Master, Salisbury Singers lend vigor
to modern choral works
By John Zeugner
Telegram & Gazette Reviewer
Article published June 11, 2007
… Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
The work of two contemporary American
composers, Paul Basler and Gwyneth Walker, was
featured in Saturday night’s joint concert
by the Master Singers of Worcester and the Salisbury
Singers at St. Paul Cathedral.
The blended choruses, 110 strong
across the full width of St. Paul’s sanctuary,
provided gorgeously rendered evidence of the beauty,
charm and power of recent choral composition.
The program opened with Basler’s
“Missa Kenya,” a Latin Mass that reflected
Basler’s Fulbright experiences in Nairobi,
as well as his own strengths as a French horn
specialist (more than 100 horn compositions have
been commissioned directly for him) and professor
of music at the University of Florida.
Michelle Graveline, music director
of the Salisbury Singers, conducted the Mass with
her characteristic attention to nuance and enunciation,
achieving in the concluding “Agnus Dei,”
a sweet, supple, reverential harmony that neatly
intertwined with the superb French horn playing
of Carolyn Cantrell. The composition was remarkable,
infusing Basler’s North Carolinian mountain
music roots with East African rhythms and traditional
Latin Mass conventions.
There was a first-rate tenor solo
by David Hill in the “Credo” segment
and impressive percussion work by Kristjan Asgeirsson
and William MacGillvray throughout.
The opening half of the concert
concluded with adroitly performed choral songs
by Jean Berger and Ysaye M. Barnwell, and some
occasionally exasperating colloquy with outside
police sirens.
The second half of the concert was
given over to Gwyneth Walker’s memorable
amalgam of New England music and literature, “New
England Journey,” a work commissioned for
the 30th anniversary of the Master Singers of
Worcester. That group’s artistic director,
Malcolm Halliday, conducted.
If Graveline had emphasized the
joint group’s cerebral intensity, nuance
and control, Halliday pushed forward the group’s
energy, dynamics and local patriotism. Walker’s
piece is a marvel of intelligence and indepth
feel for New England’s cultural range, from
the haunting lilt of an Elizabeth Bishop sonnet,
to the barbed satire of an Emily Dickinson poem,
to the ferocious judgment of a William Billings
song, to the sweet implied salvation of a Shaker
hymn, and the calm resolution of a Whittier poem.
Walker has found uncanny ways of blending her
music with the sentiments expressed. The six different
expressions dovetailed magically in renderings
that were sweet, powerful and enthralling in Walker’s
beguiling meditation on, in Billings’ phrase,
“New England’s soul forever reigns.”
Walker had come down from Vermont
for this event, and the audience immediately gave
her a standing ovation.
The power of contemporary composition
was a thread weaving its way through this year’s
St. Paul Music Festival, culminating in this joint
chorus concert. That thread was evident in the
June 5 concert with Ian Watson conducting a blockbuster
fierce rendering of Shostakovich’s Chamber
Symphony by the amazing Worcester Collegium Strings;
in June 7’s afternoon concert by Jeffrey
Wood at the organ, deftly performing rarely-heard
contemporary compositions by Jean Langlais and
Joel Martinson; and in, presumably (this reviewer
could not attend), the June 8 world premiere of
Ruth Lomon’s orchestration of Rebecca Clarke’s
“Sonata for Viola and Orchestra.”
In short, it was a wonderful week
for music in Worcester and a reminder of the terrific
talent in town.
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