Reviews

The Annual Allen Shaffer Concert
Sunday, March 13, 2022, Christ and St. Luke's Church
Review by John Campbell

The program booklet says “A Little Bird Music in anticipation of Spring's arrival” and so it was. Opening the program, Debra Wendells Cross, flute, played Antonio Vivaldi's (1678-1733) The Gold Finch (Concerto in D Major “Il Cardellino”) backed by the Ghent Chamber Players: George Corbett, oboe; Allegra Havens, violin; Gretchen Loyola, violin; Stacey Migliozzi, viola; Peter Greydanus, cello; William McPeters, bass. They gave a charming performance.

Allen Shaffer then introduced an innovative juxtaposition of music by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) and François Couperin (1668-1733). In the early 1720s François Couperin had developed a wide variety of ways to bring French and Italian styles together. Allen Shaffer juxtaposed Couperin's Cinque pieces, 14eme Ordre (1722) with Olivier Messiaen's (1908-1992) Petites esquisse d'oiseaux (1985), written 260 years later.

Written in 1985 for his second wife, Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen's little sketches of birds are at once very similar and very different. Similar in harmonic style and ever changing colors but each has its own aesthetic with varying melodic and rhythmic movement.

Pianist Oksana Lutsyshyn opened the set with Messiaen's Le Rouge-gorge (The Robin). This was followed by Le Rossignol en amour (The nightingale in love) by Couperin, played by flutist Debra Wendells Cross and harpsichordist Tom Marshall. This set the pattern of alternation between pieces by each composer, though the muscular piano that followed the harpsichord was occasionally jarring on the ear. The three Robin pieces offered chains of arpeggios descending into glissandi or slow notes and carefully drawn figures. The eighteenth-century scene painting often gave lovely lyrical bird-like songs from the flute above the soothing, steady harpsichord.

After intermission soprano Billye Brown Youmans with pianist Oksana Lutsyshyn performed four art songs. The first two were by W.A. Mozart (1756-1791). The ariettes with French texts were set while Mozart was at the Mannheim court in the winter of 1777-1778. These delightful songs were sung by the daughters of the court flutist. The first text tells us how the birds come for springtime and love and then migrate when the flowers go away. The second is a scene painting in music of walking in the forest and finding Cupid asleep there. Fascinated by Cupid's beauty, the singer recalls her faithless lover. Her sigh awakens Cupid who fires a cruel arrow, declaring she will always be wounded by this faithless lover in punishment for disturbing his sleep.

This was followed by two songs, with texts by Henrik Ibsen, Norway's great lyric poet, set by Edvard Grieg in 1867. En Svane (The Swan), a symbol of the soul, has a simple chordal accompaniment evocative of the gliding movement of the bird. The words unfold slowly, quietly gaining passionate expression to end in a mood of quiet intensity. En Fuglevise (Lovers Lullaby) tells a story of lovers' last stroll together on a lovely, blue-sky day with gossipy mother sparrow making a song about the couple while she sits on her nest. Instead of a German translation, Ms. Youmans honored Grieg by singing it in the original Norwegian. With its glorification of nature, the poetry is evocative of the landscape that the composer loved.

To cap the set of songs Billye Brown Youmans became a romantic crooner for A Nightengale Sang in Berkeley Square by Sherwin, Maschwitz and Strachey with Oksana Lutsyshyn as cocktail pianist. The audience loved it.

The concluding music was G.F. Handel's concerto No. 13 HWV 295 “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” with organist Kevin Kwan and the Ghent Chamber Players. Completed by Handel in 1739 and played two days later at a performance of Israel in Eqypt, this delightful music in four movements with a dance-like opening has the players echoed by the organ but soon shifts to the organ speaking as the cuckoo, accompanied by the oboe brilliantly played by Mr. Corbett. A grand flow of melodious notes concludes the first movement.

The concerto's nickname comes from the second movement where a little motive sounds like a cuckoo and a G minor section offers the gentle song of a nightingale. In the third movement Handel instructs the organist to improvise a transition into the gentle, lyrical melody where the organ and orchestra are in dialogue, seeming to finish each other's statements.

The final movement was bright and lively, allowing the ensemble to glow. It was a glow that suffused the audience in this concert celebrating the tenth year since Dr. Shaffer's retirement as music director at Christ and St. Luke's. (There was no performance in 2021.)

Sacred Music in a Sacred Space
Stephen Coxe and Friends
December 8, 2022, Christ and St. Luke's Church
Review by John Campbell

Kevin Kwan, director of music at Christ and St Luke's, introduced this outstanding program for the Christmas season with its unique repertory presented by some of Tidewater Virginia's finest musicians. Then, as organist, he played Ave Maris Stella, from Nicolas DeGrigny's (1672-1703) single volume of organ music, Premier Livre d'Orgue (1699). The work showcases the formidable contrapuntal and ornamentation techniques demanded by the composer. There is great energy in the opening Plein Jeu that gave way to a more introspective mood in Fugue à 4. The two voices in Duo were followed by the dramatic, grand celebration of the concluding Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux. Kevin Kwan gave a marvelous performance.

