Reviews:
This year was excellent because we performed it in mixed seating, so
instead of sitting in sections with all basses together, all tenors
together, etc., we sat in mixed quartets, so I was sitting between a
soprano and an alto. It definitely makes the section solos more
challenging, but it's absolutely wonderful for the counterpoint that
Handel uses so effectively. In sections, it's sometimes hard to
realize that you don't currently have the melody, but when the person
next to you is singing it, you get a much better feel for where the
melody is bouncing around.
And it was also fun because this chorus is so on the ball that people
were catching things on the fly, just from the conductor or from each
other. How a particular word was going to end. How to phrase a
certain run. Things like that were just happening organically as we
rehearsed. And the conductor made it easy as well; it was a pretty
good sign that he wanted us to sing louder when he started jumping up
and down waving his hands. It was great!
The performances went off wonderfully both evenings, despite a power
outage just before the second performance. We got our typical
roar from the audience in the bows afterwards; we've gotten a bit
spoiled, but I can't tell you how good it feels to have an
appreciative audience.
Reviews:
Reviews:
Handel Messiah (12/03)
Whee, another Messiah. It's so great doing this piece with this
group. It's got some really virtuosic stuff for the chorus to show
off with. And since we do it almost every year, it takes very little
to pull it together. People new to the chorus get a few extra
rehearsals, but for us returning choristers, we had one rehearsal to
reacquaint ourselves with it, and get the stylistic markings that our
guest conductor, Martin Haselbock, wanted, one rehearsal to nail down
our execution of those stylistic markings, one rehearsal with
Haselbock to check to make sure we were doing what he wanted, one
rehearsal with the orchestra, and then the performance.Faure Requiem (1/04)
The Faure Requiem is a beautiful little piece. Much like the Brahms
Requiem, the chorus is the focus of the piece, with only two and a
half movements devoted to soloists. This particular rendition was
even more chorus-centric, since the two soloists fell unfortunately
ill just before the first performance (we were particularly
disappointed that Barbara Bonney was unable to perform). But the
chorus stepped up and had a great performance. One of the magical
things about the Symphony Chorus is that, while it has the power
inherent in 170 singers, it also has the capability of singing with a
magical hushed quality, an effect that Joshua Kosman, the Chronicle
reviewer, calls "paradoxically potent".
Getty Annabel Lee and Young America (2/04)
Gordon Getty is a well-known composer and philanthropist. This
concert presented the West Coast premiere of Young America, one of his
recent works, as well as Annabel Lee, a piece where he set Poe's poem
to music for men's chorus. The concerts were recorded for later
release on CD, which is exciting for me personally. Annabel Lee is a
pretty little song, and the men of the Chorus sound just amazing
(okay, I'm biased). Young America is interesting; I didn't like it at
first, but it started to grow on me as we sang it more. There's a
couple fantastic violin solos in the middle, which Nadya Tichman
pulled off with her usual verve. Not much more to say than that.
Beethoven Journey (5/04)
As part of the Beethoven
festival this year, they chose to schedule a program consisting of
less well-known works of Beethoven. As Michael put
it, "This concert is everything you wanted to know about Beethoven
but were afraid to ask." The chorus did four songs, there were lots
of little chamber pieces involving various combinations of piano,
winds, and voice, etc. See the
concert page for more details and a link to the
program notes. The various pieces were cute and well-constructed,
but there wasn't a lot of depth to them, in general. The best of the
bunch was a trio for two oboes and an english horn, playing a theme
and variations on an aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni, and that was
mostly because Bill Bennett, the principal oboe of the Symphony is so
amazing.
There were several funny moments, though, especially in Michael's rehearsals. And one more during the second concert. After the first night's concert ran long til 10:30, they decided to shorten it the second evening. In particular, apparently, the union rules were that 10:15pm is when the orchestra members, who are all part of the musicians' union, hit overtime. So this evening, Michael cut his talk short, and they dropped a couple pieces from the second half. They also tightened up entrances and exits, no extra bows for anybody, etc. So we streaked through the program. We ended up finishing the concert at 10:05. Michael takes his bow, goes offstage, they're still clapping, and he comes back on, and says something to the orchestra and they start getting out music. The chorus looks confused, because we didn't prepare an encore. Then he yells to us "Schlusschor" (the finale movement of the concert), and we sing it over again.
I'm convinced that we did an encore because they said offstage "Dammit! We finished at 10:05! We've got the orchestra until 10:15! We can't let them go early - I guess we better do an encore!" The first encore in history prompted by union regulations...
Reviews:
It's a tremendous piece of music, full of wonderful music of all sorts, ending with ten minutes of choral singing where we go from the softest of the soft, to the loudest of the loud, from the bottom of our ranges to the top, with lyrics that stir the soul ("What has passed away must rise again... I will die, so that I will live!"). Michael and the Symphony are in peak form, and it's been a true joy to listen to them perform the first 75 minutes of the symphony each night. I'm really looking forward to the recording that comes out of this - I think it will be absolutely fantastic.
Reviews:
Eric Nehrlich's WWW home page / nehrlich@alum.mit.edu