, and gorgeous tone quality. I loved the slight decrescendo at the ending (Adagio) of “But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. The singers acquitted themselves admirably in the very exposed opening of “Blessings and honour, glory and pow’r be unto Him”. The great “Amen” was sung with great depth of feeling, giving this already memorable evening a real sense of communion.

I believe it is no exaggeration to say that we live in a post-Christian age. That said, the fact that people flock year after year to performances of Handel’s Messiah tells me that we, all of us, no matter what we profess to believe (or not), are in search of something beyond our everyday existence, something transcendent. For me, this performance of Handel’s masterwork had truly brought these divinely inspired work alive. 

Wishing everyone a joyous Christmas and a new year that will bring a return to peace for so many parts of the world.

                                                                                                            Patrick May

Christmas Reprise - An Appreciation

The Vancouver Cantata Singers is having a banner 60^th anniversary year! After their incandescent and uplifting performance of Handel’s Messiah, they really got us into the joyous spirit of the celebration of Christ’s birth with their 15^th Christmas Reprise at downtown’s Holy Rosary Cathedral.

The choir began and ended their performance with two settings of Ava Maria, the opening one by Bruckner, and the closing one by Franz Biebl. Right from the outset, I was captivated by how these oft repeated words about the Virgin Mary filled the sacred space of the cathedral. Acoustically, I was surprised by how little echo, of “aftersound”, this cavernous space had, which made it very easy for the audience to hear the words being sung.

In terms of repertoire, it ranges from the traditional Christmas favourites (albeit with very original choral settings), like Infant Holy, Infant Lowly, Angels We Have Heard on High, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, and O Little Town of Bethlehem, to Mouton’s Nesciens Mater, Eric Whitacre’s Lux Nova, and Ēriks Ešenvalds’ O Emmanuel.

There were many musical highlights in the afternoon. In Francis Poulenc’s Hodie Christus Natus Est, the traditional French carol Un Flambeau, and the English carol A Virgin Most Pure, there was a beguiling lightness and a sense of “bounce” in the choir’s singing. In A Virgin Most Pure, the male voices also created a beautiful sound palette, effectively supporting the purity of the choir’s female voices. In the very familiar Angels We Have Heard on High, the men provided discreet and effective background for the ladies in their drone-like “accompaniment”.

Some of the works performed provided solo opportunities for many of the choir’s talented singers – David Rosborough in Three Kings, Melanie Adams in I Wonder as I Wander, Sarah McGrath, Emily Cheung, Missy Clarkson and Tiffany Chen in When a Child is Born, Sarah McGrath in In the Bleak Midwinter, Benila Ninan in a rousing and idiomatic performance of Esta Noche Nace un Niño, Andy Booth in O Little Town of Bethlehem, and Erik Kallo in O Emmanuel. All these singers rose to their respective challenges and acquitted themselves wonderfully in their respective solo opportunities. In Esta Noche Nace un Niño, the choir’s imitation of the sounds of a Spanish guitar as well as the Flamenco rhythms were really very effective. In I Wonder as I Wander, the delicious dissonance to the words, “He surely could have had it,” was beautifully sung and perfectly coloured.

For me, one of the most striking works of the afternoon was perhaps Eric Whitacre’s Lux Nova, where the composer successfully and effectively uses sound to evoke light, especially in his writing for the sopranos. The choir sung the words, “Et canunt angeli molliter” as well as “Modo natum”, with such purity and beauty that the effect was nothing short of magical.

Half way through the concert, as daylight slowly receded, it seemed almost as if the music was hastening the arrival of dusk. As in the beginning of the concert, when the choir sang Bruckner’s Ava Maria, the singers filed to either side of the cathedral at the end of their performance, and sung Biebl’s setting of these prayerful words as a final benediction for the afternoon, readying us to face the onslaught of Christmas shoppers and the pounding Muzak of more secular Christmas music. We are thankful for this afternoon of uplifting choral music by this talented choir, led by the equally talented Paula Kremer, for giving us, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, a peace that the world cannot give.

Patrick May

4th Sunday of Advent

Christmas Eve, 2017

Handel's Messiah

Early Music Vancouver presented, incredibly, for the first time Handel’s perennially popular Messiah this weekend. I attended one of four performances of the oratorio, and found the performance both musically satisfying and spiritually uplifting.

For their presentation, EMV had assembled a strong cast consisting of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Vancouver Cantata Singers (under Paula Kremer), soprano Yulia Van Doren, Mezzo-Soprano Krisztina Szabó, Tenor Charles Daniels, and Vancouver’s own Baritone Tyler Duncan, under the direction of Alexander Weimann, who also played the harpsichord.

All four soloists for the performance are outstanding artists. Vocally Van Doren was the strongest of the four, and her singing of many of the florid vocal lines had an effortless quality as well as a palpable feeling of joyfulness.  This was particularly evident in her exhilarating performance of the aria, “Rejoice greatly”. As well, her performance of “I know that my Redeemer liveth” had a simplicity of feeling and a naturalness in delivery. Also memorable was Szabó’s deeply felt singing of the alto aria, “He was despised and rejected”.

To my ears, the soloists all meant what they were singing. Tenor Daniels, in particular, made every word he sang charged with meaning. I felt this especially in the many accompanied recitatives, recitatives, arioso (“Behold, and see if there be any sorrow”) in Part II of the oratorio. In “Why do the nations so furiously rage together”, Duncan delivered the aria with incredible power and dizzying vocal prowess as well as a palpable sense of urgency, and I could not help but feel that the words of the aria are particularly apt for our times.

