St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, continues its series of rededication recitals at 7:30 p.m., Friday, May 2, with featured soloist Andrew Kotylo, the parish’s organist and director of music. 

Kotylo’s program will include Joseph Jongen’s “Toccata, Opus 104; Herbert Howells’ “Psalm Prelude, Set 2, No. 1; George Baker’s “Tuba Tune Ragtime;” “Homage to Fritz Kreisler (Londonderry Air)” arranged by Robert Hebble; “Passacaglia in C minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach; John Williams’ “Throne Room Scene and End Titles” from “Star Wars;”  Robert Schumann’s “Canons in B minor and B major;” and “Choralfantasie über ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’” by Max Reger.

St. Paul’s organ, built in 1929, underwent a $2.5 million restoration that was completed last year.

Kotylo has been director of music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church since 2019, when he succeeded Zachary Hemenway. He previously served as organist/choirmaster at the Roman Catholic Basilica of Saint Peter in Columbia, S.C., and was associate director of music at the historic Trinity on the Green Episcopal Church in New Haven, Connecticut. 

Born in Birmingham, New York, Kotylo earned degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied organ with Christopher Young and Larry Smith, and choral conducting with William Jon Gray. 

Recital tickets are $10 to $30 and can be purchased online or at the door.

Double Bill at St. Martin’s 

Tyrone Whiting, the director of music and arts at the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Chestnut Hill, oversaw two distinct yet complementary musical events in observance of the holiest period on the Christian calendar. On Palm Sunday, April 13, the church’s music department presented a rendition of Sir John Stainer’s oratorio, “The Crucifixion” in partnership with Christ Episcopal Church in Old City. Several days later, musicians and singers performed Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater.”

Over the century and a half since Stainer composed “The Crucifixion,” the popularity of the work has risen and fallen and risen again. The acclaim — or not — depends upon the overall view of the arts at any given time in 19th-century Victorian Great Britain, and that viewpoint depends, to some degree, on how Victorian Britain is viewed. When we disparage the British Empire (which at its height controlled one-quarter of earth’s land and population), we tend to view its art as pompous and sentimental. But when we look upon the Empire with amazement, especially while considering Great Britain’s small geography, we see its art (especially its literature) in a much more favorable light.

When I was a kid, “The Crucifixion” was held in very high esteem. It fell out of favor and one rarely heard anything other than the lovely chorus, “God So Loved the World.” Perhaps Whiting’s decision to perform the entire oratorio will launch a full-scale revival. In any case, it was sung effectively Sunday afternoon by the combined choirs of St. Martin’s Church and Christ Episcopal Church. Under Whiting’s direction, and with the help of soloists Michael Miller and Aaron Scarberry, the chorus sang as one well-blended ensemble spanning the music’s gamut of tones and emotions.

Two evenings later, and with the help of the parish’s ensemble-in-residence, the Fairmount String Quartet, Whiting conducted from the chamber organ a moving interpretation of Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” featuring vocal soloists Anika Kildegaard and Marisa Miller. Composed in 1736, only months before the 26-year-old Pergolesi was about to die, the score delineates both the searing poignance of its Latin text as well as a sense of a supernatural realization by the composer that his own life was about to end.

The Latin text is a prayerful sequence cherished and chanted by Catholics throughout the centuries, revealing the suffering experienced by the Blessed Virgin Mary as she watched her divine son, Jesus, die on the cross on Good Friday. It opens: “At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last.”

By scoring the work so simply, Pergolesi focused on the fulfillment of St. Simeon’s prophecy three decades earlier: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul, also.” 

Both Kildegaard and Miller sang with full-throated beauty of tone, eloquent phrasing, and an immaculate blend of their sympathetic timbres. The Fairmount musicians gave resonant support to both vocalists and, as he had in the Stainer, Whiting conducted with strength and sensitivity.

Permit me to mention two disappointments. In “The Crucifixion,” the congregation wasn’t invited to join in on the choral hymns, as was always the tradition in the past. In the “Stabat Mater,” no English translation of the Latin text was offered.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.