Spectrum Singers add that personal touch
By Richard Buell, Globe Correspondent, 06/04/96
John Ehrlich's Spectrum Singers is not the most lavishly publicized of Boston's choral organizations, but it has nonetheless carved a distinctive identity for itself. That distinction lies in something basic: a certain kind of warmth, a personal quality to the way these voices phrase their music. It's never an impersonal, quasi-instrumental massing of sound. Saturday night at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge these strengths were beautifully matched to some rather choice Mozart and Schubert, some of it not as well known as it ought to be.
Indeed it seems astounding that the ``Stabat Mater'' in F Minor (D 383) - written in the composer's 19th year, and full of anticipations of his later music - should be so little known. The dark, wind-saturated chords of the orchestral prologue grip you at once. Among its beauties are an intensely emotional chorus (``Wer wird Zaehren sanften Mitleids'') with some superb horn writing, striking arias for tenor and bass, and some lively, if uncharacteristic, fugues. A strong vocal quartet - Luellen Best (soprano), Gloria Raymond (mezzo), Martin Kelly (tenor), Donald Wilkinson (bass) - made the most of its rich opportunities here. Added to this were the choral singing (as described) and the orchestral contribution, made up of some of Boston's more indispensable free-lance virtuosi. Does this sound like a revelation? Well, it was.
Set beside this astonishing ``Stabat Mater,'' the two other choral works - the Mozart ``Coronation'' Mass and Schubert's C Major Magnificat (D 486) - seemed somewhat ``public'' and institutional, persuasive though the performances were. (The no-two-times-the-same shaping of the ``dona'' in Mozart's closing ``dona nobis pacem'' was a typical felicity.)
It should be noted that this was a benefit for the Hospice of Cambridge, with proceeds going to musicians with HIV and AIDS.
Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Yeesun Kim (cello) and Randall Hodgkinson (piano) are estimable performers all, but at NEC's Williams Hall Friday their joint concert seemed not quite jelled, a matter of fits and starts, half-dazzling, half-ordinary. The chief dazzler was a quiet one, namely the second of Gerald Finzi's Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano, a dusky, over-the-hills-and-far-away mood piece (with a long, long morendo) that Cohler played to perfection. Beethoven's Opus 11 Trio, with its delightful ``Heidelberg Fight Song'' finale, got a bit rough, with the pianist nervously pulling phrases apart, and the Brahms A Minor Trio was not of one unified interpretive mind. The light stuff - Simon Sargon's ``KlezMuziK'' and Luigi Bassi's ``Rigoletto'' ``Concert Fantasia'' - was on the mark.
Unless your reviewer's critical antennae were seriously out of whack, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra's all-Schubert concert under Gisele Ben-Dor at Faneuil Hall Sunday afternoon wasn't giving anybody a lot to think about, either positive or negative. Here was the goods, nothing fancy. Cleanly and emphatically played (as here), the ``Rosamunde'' Overture and the great C Major Symphony will always yield up something worthwhile, though the massiveness of the sound did bang around rather unpleasantly in this acoustic. The performance of the Schubert/Liszt Wanderer Fantasy made a better case for the arrangement (it does ``open up'' the piece) than for the 1878 Erard fortepiano Malcolm Halliday was playing it on. The orchestra brimmed with energy. The sound of this venerable keyboard instrument did not.
This story ran on page 55 of the Boston Globe on 06/04/96.
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