The Festival Singers of Atlanta under the very capable direction of Jane Burke presented “Songs for a Summer Night,” at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church early this evening. Marred only by one restart (and one cell phone…), this program provided an eclectic mix of a cappella treats from Renaissance and 20th Century masters.
Kicking off quite promptly with three madrigals by Thomas Morley showcased this all volunteer choir’s adeptness at tone painting. Morley matched his music to the texts quite adroitly, and the FSA completed the picture with excellent diction and timing as well as a sense of balance that, quite frankly, is remarkable! There was a hint of brass coming from the tenor section throughout the first piece that did not quite match the otherwise round tone of the choir at large, but by the middle of the second work they had settled in and created a lush yet precise mixture that captivated the nearly half filled church. Of particular note was the third piece, Fire, fire, my heart, which used changes in phrase length that bounced around the sections to truly match the ebb and flow of sitting by a crackling fire.
Music Divine by Thomas Tomkins followed, and it lived up to its name! Full of ever so slight hesitancy in the slower sections and lock step counterpoint when fast, the FSA delivered this work with their purest tone of the evening. The last two lines of this madrigal carry a warning for those of us so eagerly seeking the multiple eargasms so readily available right now:
And yet in this her slander is unjust,
To call that love, which is indeed but lust.
Atlanta Festival Singers Director, Jane F. Burke
Director Burke introduced the two works by Frederick Delius from which the title of the program came as “choral vocalises.” The whole choir would be singing nothing but neutral vowel tones throughout. Both were highly chromatic, rather difficult works (for both choir and audience…) that felt as if just around the next corner, the seams would rip and all would be lost. The next corners would come, and the “resolutions” were always wonderful…for most of the audience… Of note here was tenor David Carroll’s solo during the second “vocalise.” He sang with just enough sweetness, and just enough fire to match the folksy rhythm and highly chromatic nature of this piece.
Next came The Silver Swan by Orlando Gibbons. We were back in the Renaissance, and many in the audience seemed glad to have a more straight forwardly diatonic harmonic structure in their ears!
The choir found a nearly perfect balance right at the start of William Byrd’s Come jolly swains and did not let it go, producing a thick, juicy backdrop for some wonderful soprano lines. Two more works by Byrd followed, bouncy and rich.
Claude Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Charles D’Orléans begins with a ping-pong counterpoint line that requires every member of a choir singing it to be “in the pocket” rhythm wise. There was a bit of muddiness in their start leading Mrs. Burke to stop the choir and start over. Second time around, they nailed it. And then…a cell phone rang. Not just any ringtone either… A funky top-40 screecher. Please don’t let this be you!!! Nuff said… The second song featured mezzo Marianna Fuller. With a complex rhythm and a breathtaking chord structure, this is pure Debussy…and purely beautiful. The third song also had an interesting rhythmic element and featured soprano Dale Fessele, alto Libby Roper, tenor Rob Aaron and bass Vince Mir.
The performance closed with Five Flower Songs, Op. 47 by Benjamin Britten. All five demonstrated his genius as a writer and the AFS’s ability to quickly shift from lovely lilting phrases to more angular melodies. Also on show in these songs is the AFS’s ace-in-the-hole; an ability to create and keep a crisp sense of excitement throughout a song, even in moments of delicate quietude. This cycle closes with a familiar Celtic story, Ballad of Green Broom, using a tone painting technique that our first composer, Thomas Morley, would have appreciated. It also brought a humorous ending to a wonderful performance.
