Staying musically engaged during a hiatus

Posted on November 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s been ages since I posted here — namely because I had a long spell without any official singing gigs.  There were only three summer concert weekends with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus this year — I had conflicts with two of them, and I ceded the third to my wife (you know, the one whose career is singing… remember, I’m Just Another Bass.)  Fortunately, Holiday Pops is coming up to exercise my vocal chords, and even more fortunately, I’m on the roster for one of my favorite pieces, the Verdi Requiem, this January.

But that meant almost 7 months without being on the stage of Symphony Hall or the Koussevitzky Shed.  When I skip any activity for even a few months, my competency decays.  How can I keep up my singing with no singing goal?  The obvious answer is to take some more lessons, but that’s not sustainable on my pocketbook.  It’s tough, but I’ve found a few activities to help fill the gap.

I had the pleasure of singing with my wife’s church choir for their “music Sunday” in June.  They picked 4 choral pieces and several arias from Mendelssohn’s Elijah, assembled a small (but, it turns out, quite impressive) band together of some strings and woodwinds to cover the orchestral parts, and gathered as many occasional singers from the congregation as possible to put it together in a night of practice.  It’d be false modesty if I told you I wasn’t the strongest bass singer there, especially having sung Elijah before.  But the group was pleasantly balanced and it was a joy to sing.  And I, for one, was happy to get some more classical singing in a formal environment that gave me something to practice.

The other interesting diversion which occupied several months of my time was preparing for Otherworld.  Otherworld is hard to describe succinctly; it’s a non-profit group whose goal is to give ordinary people extraordinary adventures.  I’ve been part of the group for 15 events across some 20 years.  Each event is a massive production held at a 4H camp in Connecticut.  How massive?  Around 80 staff members host about 55 participants in an adventure weekend as they become the heroes of an intricately laid out story.  It’s like walking into a book, or finding yourself an actor in one of those dinner theaters.

In any case, Otherworld has a significant amount of music in it.  There’s a part where singers hidden in the woods gently sing a Taize melody to make a moment feel magical.  There’s a Big Musical Number (think an Elvis movie or Broadway musical, where in the middle of a scene suddenly people break out into song).  This year there was a Barbershop Quartet–I wish I could tell you WHY there was a Barbershop Quartet, but it would involve too many spoilers for the weekend should you ever decide to come (and you should!).  And there was a part where carolers show up and sing, except they’re singing for a holiday that doesn’t exist in our world (a cross between Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

I had the distinct pleasure of being involved in all four of these musical singing endeavors.  While the Taize had been done in past events, the other three were brand new.  I would arrange a medley of Bob Dylan’s Quinn the Eskimo and the 70’s hit Lay a Little Lovin’ On Me, for a group of singers who wouldn’t all be in the same place together until the day of the event.  I worked with three other singers remotely to identify Barbershop songs that we could learn independently and then blend together, again on the day of the event.  And, I had to compose a short holiday carol.  Each of these with a different group of people on staff.

Sound like a nightmare?  Well, the whole experience was quite exhilarating!

While I enjoy arranging music, having done so for past Otherworld events and for a few weddings, it’s by no means my forte–I’ve seen so many others who can arrange music faster and better than I can.  I probably spent about 15-20 hours of time listening to recordings of the music, first casually during commutes, and then more intensely while trying to map out the song and transfer it into Finale the way I was hearing it.  Getting the transitions in the medley was tricky but I was super-excited when I figured out a way to musically handle it.  I did some test recordings of just my voice on all parts to get a sense of whether my arrangement was working.  I switched midway through from all-male back to a mixed chorus.  Then getting the music into the computer and onto paper for the 8 of us I had singing, and making practice recordings where I would delete some of the parts so people could listen to it on their own.  We then got 5 of us who were local into one place to rehearse, and recorded THAT for distribution and practice… overall it was probably a 50 hour labor of love… and it was all for about 3 minutes during the weekend.  The best part?  It came out PERFECTLY.

The Barbershop Quartet was equally challenging.  Having never sung Barbershop before, I received some tutelage from fellow staffer Chris Reichert, whose “Notable Ring” quartet in Austin has won awards in a few regional contests. He recommended some tags, procured some music and learning tracks (which are awesome — left side, just your part; right side, other three parts), and coached all of us about the style: less vibrato, aiming for a ‘ringing’ on sustained chords, emphasizing the ‘sour’ notes whose dissonances drive the music forward, even such logistics as gathering together to find your opening pitch then spreading into a circle and nailing it.  We were worried because when we first got together in person to practice, we discovered that it’s harder to sing your part with three other people who are also trying to learn their part, as opposed to a recording of three solid singers on a learning track.  But with Chris’s coaching, we made it first to barely passable, then quite acceptable, and finally to knock-people’s-socks-off when we performed.  To untrained singers, we were amazing.  But even singers (and at least one participant who sang barbershop), we were top-notch.  Another case where hours put into a labor of love paid off handsomely, even though we were only “on  stage” for a few hours of episodic singing.

