Devilishly difficult music, angelic voices at St. Paul's

Posted 11/27/15

by Michael Caruso

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, marked the end of the liturgical year with Choral Evensong for the Feast of Christ King Sunday, Nov. 22. The service was preceded …

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Devilishly difficult music, angelic voices at St. Paul's

Posted

by Michael Caruso

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, marked the end of the liturgical year with Choral Evensong for the Feast of Christ King Sunday, Nov. 22. The service was preceded by a solo organ recital featuring Peter Carter. The series of recitals helps raise money for the Ann Stookey Memorial Fund, which supports the maintenance of the church’s 114-rank/6,300 pipe Aeolian-Skinner organ. Carter gave stunning interpretations to music by Durufle, Grigny, Widor and Tournemire.

Parish music director Zach Fritsch-Hemenway led the church’s 60-member adult choir in James MacMillan’s “O Sing unto the Lord a new song,” which opened the service. MacMillan – a rare Scottish Roman Catholic – is one of the leading lights of the international contemporary choral music scene. His music seems to occupy a celestial realm of angelic voices floating above their organ accompaniment. The music is also devilishly difficult, yet the choir under Fritsch-Hemenway’s expert direction and with organ scholar Joseph Russell’s accompaniment offered one of the most sublime readings of any of MacMillan’s scores I’ve ever heard in performance. Immaculate pitch from top to bottom and eloquent phrasing delivered not merely the meaning of the music’s text but the spirit that inspired the words.

William Marsh’s Anglican Chant setting of Psalm 145: “I will magnify thee, O God, my King” and Philip Radcliffe’s setting of the Prayers for Evensong – including the most exquisite choral arrangement of the “Our Father” I’ve ever encountered – were given renditions of equal beauty.

Perhaps the most impressive choral piece of the afternoon, however, was Herbert Howells’ Anthem at the Offertory, “We praise thee, O God.” Boasting ever-changing textures to sonically explicate the text, the score is characterized by inventive yet never intrusive counterpoint. The organ accompaniment is a marvel of colorful support. Fritsch-Hemenway led a performance that hurtled toward the score’s dramatic climax without overwhelming the delicate intimacies featured along the way.

ADVENT VESPERS: Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, wrote the Anglican Liturgy of Evensong for the newly constituted Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. He based it upon the combined Roman Catholic Latin Liturgies of the Hours, Vespers and Compline.

Old St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, located at 4th & Walnut Streets in Society Hill and the city's first Catholic church, will celebrate an Advent Vespers service Sunday, Nov. 29, 4 p.m. Music director Pasquale Montenegro will lead the parish’s Schola Cantorum and the Rittenhouse String Quartet in Bach’s Cantata No. 61, “Now Comes the Savior of the Gentiles,” and Palestrina’s “Magnificat.”

It’s a rare opportunity to experience this ancient liturgy in a historic church.

For more information, call 215-923-1733.

EARLY TCHAIKOVSKY

Gianandrea Noseda guest conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra Nov. 19-21 in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. The concert started 10 minutes late and ended 20 minutes later than suggested in the program, with more than a few patrons leaving the far-from-filled hall before the conclusion of the program’s final work.

That closing score was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G minor (“Winter Daydreams”). Although the First, Second and Third Symphonies are far less frequently performed than the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth, and don’t quite consistently display the supreme command over style and substance that eventually made the Russian master one of the most popular and acclaimed of all classical composers, the First Symphony abounds in beautiful melodies and inventive harmonies.

Noseda drew mostly fine playing from the Philadelphians, especially from the brass and woodwind choirs. There were, however, occasional problems of ensemble within the string section, which on the whole lacked the glistening shimmer Eugene Ormandy (music director from 1936-80) regularly elicited from the strings in the Tchaikovsky canon of symphonies and ballet scores.

The concert opened with Liszt’s “Mazeppa,” the sixth of his symphonic poems. It’s an inferior work, poorly structured and even more poorly scored, but Noseda and the orchestra made the most of its meager charms.

Filling out the program’s first half was Sibelius’ masterful “Violin Concerto in D minor,” with Leonidas Kavakos as the soloist. The Greek-born virtuoso offered a tone of surpassing purity as the expressive voice to delineate the Finnish composer’s chilly tonal landscape.

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