Boston Classical Review

Michael Barrett conducted the Boston Cecilia Friday night in Brookline.

Anniversaries can be tricky to get right, for institutions as much as individuals. But the final program of Boston Cecilia’s 150^th season hit the mark. Looking simultaneously backwards and forwards, the concert also recalled some of what has made this group so significant to the city’s musical life these past fifteen decades.

Styled “A New Song,” Saturday night’s performance at Brookline’s All Saints Parish leaned into fare “that has a particular connection to [the] Cecilia,” as music director Michael Barrett put it. That much of it was written for the group spoke to the ensemble’s legacy as an incubator for the new music of multiple eras.

The night’s most significant item was Scott Wheeler’s Cecilia-commissioned Turning Back. A setting of four poems on mythological subjects by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), the score was somewhat curiously split across the concert’s two halves.

Even so, the rigor of Wheeler’s writing for solo mezzo-soprano, choir, and piano came across powerfully. For the most part, the soloist takes the lead over the choral forces, though roles are increasingly blurred across its last two sections. The keyboard part runs a gamut from spare, simple phrases to punchily dissonant textures.

On Saturday, Turning Back’s solo vocal line was dispatched with considerable purity by Krista River, who fully inhabited the music’s sense of theater, building from the searching lines of “Aubade” to the angular declamations of “Eurydice.” Pianist Yoko Hagino navigated her part strongly, too, be they the droll, pointed figurations in “Circe” or the pulsing accompaniments of “Lethe.”

Barrett and the Cecilia brought a strong command of pacing and dynamics to the performance. In particular, the collective drew out the Britten-esque qualities of Wheeler’s writing—ear-catching voicings and tonal combinations, a clarity and direction of gestures—which proved unexpectedly enticing; afterwards, it didn’t seem wrong to think of Turning Back as some sort of corollary to the British master’s Phaedra.

Another English icon hovered over the contributions of former Cecilia music director Nicholas White. That would be John Rutter, whose influence on the composer-conductor’s The Choir Invisible and Regret Not Me were hard to miss.

If the ensemble’s blend in the former was sometimes a bit touchy, the larger work mixed a natural lyricism with some knowing, high-church dissonances. The latter lilted, soprano Deborah Greenman floating through her pure-toned solos.

A pair of works by Grace Coberly trafficked in similar veins. Little Things opened with a picture of generic simplicity but then began to take on a welcome little swing—before the setting’s abrupt ending.

Cecilia Dreams of the Lyre, an adaptation of texts by Addison, Auden, Dryden, Pope, Smart, and Ursula Vaughan Williams, wasn’t in such a rush. Another Cecilia commission (this in its world premiere), Coberly’s work doesn’t break any new ground but incorporates a number of familiar devices—counterpoint, pedal points, text painting—with warmth and knowing ease.

Benjamin Kapp Perry’s Your Brighter Eyes proved similarly idiomatic. Rich and unhurried, the anthem delivered some interesting harmonic turns and a haunting last chord. The same composer’s When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer was likewise touching, the Cecilia beautifully cushioning soprano Anney Barrett’s soaring solos.

Meanwhile, Ashi Day’s adaptation of Langdon Smith’s Evolution brought the concert to its close. The night’s other premiere, the short work’s mostly whimsical tone charmed and was winningly realized by the Cecilia.

To open the night, organist Kevin Neel presented the Andante from Mendelssohn’s Organ Sonata No. 3. There was a convoluted backstory in the program tying this work to Cecilia’s founding conductor, B. J. Lang. Interesting as that was, Saturday’s account of this little gem did justice to the composer’s nowadays-neglected mastery of that instrument.

The program will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at Methuen Memorial Hall. bostoncecilia.org

Posted in Performances
No Comments