The holiday carol required much fewer hours, more of them spent thinking than composing or practicing.  I needed something that sounded Christmas-y but wasn’t a known carol, and that could be learned by a group of about 12 singers with mixed levels of experience singing — just as you might have at a holiday gathering.  For that reason, I quickly ruled out part-singing.  I ended up taking “Joy to the World” and flipping the melody upside down.  That way, the rhythm was known to the singers, the chords (if there were any) would echo other carols, and the tune would sound vaguely familiar to listeners.  I sang it for a group of friends and it had the desired effect.  So we printed up some sheet music and made little caroling books.  I recorded it on the piano and recorded me singing it, and got a copy to everyone in the makeshift chorus.  The only problem?  The singers were too good!  (The scene called for them getting interrupted toward the end of the chorus by a boorish character who thought they weren’t doing a good job, which leads to another character confronting him, and… well, that’s a story for another time.)

All in all, it’s amazing how busy you can make yourself musically if you look for ways to fill the gap.  And now — onto Holiday Pops and the Verdi Requiem!  The Verdi is going to be AWESOME!

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The Schlock of Champions

Posted on May 23, 2012 | 3 comments

Sometimes you gotta get away from the formality of the BSO concerts and embrace the cheese of the Boston Pops. Normally this is reserved for the holidays. But I was fortunate enough to get on the roster for a three night series of Pops concerts called “City of Champions” — a star-studded celebration of Boston’s sports culture.

What do I mean by schlock? Our songs include the star spangled banner, O Fortuna, take me out to the ball game (which has verses?!), Heart from Damn Yankees, to be a football hero, we are the champions, an Olympic fanfare from John Williams… Andre Tippett of Patriots fame is narrating a piece. More guest stars have been promised. The whole thing is just way more fun than anyone should be allowed to have at Symphony Hall.

For instance, as i write this at rehearsal today, we sit behind the Drop kick Murphys as they warmed up. We were warned that the organist from Fenway Park would be “warming up the crowd” before the concert and at intermission on Thursday. We were also told not to be alarmed if we heard the T shirt cannon going off.

First concert is tonight. In typical pops form, we had one rehearsal which was the first time many of us saw the music, and the on stage rehearsal is now. Should be a blast!

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Critical Reviews of the Brahms

Posted on April 7, 2012 | 3 comments

Well, this was another lesson in “don’t put too much stock in the reviewers.”  Our Thursday performance was perhaps one of the better performances I’ve been privileged to be a part of.  Our Friday matinee was also outstanding, though I admit I felt more emotionally connected to the Thursday performance… Fridays was more mechanical, and a little tougher for the chorus to keep the pitch up at the end, no doubt a little vocally weary after singing this twice in 16 hours.

But you wouldn’t believe that based on some of the reviews.

Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe had this to say about the chorus:

And of course the hard-working Tanglewood Festival Chorus was in the spotlight for the entire evening. There were a few moments of wayward pitch, but overall these singers achieved a beautifully warm blend and sang from memory with a musical responsiveness that would be gratifying for any conductor. Certainly, as the response made clear, it was gratifying in the hall.

We initially bristled at the characterization of “a few moments of wayward pitch,” but a few chorus members in the audience dutifully confirmed just that: one or two moments of wavering.  Hardly significant, though, and by all accounts did not detract from the full enjoyment of the piece.  If anything, it’s disappointing what the reviewer did NOT mention: the slavish attention to detail with regard to diction and dynamics that produced a clarity of sound rarely heard in any Brahms Requiem performance.

The next Boston-area review, by David Wright of Boston Classical Review, was just a darn shame.  It practically devolved into insulting us.  He *really* didn’t like the performance, calling it “dull” and “a lugubrious miasma.”  And while many of us considered the soprano good but not great,  he held her up as the bright spot…

…on a night characterized by plodding tempos, lax rhythms, congealed orchestral textures, and choral singing that sounded harsh in forte and fuzzy in the softer dynamics.