Kudos to Paula Kremer and the Vancouver Cantata Singers for their always beautifully nuanced, textually clear, and always musical singing really made them one of the evening’s highlights. In some of the choruses, Alexander Weimann set tempi for the singers that are challenging to sing. The choir more than rose to the occasion in the dizzying speed, agility, accuracy, and lightness of their singing. In choruses such as “For unto us a child is born” and “All we like sheep”, there was an incredible feeling of excitement and exhilaration.  In “Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”, the choristers infused the music and the words with an incredible intensity of feeling.

The Pacific Baroque Orchestra has been a cornerstone of Vancouver’s early music scene. Concertmaster Chloe Meyers played with great confidence and beautiful articulation. I particularly enjoyed her playing of the striking violin figures in “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron”.

It was quite a sight to watch conductor and harpsichordist Alexander Weimann in action, sometimes standing or half sitting while playing, keeping all of the performing forces together. The ensemble was impeccable, the coordination between orchestra and singers was always at one with each other, and it was a reading that was intensely beautiful and musical. In the final “Amen”, Handel’s genius and the talent and hard work of the musicians all came together to conclude this incredible evening with a final benediction. For me, it was a performance that very much moved.

It is probably safe to say that we live in a post-Christian age. Yet, year after year, people flock to performances of Handel’s Messiah, and recordings of the oratorio continue to be made and are sold. On top of the emotional association every December of doing “something Christmassy” – and Handel’s Messiah certainly beats another performance of Nutcracker - could it be that we, even when we want to deny it, are in search of something transcendent? Surely when we hear those beautiful and inspired (by the Holy Spirit no less) words being sung, we could not help but be moved?  In the words of Saint Augustine, all of us are “wired” for God, and nothing in our world would ever be able to finally satisfy us  - “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee”.

Perhaps we are, all of us, no matter how much we protest otherwise, in search of an “invasion of grace” into our lives.

Patrick May

December 4, 2017

Liebeslieder

The Vancouver Cantata Singers celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday with a delightful performance of Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer, as well as other songs addressing the subjects of love and infatuation. It was my first experience with the performing space of Vancouver’s Orpheum Annex, next to the historic theatre that is the home of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The inside of the hall is somewhat industrial looking, with a narrow balcony wrapped around the sides and back of the hall.

Artistic director and conductor Paula Kremer and the choir began the concert with Victor Young’s beautiful When I fall in love, arranged by choral conductor Cortland Hultberg. I was immediately captivated by the choir’s immaculate blending of the voices as well as its richness of the sound. I have long loved the lyrical interpretation of this song by singer/pianist Nat King Cole, but the VCS certainly gave us a different and very beautiful “take” on this ever-popular song.

The concert continued with four very different songs of love – Simon Carrington’s arrangement of Robert Burns’ O my love is like a red, red rose, Gustav Holst’s arrangement of I love my love, Healy Willan’s setting of Rise up, my love, my fair one (words from the Song of Songs) and Så tag mit hjerte by Gisli Magnússon. The four very different songs truly and fully exploited (in the best sense of the word) the abilities of this choir. The singers in the VCS rose to the musical and technical challenges admirably. Magical moments there were many, like the true pianissimo the choir achieved in O my love is like a red, red rose, and the delicious dissonance at the end of the line, “(H)e flew into her snow-white arms, and thus replied he”, from I love my love.

In the performance of the Liebeslieder Walzer, the VCS was joined by the Bergmann Piano Duo. As much as the hall worked wonderfully well acoustically for voices, the piano came off sounding rather dry and brittle. I was later informed that the lid of the piano had to be closed in order to balance the sound with the choir. I believed that part of the problem was the clarity in texture that the duo pianists were trying to achieve. Perhaps the problem could have been overcome by a more generous use of the pedal. In any event, the choir as well as the two pianists were one in their interpretation of this, Brahms’ most charming score, with just the right hint of schmaltz. The energy that the performers conveyed in the Hungarian-sounding eleventh waltz and the vigorous twelfth waltz was infectious. All in all, it was a performance as rich as the coffee and chocolate torte from Vienna’s Hotel Sacher!

After the interval, pianists Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann played for us a beautiful rendition of One hand, one heart, from what I consider to be Leonard Bernstein’s greatest work, West Side Story. Here the piano sound had a palpable warmth that was somewhat lacking in the Brahms.

The Bernstein work served as a perfect interlude between the Brahms and the other major work of the concert, Canadian composer John Greer’s Liebesleid-Lieder, a 20^th century homage to the Brahms work and a more contemporary and, I thought, rather cynical look at love. The choir, the solo singers from the group as well as the Bergmann duo, reveled in and perfectly conveyed the humour so evident in the score. Particularly memorable for me were the warmth and richness of the harmony in Live and love, the dark, almost Brahmsian harmony in Reuben’s children, the mock sentimentality in A very short song, written as a Sarabande. It is an extremely clever score that really captured the deadly humour of the poems, especially the ones penned by Dorothy Parker.

The concert ended with Liebeslied, a brief work by American composer John Corigliano. The work consists of the words “I love you”, tossed back and forth between the different sections of the choir, and with some delicious colouratura flourishes sung by solo singers from the choir.

What a wonderful way to celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day!

The Vancouver Cantata Singers is surely in very good hands under the direction of Paula Kremer, and I look forward to more performances by this talented group of singers.