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April 18, 2010
Transcendent Evening With Boston Cecilia
“When Britten Met Haydn,” the concert by Boston Cecilia on April 16 at All Saints’ Church, Brookline, was splendid. In an opulent evening, Britten’s Serenade was the standout. Tenor Aaron Sheehan, joined by BSO principal horn James Sommerville and an orchestra of some of Boston’s finest-free lance players, all under Donald Teeters’s baton, delivered a performance of transcendent beauty. Sommerville’s secure handling of the demands of the valve-less horn in Britten’s score was perfection, highlighted by “hand-stopping.” Sheehan negotiated both the linear and acrobatic elements of the tenor line with complete confidence and penetrating artistry.
Leading off the evening was the brief and lovely Haydn’s “Little Organ Mass.” Barbara Bruns’ clear and subtle playing on the sweet positive organ spun a web through the orchestra and chorus, and Haydn’s music soared. Teresa Wakim’s soprano was luminous, and the three other soloists, alto Mary Gerbi, tenor Matthew Anderson, and baritone Ron Williams sounded as though they’d been singing together for years.
Although originally written for soloists only, the conductor took the liberty of redistributing some of the material in Haydn’s Salve Regina to the chorus, which worked beautifully.
Britten’s Cantata Misericordium is a curious, penetrating piece on the Good Samaritan. Williams brought stunning, even shocking power and depth to the role of the traveler, and Aaron Sheehan again got it exactly right with every phrase. The Cecilia chorus, so sweet-voiced in the Haydn pieces, morphed into a crowd of angry power here and kind compassion there, reflecting the events at hand. This is demanding music, but at every moment the confidence of chorus, soloists and orchestra made this the “art that conceals art.” [Click title for full review.]
April 9, 2010
A Force for Music Education Wears His Other Hat: Cortese and New England String Ensemble to Perform Tippett, Vivaldi, Purcell, Benjamin, Britten.
Conductor Federico Cortese is very well known and valued for one niche in classical-music Boston — teaching serious music students; but he is not adequately recognized in another, as Music Director of New England String Ensemble. His upcoming NESE concert on April 17 at Jordan Hall should help rectify that. The program includes Sir Michael [...]
February 12, 2010
BSO- Best Night in 56 Years!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra play more beautifully than they did last night, and I’ve been listening to them in concert for 56 years.
The February 11th program was superbly challenging: Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for orchestra, op. 6; Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs; and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. All of these works have social, personal, and national kinships; all the composers knew each other and each other’s work, and the three works frame the most historically important years of central Europe in the past century. For this listener, Mahler’s 4th with soprano, Renee Fleming was a most incomparably rich and expressive performance. [Click title for full review]
December 14, 2009
Cecilia Sets Bar with Woodman’s Music for Christmas Concerts
The Boston Cecilia seemed to set the bar (as they have done for many years) for this season’s classical Christmas scene. The Cecilia, under the baton of Donald Teeters with Barbara Bruns at the organ, excelled at interpreting the works of local sacred composer and organist, James Woodman. The concluding text of The Midwife’s Tale seem to effervesce from the choir as if being spontaneously contrived as an act of creation or genesis, the essence of the text and message conveyed by Woodman. And this is probably where the concert should have ended.
The Cecilia lost some of its luster in the second half. Most of this came from the 16th-century Spanish carols, although the Spanish pronunciation seemed a bit muddled throughout. This ambitious program probably could have used some trimming. [Click title for full review.]
November 11, 2009
Musica Sacra’s 50th Anniversary Concert Offers Brahms Requiem with The Boston Cecilia
To begin its 50th season, at Jordan Hall on November 8, Musica Sacra chose one of the best-loved works of the romantic choral repertory, Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem.
The opening piece was a special touch: A setting of the same text that Brahms set in the last movement of the German Requiem in an a cappella version by one of his greatest forebears, Heinrich Schütz, performed elegantly by the Musica Sacra singers with a fine balance of voices and a clear, expressive presentation of the text. They were joined by The Boston Cecilia singers for a modern choral work sung unaccompanied, Sleep, set by Eric Whitacre. The extraordinary blend of the voices gave luminous expression to Whitacre’s harmonic colors.
The pièce de résistance of the afternoon was marked by the same qualities of clarity, balance, and expression. Baritone Dana Whiteside was suitably urgent in the tense anticipation of death and the last judgement, while Emily Hindrichs floated the long-breathed, high soprano lines of the movement that Brahms added in memory of his own mother with superb (and welcome) diction. [Click title for full review.]
April 22, 2009
Historic Concert at Methuen Music Hall
The Harvard Musical Association collaborated with The Methuen Memorial Music Hall Association on the re-enactment of the Inauguration of the Great Organ at the Boston Music Hall. (The organ was moved to the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in 1909.) Organists Peter Sykes, Sandra Soderlund, Mark Dwyer, and Brian Jones played the original program of works [...]
December 12, 2008
Christmas in (New) England from Old England
Indescribably ethereal sounds came from a multitude of human voices at the Church of the Advent, where on Friday, December 12, Donald Teeters, The Boston Cecilia and special guests, Exultemus, presented “Christmas in England: Ancient & Modern.”
As with winter in New England, so did these many Christmas songs finally begin to take their toll. That feeling of cabin fever and of wanting a change kept creeping in. Not that there were not beautiful sounds everywhere, but that there were not enough colors in the singing, not enough drama, or life, in a word. [Click title for full review.]
November 22, 2008
Spectrum Singers Offers Tribute to St. Cecilia
The Spectrum Singers, under the direction of John Ehrlich, delivered an outstanding performance at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge on Saturday, November 22. The program, entitled “A Christmas Prelude Celebrating St. Cecilia” offered a wide range of music from the late Renaissance and the 20th Century. The true highlight of the evening was Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, an extremely difficult piece sung with the utmost regard for contrast, shifting with seamless control from the most delicate to powerful passages. Multiple soloists were featured, but soprano Robyn Sanderson and bass Dana Whiteside truly stood out.
Two pieces by Daniel Pinkham were featured on the second half. The first, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, was a bit disorienting. Though sung with accuracy and sensitivity, the piece shifted between a generally modern sounding form of extended-tonality supported by the organ, and a completely different idiom of more “choir-friendly” music. The result was much like listening to a conversation in two different languages. Norman Dello Joio’s To Saint Cecilia, was largely a setting of the same text as the first (and later composed) Daniel Pinkham piece A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. The Dello Joio, both intriguing and impressive, closed the concert with pertinent and powerful lines:
“The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.”
[click on title for full review.]
November 2, 2008
A welcome visitor to Boston: Tokyo String Quartet has lost none of its clarity, precision
We were fortunate to hear some of Haydn’s best movements for string quartet, as well as equally good ones by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, performed by the Tokyo String Quartet at Jordan Hall on November 1. In opus 76, no. 1, we find Haydn in full command of his genius and abilities, and the Tokyo String Quartet rose to the occasion. The quartet’s performance of the Beethoven was energetic and powerful, although a bit too straight-ahead for my tastes. The program concluded with a spirited performance of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in D major, op. 44, no. 1, written in 1838. [Click on title for full review]
September 2, 2008
Last Issue of Dwight’s Journal of Music
[Vol. XLI, no. 1051] Dwight’s Musical Journal SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1881. VALEDICTORY This is the last appearance of the Journal of Music which has so long borne our name. For needed rest, as well as to gain time for the solution of certain practical problems (out of which however, nothing has yet come), this post [...]