Mr. Wright also claimed Dohnányi’s performance lacked in Brahmsian energy and warmth, said the Wie lieblich had no gentle sway to it, and claimed the emotional contrasts of the second movement “were grayed out in Dohnányi’s slack, one-tone-fits-all rendering.”  He further writes:

In fact, the entire performance was a cautionary study in how important a firm rhythmic foundation is, no matter what the music’s mood.  Without it, phrases lost shape and direction, ensemble playing grew shaky, crescendos lacked emotional conviction and became just a dialing-up of sound, the chorus’s tone and diction sagged—and, for the listener, minutes began to seem like hours.

To this, most of us say, “Huh?”  It’s hard to understand whether Mr. Wright was in the same Hall as the rest of us.  I could go through and refute each one of his points (except maybe the sagging tone), as each one of them was countered by the specific praise we heard from sharper, more experienced ears than his: non-roster chorus members attending, native speakers who praised our diction, brass at the BSO, orchestra members, and John Oliver himself.  My guess is that he fell into the same issue that I mentioned at the end of a previous blog post: his favorite interpretation of the Brahms Requiem no doubt indulges in more upbeat tempi, more swells, and [hyper]emotional melodrama.  Yet I still can’t explain his characterization of congealed orchestral textures, fuzzy choral singing, and lack of a rhythmic foundation.  Maybe he sat behind a pole or something.  Shrug.

The last review published online was the most spot on, from my ears, and not just because he said nice things.  Joel Schwindt, of the Boston Musical Intelligencer, wrote:

The combined forces offered a sensitive, supple interpretation of the work’s varied textures and temperaments, and the chorus displayed a remarkable unity of concept in their rendition of the Biblical and secular texts. This high level of unification included an impressive rapport between conductor and chorus, conductor and orchestra, and even the less-frequently-found rapport between chorus and orchestra, all of which was well served by the chorus’s memorization of the work.

He said the soloists were the only disappointment of the evening–not because their performances were poor (“executed their parts skillfully and gracefully”) but because they didn’t adapt their light-hearted vocal style sufficiently to meet the gravitas of Brahms.  He cited their backgrounds: Müller-Brachmann came across as if doing a Schubert song-cycle, and Prohaska resembled her colortura opera roles.  I hadn’t thought of this when hearing them, but I’m convinced he’s correct.

He closes with a movement by movement analysis of the performance, complimenting our performance as an ensemble rather than as chorus + orchestra + conductor.  I’d call it all exceedingly accurate and have no real quibbles with his observations and criticisms:

Soloists aside, the ensemble communicated Brahms’s message of “comfort for the living, rather than the beloved departed” (to paraphrase the composer) in a very moving fashion. A small amount of reticence at the opening of the performance completely vanished by the return of the first movement’s opening music, a moment that what was perhaps the most sublime of the entire evening. If the recapitulation of the first movement was the most sublime, then the return of the opening text in the second movement (“Denn alles fleisch es ist wie Grass/Then all flesh is as the grass”) was certainly the most moving. The ensemble offered a very tender rendition of the simply textured fourth movement, and its promise of eternal blessing after death. The sixth movement had its high and low points: the chorus’s staccato articulation at the opening led to a loss of the “horizontal” qualities of the musical and textual line, though the fluidity and intensity of lines that followed created a very effective buildup to the Vivace of the triumphant, “Tod, wo ist dein Sieg?” (Death, where is your victory?) Dohnányi’s choice of tempo in the Vivace was very exhilarating, though it was generally too fast to allow the chorus effectively to articulate of the syntax of the text. All of these issues disappeared, however, in the group’s exuberant rendition of the movement’s closing fugue. The final movement, “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben” (Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord), offered a touching close to the group’s stirring performance.

It’s telling that Mr. Schwindt’s byline gives his credentials as pursuing a Ph.D. in musicology at Brandeis as well as having vocalist and conductor experience.  It shows in his writing and his analysis of the performance.

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Christoph Von Valentine

Posted on April 5, 2012 | 1 comment

Our conductor is Bobby Valentine.

Bear with me for a second on this analogy, especially you non-Red Sox fans: the new Red Sox manager this year, Bobby Valentine, is seen as a markedly different manager than his predecessor, Terry Francona. Terry “let the players play” because he considered them professionals and figured they knew how best to prepare themselves. He managed gametime decisions and kept the clubhouse moving in the same direction, and let the players police themselves. In contrast, Bobby Valentine has implemented some new policies perceived to be harsher than during Terry’s reign. During the offseason he flew to several players’ homes, even out of the country, to establish a better rapport with them. He’s been emphasizing fundamentals, he’s been all over the place during spring training, he’s been heavily involved—some might even say micromanaging—in every aspect of the Red Sox player’s preparations.

