For those of you who haven’t been there, St. Stephen’s Church on Anson St. is more like a chapel than a church … and it was the perfect, intimate venue for the twin pair of “Les Angélus” programs, sung mostly by the lovely-voiced ladies of the Westminster Choir. It seems that the only opera chorus work this year was for the men – so new director Joe Miller added these separate events, just for the girls. I missed last week’s opener of this, but was there with bells on for the repeat gig on Saturday.
This was a pretty complex mix of sacred and secular items, with lots of smaller pieces mixed in with solo and choral numbers from the main work, Dmitri Shostakovich’s From Yiddish Folk-Poetry (remember, we’re just coming off his 100th birthday year). You could also call this a semi-choreographed event, with endless individual and ensemble shifts: Some numbers were done up front – others came at us from the balcony. The choir sometimes broke up into sub-ensembles or lined up against the sides, so that we lucky listeners got quite a few surround-sound moments. It wasn’t all choral: quite a few of the Shostakovich pieces were for either solo singers or duets.
Aside from the Shostakovich, the program covered everything from ancient plainchant to pieces probably written in the past decade. No room for the whole laundry list here – but some of the best stuff was from Clytus Gottwald (his transcription of a Debussy song), Paul Chesnokov (another Russian), and Chinese-American composer Chen Yi.
Among several golden-voiced soloists (and Westminster has lots of those), tenor Adam Klein was the sole male presence – and, oh, wotta voice! In fact, his pipes were were almost too powerful, in places, for such an intimate venue as St. Stephens. Aside from that, there were no artistic flies in the ointment – but the audience’s rapt spell was repeatedly broken by a dunderheaded lady who was snapping flash photos of the action (see Concert Etiquette 101 below).
All in all, this delightfully different program was further proof of the inspired choice Westminster College made when they picked Joe Miller to fill the very big shoes left by former director Flummerfelt. I hope he considers doing more things like this in future Spoletos.
