Rocked by Requiems: Summer Chorale dazzles
By Nan Lincoln – The Bar Harbor Times
BAR HARBOR (Aug 4, 09): At last year's Mt. Desert Summer Chorale concert, I recall being moved by
the text of the beautiful "Brahms Requiem" they performed. How the words seemed astonishingly and
personally appropriate and comforting for me, after a death in my family – reminding me that after
sorrow, there will be comfort and even joy. And, as it turned out, they were right.
This year the concert was all about the music, with the St. Saviour's Visser Rowland tracker organ,
"The King of Instruments," as the centerpiece for this year's selection of works.
Since I don't really know all that much about organ music, or the three major works featured that
night – requiems by Haydn and Durufle and an organ concerto by Handel – I decided to
attend Chorale Director David Schildkret's pre-concert lecture.
What a good idea that was. Schildkret is a professor of choral music at Arizona State College, so not
only does he know his stuff, he presents it in a dynamic way conducting with his hands as he talks
and, in this instance, complete with audio aids from a sextet of chorale members.
He said at the start how nice it was to have an audience of volunteer listeners rather than students
who would much rather be somewhere else. I think he was being facetious, because I can't imagine students
not being thrilled to hear what he had to say. In any case, I was fascinated to learn how Haydn had
"telescoped" the usually lengthy "Gloria and Credo" section of his Requiem by having the different
voice sections sing different parts of the text as well as different notes, ingeniously coming together
for certain words, like "unum" or one. When the choristers demonstrated what should have sounded like
cacophony and was actually just wonderful and interesting and complex, it highlighted how incredibly
gifted and clever the composer was.
Schildkret also advised us to listen for the birdsongs in Handel's "Concerto in A Major for organ."
For the final work of the evening, Durufle's "Requiem Opus 9," the professor said to take note of the
ever-changing tempo; how the composer moves from antique Gregorian chants into original phrases with
no discernable break and for the mystical, peaceful qualities he brings to the traditional requiem format.
Okay, professor, I'm ready for the music now; bring it on.
And wow! Did they ever.
The Evening started with the lovely melodious and a bit somber "Kyrie" of Haydn's Requiem. When I arrived
at the concert I had spotted several very talented friends, who are normally singing with this chorale, in
the audience and wondered if their absence in the vocal ranks would be noticeable. Well, it just shows how
deep the talent in the community runs, because the volume, depth and beauty of the sounds the Summer Chorale
produced this evening were simply stunning, and I am sure my friends were thrilled to be sitting right where they were for a change.
This first piece also included a lovely solo by local soprano Bronwyn Kortge, which followed an organ solo
(by guest organist Clayton W. Smith) that was so sweet and lilting it was hard to tell where it left off
and Kortge's equally lilting voice began. This phenomenon happened over and over again throughout the evening
with all the instrumentalists who made up the orchestra that evening, seamlessly weaving in and out of the vocal passages of the Chorale.
As I said, I don't know that much about the organ music oeuvre, and tend to think of it as a rather leaden and funereal instrument.
Well that opinion was changed forever by this Handel concerto, played by St. Saviour's organist Julia Morris-Myers.
Never have I heard an organ sound so jolly outside of a baseball park. Lot's of happy "boop bee boops" and yes,
thank you professor, sure enough in the midst of it all I heard the fluty whistle of the cuckoo and the merry
trill of the nightingale. Neat.
But, oh, the real spine-tingling delight of the evening was the Durufle. I noticed that one of the violinists
that evening, and one of the sopranos in the chorus, were very pregnant, and the thought occurred to me many
times during this deeply moving and spiritual piece how lucky those babies were to be hearing such beautiful
sounds from the world they would soon be entering.
How lucky we all were, for that matter, at whatever phase we were in life.
Summer Chorale's 2009 Concert
By Chris Donovan – Bar Harbor Times
It started in subdued, almost muted minor chords and the drone-like Gregorian chant,
and then at some point muted horns took up those sparse notes and added to them,
inviting a harp to join in with its rippling notes, and then the strings and voices swelled
until you thought they were all giving it all they had. But Schildkret summoned them for more
and more, and, impossibly, they actually had more to give.
In some places it was all so dramatic and visually evocative, I thought I must have heard
this music before in a movie score ("Ben Hur" maybe) because what I was seeing was definitely
biblical and I think Charlton Heston was there.
But there were some passages that seemed incredibly modern – the Requiem movement in particular
with its underlying repetitive organ phrases and fluttering violins reminded me a little of Phillip Glass'
music and I wanted to ask Professor Schildkret about that, because he remarked earlier in his lecture
that the key to being a good music listener was being able to recognize something you had heard before.
The five first movements of this Requiem all built up to one thrilling and kind of scary climax with the
penultimate "Libera Me" which is all about God's wrath and sin, sorrow, bitterness and fear, complete with
thundering timpani and blaring horns.
And then it is all washed away like a wave of light and angel voices pouring over us,
saying it's all going to be all right in the end.
And it absolutely was.