Let’s just say our conductor is not letting the orchestra and chorus figure this out on our own, like Francona did with past Red Sox teams.  In the last three orchestra, rehearsals, Christoph Von Dohnányi has:

  • Stopped the chorus to correct our tuning when he felt it was going flat, to the point where he would have an entire section sans orchestra singing the same two measures until he was satisfied
  • Stopped the chorus to correct our diction, because the consonants were not strong enough for him
  • Asked various orchestra members, by name, to make adjustments. (“Mike, could you give me a little less on the second horn in that measure?”)
  • Given specific (though inaudible) suggestions and criticisms to the soprano soloist, presumably on her diction and the timing of her entrances
  • Told the harpist she was playing a chord too fast for his liking
  • Asked the violists to use short focused strokes, by using his arms to wildly mimic their current bowing technique as all over the place
  • Asked the timpanist to use a shorter stick [edit: other choristers have told me he said either “softer” or “smaller” but some heard “shorter” as well.  Shrug.]
  • Gone back to that timpanist and asked if he had anything between the two sticks he had just tried, for a darker sound
  • Stopped the orchestra several times for not playing more quietly than the chorus was singing
  • Asked the second bassoonist to play a little sharper to fix his chord with the first violins and flutes, which he perceived to be off. (I’m still not completely sure if he was serious or joking when he asked the bassoonist if he was tuned to 41 or 42.  Later someone explained that he meant “441 Hz” which is imperceptibly above the standard A of 440 Hz that modern orchestras tune to.)  [edit: I’m told the orchestra regularly tunes to the higher pitch for a brighter sound.  Best guesses are that this was a polite way of telling the violins and bassoons that they’d better figure out how to stay in tune with each other.]

As a concert goer, it’s easy to forget that most of the work for a world-class conductor does NOT happen on the podium during the concert. The waggle of the maestro’s baton does not control the notes played by the strings, woodwinds, and brass—contrary to what numerous cartoons and at least one Marx Brothers routine might tell you! Sure, he’s holding the ensemble together with his “in-game management,” indicating tangibles like timing and tempo and dynamics and conveying intangibles like interpretation and emotion and drama. But most of that comes from the hard work he does ahead of time setting his expectations.   And that’s built upon the foundation that John Oliver and the chorus prepare before we walk into our first rehearsal with him… call it our own spring training for a piece.  By the time “the season starts” and Coach Von Dohnányi is at the podium, he’s not giving us direction, so much as he’s giving us reminders.

The result, as we’ve discovered, is a clarity of sound and a unity of purpose that few if any of us have experienced before in preparations for a concert. Our dress rehearsal last night for a small crowd of special guests (read: donors) was astounding.

When John Oliver had to take over at the last second for the Missa Solemnis, he was like an interim coach after the previous manager was fired:  he pretty much had no choice but to let the orchestra players play.  He had no time to stamp his interpretation and character on the orchestra; he just had what he had prepared with us in the chorus.  (Fortunately, he was able to manage everything quite well from the podium.)  Christoph has whipped us all into shape, from practicing the fundamentals of German pronunciation to quite specific direction on how he wants us to play and sing.  Now we’re working together as a team to deliver a victorious performance.

Unfortunately for the Red Sox, the jury’s still out on whether Bobby Valentine’s hands-on style is going to improve the Red Sox’s performance this year, especially given the injuries, overpaid talent, and aging superstars on the team. (If opening day is any indication, the team may be in trouble.) Fortunately for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, I don’t know of any injuries, we volunteer so we’re not overpaid, and our “aging superstars” have only improved with experience. Looking forward to a great concert tonight!

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The Christoph von Dohnányi Brahms Requiem

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 5 comments

Okay, okay… THAT was a rehearsal, too.  🙂

Singing yesterday with John was about seeing a familiar face.  Singing tonight was great, but it was hard work.  If yesterday was slipping into a favorite, comfortable pair of slippers, then today was breaking in a new pair of $700 loafers.  (Hat tip to Will for that one.  Also, I clearly don’t spend enough on my shoes.)

So what does the Brahms Requiem according to Maestro Dohnányi sound like?

For one thing, he embraces the concept that this piece is about “philosophy, not belief.”  The German Requiem is more secular in nature than others, given the way it eschews the Latin Mass in favor of vernacular passages from the Luther Bible.  It’s less about the afterlife and those who have died, and more about those of us here now who still live.  That happens to be one of the reasons I really enjoy this Requiem more than some of the others, but I’d never seen that philosophy transferred into the interpretation of the music before.  Christoph’s  overriding direction to us was to make it happy.  Blessed are we who mourn!  We should rejoice in the lives that were led, and embrace those of us still here.  Instead, our tendency has been to sing this like a funeral dirge, with a  lugubrious, dark tone.  Christoph wants none of that, and immediately set to work reversing our somber tone, reminding us that we’re comforting the mourners, reminding them of the good in life.

