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To wind up our cultural week in the Berkshires, David and I heard Mahler's Symphony # 8 at the Berkshire Choral International Festival in Sheffield. This is apparently the final year it will be held in Sheffield after thirty six years there. This coming week David will be there participating in their final week, singing in the chorus for the Verdi Requiem'.
The concert was preceded by an excellent talk by Laura Stanfield Prichard. Her amazing knowledge of Mahler and of music in general opened my eyes and ears to be prepared to hear the first performance of this work I have ever heard. She compared Mahler's work to that of Verdi and of Charles Ives, both of whom were contemporaries of Mahler. Like Ives, Mahler used sound he had grown up with, band music, church music, and folk music in his compositions.
His Eighth Symphony is a massive, sometimes wandering work of enormous proportions. The original performance had a chorus of 800 singers and a huge orchestra. Last night's performance had to make do with a mere 300 singers and the enlarged Springfield Symphony Orchestra.
The excellent solo singers were Rachel Rosales, Kara Shay Thomson, Emily Misch, Sara Murphy, Mary Phillips, Jonathan Matthew Myers, Jesse Blumberg, and Adam Lau. The fine conductor, who managed to keep all these elements together with apparent ease, was Kent Tritle. The Connecticut Concert Children's Choir was conducted by Marc Singleton.
Kent Tritle
The work took up the entire concert, the first half being based on the Latin hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus, and the second half of the last part of Goethe's Faust.
Throughout the work the orchestra and chorus are divided into multiple sections making it an incredibly busy work to listen to, indeed.
It made for an exhausting musical evening!
Tonight the Berkshire Choral Festival finally presented a program that works for a 230 voice choir. It was Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.
This is an ultra romantic piece based on an ultra Catholic poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman. It details the spiritual progress of a soul as it passes through Purgatory en route to Heaven. For a number of years Anglican churches in England either left out the overtly Catholic parts or refused to allow the work to be performed.
It was conducted with great energy and passion by Kent Tritle. The soloists were Sara Murphy, mezzo-soprano, John Bellemer, tenor, and Sidney Outlaw, baritone.
Ms. Murphy has a glorious voice that easily encompassed the wide-ranging role from below the passaggio to above the staff. She is a truly fine singer.
Mr. Bellemer has a splendid tenor voice, more in the British style than the Italian, but perfect for this role.
Mr. Outlaw has a fine baritone voice and sang his part very well.
The 230 voice chorus found the perfect work for itself, adding swaths of sound and orgastic climaxes where needed. After hearing similar groups last week and the week before in the Brahms Requiem, which was vastly under-sung, and Bach's St. John Passion, which wallowed around in an overly-romantic presentation, it was a pleasure to hear the right choir singing the right work under the right conductor.
Next season will open with Jane Glover conducting Britten's War Requiem. David has already signed up for that one.
Might I suggest a work like Walton's Belshazzar's Feast as a possible future concert?
(I apologize for the differing sizes of pictures but I have to take what I find on the net.)