Next we turned to music by an Italian Baroque composer who is finally getting the hearing she deserves, Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). Bianca Hall, soprano, accompanied by Dionne Smith, cello and Stephen Coxe, harpsichord, sang Sino alla morte ('Til Death) from one of Strozzi's many published cantatas (she published more cantatas than any other 17th century composer). Her cantatas are musically original and reflect her literary background in her sensitivity to texts. Strozzi was also a trained singer and her idiomatic musical settings were apparent as Dr. Hall sang the many verses making clear the story of how deeply committed the lover is to her beloved: in defiance to time, destiny, fading beauty, and fortune 'til death.

Adding another dimension to the evening, the Camerata Choristers (SABT, eight voices) performed five choral settings (three by Stephen Coxe and two by Hugo Distler (1908-1942) without accompaniment. Coxe conducted his Virga Jesse (2018) , Alma redemptoris Mater (Loving Mother of the Redeemer) and The Angel Gabriel (2020). The Distler selections were Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (A rose has sprung) and Now may we singen and featured dialogues of contrasting solo voices (Kathryn Kelly, soprano and Bryson Mortensen, baritone). The other voices were: Sarah Taylor, Scott Crissman; Anna Farley, John Irving; Keaton Whitehurst and Gary Montgomery.

It was so good to hear again mezzo-soprano Bonnie Lambert-Baxter in solo songs by Johannes Brahms. Usually Ms. Lambert-Baxter sings with the Virginia Chorale. But in June of 2013 she gave a solo recital at Larchmont United Methodist Church. At the time I praised her natural, clear sound as ideal for art song; it still is. Here the instrumentalists were Joanna Binford, viola and Dr. Coxe, piano in Gestillte Sehnsucht (Stilled Longing). This setting of a very romantic text speaks of soft wind and little birds that “whisper my longing, along with my life." This was followed by Geistliches Wegenlied (Sacred Lullaby), where the urgency in the voice carries the Virgin Mary's concern for her sleeping child when she asks the angels to silence the wind in the treetops. She later requests that the same angels also cover him with their wings to warm him and protect him from earthly sorrow and fierce cold. Her singing was so very lovely, enhanced by the beautiful instrumental sounds.

Tenor Scott Crissman then sang five Folksongs from the British Isles (1943) by Benjamin Britten with piano. Britten's folk song arrangements are far from being simple “tunes with accompaniment” but rather we find his musical brilliance, freedom and vitality in what were familiar tunes as he made them his own. Mr. Crissman gave an ideal performance of The Salley Gardens with text by William Butler Yeats, singing in a mannered, English way. The Holly and the Ivy celebrates the birth of a redeemer “to do poor sinners good.” The lament, The trees they grow so high, is a Somerset folk song that tells of the wife married by her family to a boy too young who later fathers a son but dies a year later and now she is caring for their own young son. O, Waly, Waly, another Somerset folk song is a promising love song of a couple boating and gathering flowers in a meadow. But the lover proves false as time goes by. The last song, How Sweet the answer, with text by Thomas Moore from “Irish Melodies,” is built around the word “echo.” The echo of music in the night—of lute, horn or soft guitar—but more importantly the echo of the lovers sigh, breathed only for one to hear! The song ends with the word "again" repeated five times as an echo of continuing love. Beautifully performed!

The best of many excellent art song and chamber music performances in 2022 was organized by Stephen Coxe. He encouraged soprano Anna Feucht to sing Dmitri Shostakovich's (1906-1975) song cycle Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok Op. 127 (1967). Coxe was pianist; Jonathan Richards, violin; and Elizabeth Meszaros, cello. We have been fortunate to hear Ms. Feucht's voice mature over the last several years into a flexible, powerful instrument capable of the stunningly precise delivery of this gut-wrenching work. The song titles in English are friendly enough (they were sung in their original Russian) and we were provided with original texts and translations.

Ophelia's Song laments separation from the beloved, a warrior. Death alone promises reunion. As the song ends, the violin and voice seem to fuse. The voice ends and the violin plays on alone. Midway through Gamayun, the prophet bird, the voice soars as the bird foretells disasters past, present and future. Later the voice becomes intimate, speaking of passion and fear. It ends with the detached chord struck on piano. We were together is a duet describing a love that grows, almost lyrical in its telling. Time passes before the story continues in Gloom Enwraps the Sleeping City and plunges us into the present gloom with the cello sawing out a sad tune. The love in the last song is a far memory as a scintillating dawn breaks over “my forsaken, joyless days...”

The fifth song, The Tempest (violin, piano) offers a wild, fierce storm with excited vocals capturing the deep unrest of a battered inner life. It was here that I realized that for me it became a requiem for the people of Ukraine today. Secret signs offers a gentle largo. The drama is over for now. On the wall an image of golden and crimson poppies appears in her dreams but by song's end the heaviness returns in an unhurried, gentle end looking toward “war and fire that lie before...” In the last song, Music, all the instruments are united in mystical union to support a grand, intensive vocal display—roses bloom, sorrows of the past are forgotten. The crimson sunset shows acceptance of the pain and blood by the singer. She offers it all as the servant of the Sovereign of the Universe. The piano and violin each give a gentle caress of sound that fades. The piano then offers a faint hint of energy; now it is truly over.

Listening to a CD a month later I once again found these songs stunningly emotional. The CD features soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband celloist Mstislav Rostropovich. Shostakovich dedicated the songs to Vishnevskaya who premiered them. The recording is wonderful but the live performance by Feucht and the instrumentalists was a once in a lifetime experience.