The other major difference is how particular Maestro is about… well, about everything, really.  The first 10 minutes of rehearsal had us all pretty worried, as Christoph’s correctional slogging, measure by measure, felt like a potential repeat of a long Saturday workout with Maestro Suzuki and the St. John Passion.  He let up a little bit as we settled in, but he still never accepted anything that interfered with the sound he wanted.  (He drilled us basses down to individual poorly tuned notes on one particularly offensive passage.)  I especially liked the way he would have us rehearse the fugues quietly.  Not only did this preserve our voices, it exposed us to flaws in our entrances, pronunciation, note values, and other automatic pilot details that disappear when you’re singing loudly.  It’s definitely a good technique to keep in mind.  (You know, should I ever conduct this piece myself.  Uh-huh.  Right.)

Nowhere was this attention to detail more noticeable than his direction on when dynamics begin and end.  We’ve admittedly gotten a bit lazy on starting and finishing crescendos, and so far we’ve just survived using our musical intelligence to shape the phrase.  But Christoph holds us to what’s printed.  That crescendo you’re making?  It doesn’t start until the third measure.  That decrescendo you didn’t make?  You’ve got to get back down to piano or else you won’t have a place to start the swell in the next two measures.  The whole rehearsal was peppered with corrections like that to what we thought we knew about the ebb and flow of the phrases.

The rest of the differences are really just interesting artistic decisions that zig where previously John zagged.  Like every encounter with great conductors, one walks away with a renewed sense of the textures of the piece, and a new appreciation for passages that might have been swept aside or sung on automatic pilot before. Asking the basses to back off so the altos can be the lead in quiet passages featuring the three lower voices.  Replacing bombastic swells with smarter phrasing that fits the character of the piece.  Emphasizing the counterpoints just as much as the subjects in the fugues.  Changing the basses’ entire fugue entrance from the marcato “Proud, Triumphant!!!”  (written in my score from previous years) to a more reserved, fully legato line that carries through the continuity of the (now much more pronounced) ewigkeit lead in.  Lots of little adjustments like that to alter the textures we’re used to and thereby bring out previously hidden melodies.

It’s… strange, to be tasting the chef’s concoction that has been plated before us.  But he’s a darn good chef, and the requiem he’s serving up tastes fantastic.  I think we all can’t wait to put it all together with the orchestra tomorrow and Wednesday.  Let’s just hope we can keep something in reserve for the actual performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

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The John Oliver Brahms Requiem

Posted on April 2, 2012 | 2 comments

Now, THAT was a rehearsal.

Our chorus had had two weeks of rehearsals with Martin, our rehearsal pianist, and a fine musician and composer on his own… but he’d be the first to admit that he’s not a choral conductor.  If there were questions about interpretation, about specific cutoffs, about rewrites that had been inserted in half the scores (and contradicted in the other half) over the many years of performances, all Martin really had the authority to say was “sing it as written” or “we’ll see what John and Christoph [von Dohnányi] say next week.  As always, those rehearsals were great for [re-]learning the notes and text and fine-tuning or catching up on memorization.  But they barely serve as making music.

Tonight we made music.  Tonight was almost a religious experience for me as we rehearsed down in the chorus room with John Oliver leading us: leaning into the chords and lines, responding to his baton and playing off of his familiar cues, creating a sound that felt fulfilling and rewarding, and making John’s interpretation of the piece come alive.  John even joked about it at one point in the second movement.  He remarked to the basses, “I see you’re familiar with the John Oliver version of this Requiem, because you didn’t do the diminuendo until the last syllable of abgefallen, which is how I like it.”  Oh, we stopped to fix things when they needed to be fixed.  The connectivity of the movements was interrupted by the necessity of mundane comments like “At rehearsal letter K, the baritones should double the tenors” or “What are the tenors singing in the second system”  or “Altos, take out the rest that’s marked and finish with the lower voices so that the subito piano… you know, the one the sopranos aren’t doing (laughter)… comes through.”  He even brought up a debate about whether the “hairpins” written into our scores were accurate, as recent editors were suggesting those swells should be over the entire measure.  It didn’t matter.  For me, pausing for those adjustments did not diminish the feeling of accomplishment just from being a part of that rehearsal.

But what made this non-performance such a special experience for me?  Well, having sung this piece with John once at MIT in the early 90’s, and once out at Tanglewood almost a decade later, I’ve internalized “John’s version of the piece” as my own.  It makes it distracting to listen to any other version, recorded or live, because a tempo will be different, a dynamic won’t be there, a certain character or tone won’t be present… fundamental decisions by the conductor and the choir can create discordances within my memory of “how it’s supposed to go.”  Like hearing a different comedian tell a joke you know — still the same joke, but the retelling of the story, the timing of the punchline, can make the joke unrecognizable or even not funny.

On the drive down this evening, I told my wife, “I will bet you dollars to donuts that John stops us to tell us three things tonight, because we’re not doing them yet.”  Those three things:

  1. He will make a pained look on his face and say “shh shh shh” in the recapitulation of the 4th movement, finally stopping us to say that this second occurrence of the Wie lieblich theme must be “absolutely pianissimo.”
  2. He will make us go back and repeat a very important agogic accent at the end of the Die loben dich immerdar section in the transition to the subito piano because we’re plowing through it without any separation.
  3. He will tell us that the opening of the sixth movement needs to sound like we’re exhausted, like we’re trudging home from work after a long day, carrying a huge burden.

Bingo.  John said all of these things, almost verbatim.  My wife shot me a smile across the room after each one of them.  To be fair, John painted a slightly different picture on the third point–he did use the word “trudging” but he described it as “several overweight pallbearers marching along carrying a coffin with another overweight man inside.”  It’s an amusing mental image, but it’s an important point to convey — that part of the piece is supposed to drive home the human side of the requiem equation, the “this is our place on Earth and we’re pushing through our days here hoping that our work before we die makes it a better place.”

There were many other familiar dynamics, phrases that John motioned to bring out from the texture, ritardandos in all the places I’m expecting them, gestures to tenors and altos on certain sections that are quintessential moments for him… and remind me that yes, THIS is the version of the Brahms Requiem I enjoy.  This rehearsal was my one and only performance of it this year.

Because that’s the shame of it all, really.  Starting tomorrow, at the piano rehearsal, Maestro Dohnányi will begin shaping us to his version of the Brahms Requiem.  I’m sure it will be glorious… full of subtlety and majesty, musically intelligent, and conveying his retelling of perhaps Brahms’ greatest work.  John will reconvene with us in the rehearsal room, and remind us of what Christoph wanted here, and advise us to watch his stentando on this cadence and an accelerando going into a fugue that we hadn’t seen before… and, as always, we will shape ourselves to deliver on a new vision.  We will embody the decisions that Christoph asks for, and I will love singing every minute of it.

But it won’t be my favorite version.

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On to the Brahms Requiem

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 1 comment

Next up in this season’s choral program for me is the Brahms Requiem.   This is getting off the long flight and seeing loved ones waiting at the gate.  This is finding out the final exam has been cancelled.  This is remembering that tomorrow is Christmas morning.  Why?  Because a) I love this piece, and b) I already have it memorized!

Unfortunately, a  quick review has reminded me that I only *think* I have it memorized.  There are a few places where I mumble the German, and a few time values I may have learned incorrectly and never made the adjustment.  Still, for a great piece such as this one, where not only do I know it but I’ve sung it for John Oliver twice before — once at MIT, and once out at Tanglewood — getting reacquainted with this masterpiece has been a wholesome pleasure. 

Last summer when we sang the three short Brahms pieces (Schicksaslied, Nänie, and the Alto Rhapsody), I found myself reminded of the German Requiem because of the cadences, the interplay between orchestra and chorus, the word painting, and just the general sumptuousness of Brahms’s choral writing.   As an added bonus, my wife is also on the same roster, so we’ll get to do this journey together, rather than one of us cheering from the sidelines.  (Her journey will be a little longer, however, as she recently switched back from alto to soprano and isn’t as familiar with the piece as I am.)

First rehearsal is Monday…!

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More Lob Than Ever Gesang Before

Posted on March 12, 2012 | 2 comments

I wrote the following article for the Winter/Spring 2012 TFC Newsletter; now that it’s published I can share it here.  I love writing these!  My last one, for last year’s TFC Newsletter, was on Oedipus Rex.

A good story has exposition, complication, a climax, dénouement, and subsequent resolution. Lobgesang is not a good story. We praised, we re-praised, we reprised the praise, and maybe even re-praised the reprise. Who knew thanking the Lord could border on monotony? Fortunately, through the guidance of John Oliver and the stewardship of choir-favorite Bramwell Tovey, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus added the color and character to bring this magnificent work to life.

Mendelssohn composed this symphony-cantata in 1840 for a festival commemorating the 400th anniversary of the printing press blah blah blah blah. You’ve skipped this paragraph already, haven’t you. You can learn this piece’s background from any of the published reviews or even Wikipedia. So never mind all that historical context—what’s it like to actually learn and sing a piece that the BSO has only performed twice before in its 131 years?

Learning anything for the winter season’s January choral performance is often fraught with peril. It’s difficult to truly devote time to studying music when you’re competing with the assembly line production of Holiday Pops concerts. This year was no exception. What was particularly dastardly, however, is how deceptively simple the piece looked from a casual glance through the score. Hmmm, let’s see… straightforward German, all tonal, predictable harmonic progressions, no crazy rhythms or key changes, reasonable dynamics, some pianissimo singing under the soloists… no problem! Just a few fugues to hash through. The score thus dismissed, we enjoyed our holidays, and set good ol’ Felix aside.

And then the panic started to settle in.

This is actually hard, went the whispers. With no subtlety or obvious dramatic tension in the piece, there were few landmarks (earmarks?) to help us memorize. Familiar passages quoted from Elijah only added to the confusion. And the fugues… oh the fugues. Straightforward enough, yet devilishly irregular—lose your place and you risked a solo entrance. Worse, once you fell off the fugue train, it was pretty tough to get a ticket back on. We began to appreciate the complexity of the simplicity. No, this was not as difficult as the Missa Solemnis, as nervous February roster members would agree. Nevertheless, it was all too easy to underestimate the effort required not only to memorize but also to internalize this Hymn of Praise.

Then there was the matter of singing technique. Where was the line between fortissimo and shouting? How could we overcome the plodding stomp, stomp, stomp of the rather blocky rhythms? How often would we make Livia Racz cringe by forgetting to schwa our unaccented German syllables? We tackled each of these challenges from the very first rehearsals. John urged us to preserve the melodic line of each phrase. Our goal, he told us, was less about volume and power and more about color and tone (and diction!) That said, at times we’d still need to summon a sonorous joy and send it to the back of the Hall, such as when chasing away die Nacht in the triumphant 7th movement.

Choristers who sang for Maestro Tovey in the Berkshires for last summer’s Porgy & Bess often gushed about how great he was to work with: personable, musically knowledgeable, and able to clearly communicate what sound he wanted from us. Those of us experiencing Tovey for the first time were not disappointed. He immediately set to work identifying the moments of drama that were hidden in plain sight, and gave us concrete tempo and dynamics adjustments to highlight them. He added personality to the pedestrian, directing us with words like “warmth” and “beautiful” and “prayerful.” He challenged us to embody the reverence and joy and relief from pain that lay beneath the surface of the text. And he did it all with a wink and a laugh that quickly earned the fierce loyalty of the whole chorus. One couldn’t help but want to sing for him and to deliver what he asked from us. We became committed to his vision of the piece, long before he endeared himself to the group at Saturday’s winter chorus party by joining the jazz band and hitting the dance floor.

Come performance time, Maestro Tovey continued his outstanding leadership at the podium. He was animated, demonstrative, and inviting in his conducting. At no time did the chorus really feel we were competing with the orchestra’s sound, with Tovey holding the reins. Through it all, we successfully captured and conveyed the piece’s character and intensity. While opening night may have felt a little tight, our subsequent efforts really did bring out a balanced mixture of radiant praise and emotional subtlety, on the shoulders of well-articulated text and strong singing technique.

Boston area critics were complimentary in their reviews, and our audiences were resoundingly enthusiastic in their acceptance. However, the all-too-numerous empty seats in the hall may have doomed this rather unknown piece to the archives for several more decades. Perhaps its unusual format or single-minded purpose have condemned Lobgesang to unpopularity. Regardless of its acceptance at large, we as a chorus were grateful to have an opportunity to add our voices to its song of praise, praise, and yet more praise.

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Critical reviews of the Lobgesang

Posted on January 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

The two usual commenters on our performance these days are the Boston Globe’s and the Boston Classical Review website.  Both did not disappoint with what I felt were accurate and insightful reviews.  Both caught on to the fact that, while this piece is magnificent in scale, its compositional form limits it.  They both also noted that, while our Chorus performed quite well, we were still missing a certain something.

I will say that our Friday performance exceeded our Thursday one — no doubt because we became yet more comfortable with the technicalities of the music (entrances, dynamics, fugues) so we could throw more weight toward the emotional connection as well as the melodic lines, and not sound quite so harsh.  I bet Saturday’s and Tuesday’s performances are even better!  Assuming anyone comes to them — the hall was half empty again on Friday.

Some of Jeremy Eichler’s comments from the Boston Globe:

Last night Symphony Hall had many empty seats, whether due to the unusual repertoire or the prospect of another substitute conductor. It was a pity because Tovey led a swift and sure-footed performance of the work, largely true to its Romantic heft, but never at risk of collapsing beneath the weight of its own grandiloquence.

There were times one wished he managed transitions with a bit more dramatic flair or harnessed the work’s rhetorical force to greater cumulative effect, but there were pleasures to be found in the constitutive parts.

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus unleashed a robust and joyful noise at its first entrance, and by and large sustained its potent energy.  […]  The work ends without any grand Beethovian apotheosis, but last night the chorus still found plenty to celebrate in the arrival of dawn.

David Wright echoed some of these comments in his Boston Classical Review:

Even a beautifully polished and committed performance by the orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and three capable vocal soloists under the direction of Bramwell Tovey (substituting for the indisposed Riccardo Chailly) couldn’t quite make the case for this musical miscellany as a coherent symphonic work.

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus sang with its usual precision, but its sound sometimes went uncharacteristically hard and blatant, as if it were trying to kick some life into Mendelssohn’s chronically short, square phrases.

Privately, there seems to be a consensus from choristers and their attending guests that the piece just doesn’t quite hang together, and that our exuberance sometimes toed the line between fortissimo and “shouty.”  With no subtlety or dramatic tension short of the Watchman-to-Dawn transition, there’s not much to hang your hat on besides making sure your sound reaches the back row.   I do feel we’re finding some of those subtleties and will continue to bring them out in the remaining performances.  Assuming we survive — Tovey may kill us all on these fugues, as they’ve gotten a little faster with each performance.

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Thoughts on Lobgesang performance

Posted on January 27, 2012 | 1 comment

Yesterday was our first of four performances of Mendelssohn’s symphony-cantata Lobgesang.  (It’s a symphony… no it’s a cantata… no it’s both!)

So how did we do?  Quite well.  We did a remarkable job of capturing the piece’s character and intensity, though I suspect there’s still more we can find in ourselves to give it over the remaining performances.

Maestro Tovey continued his outstanding stewardship at the podium.  He was kinetic, demonstrative, and inviting — but most importantly, consistent.  Consistent with the tempi and the cues and in the feeling he was trying to evoke from us as an orchestra and chorus.  I did think that one of the fugal passages started off a touch fast, almost as if he was daring us to keep up with him, but all in all there were no surprises.

The soloists were impressive — especially the way the two sopranos, Carolyn Sampson and Camilla Tilling.  I can only assume, when soloists like them are selected, that they are chosen not only for their availability and their skill, but also for how well they match each other for a duet like the cantata’s fifth movement.  John Tessier was pretty much what I expected from a tenor in this role – technically accurate, strong delivery, and capturing some of the pleading that’s built into his movements (which, given their nature, provide the work’s only counter to the “praise” theme.)

Our sound as a chorus was full and luscious, reaching to the back of a (disappointingly half empty) hall.  At no time did I feel we were competing with the orchestra for volume.  My throat’s a little sore this morning, so I have to wonder if I still may have been oversinging despite my best efforts to produce an efficient sound.  My singing felt good while I was up there.   Technically, I know we basses had a few shaky parts on some of the fugues where uncertainty pulled back our volume or made a weak entrance, but it was nothing serious and likely not noticeable in the heavy counterpoints we were wading through.  The highlight of the piece remains the Die Nacht ist vergangen! 7th movement as we transition from night into daylight, and we really did nail the a capella chorale that immediately follows it — nuanced, heartfelt singing that carried a prayerful, reflective tone.

We still have more to give, however.  Some of the color and character of the piece that we brought out in rehearsals was still not captured in our performance as well as I’d hoped.  The fugues are still a little pedestrian sometimes, losing some of the pleasantry of the counterpoint and melodic line in favor of the plodding thump, thump, thump needed to get through them correctly.  I think we can get more pathos in the fourth movement and, yes, even in the chorale, where details like a subtle swell on the word Gott didn’t come through to my ears.  I think there’s still a minuscule barrier in our heads that we need to overcome, because of the late memorization — that if we all can truly internalize the music and stop worrying about what’s next, what’s next, that we can break through to an even higher echelon of performance.  Mind you, there’s only so much you can do with this piece given its monologue of praise, praise, praise.  Hopefully, though, it won’t be another 24 years before it’s performed again!

 

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