Boston Classical Review

A few days after Boston was designated the “most beautiful winter city in the world,” Mother Nature decided to put that rating to the test.

Though Friday’s dusting resulted in far worse traffic than the slight totals should have warranted, it did lend the metropolis a certain charm. And that seasonal ambience carried into the Back Bay Chorale’s “A Boston Christmas” at Old South Church.

Led by the ensemble’s new music director, Stephen Spinelli, and accompanied by an ad hoc brass quartet, timpanist Michael Sparhuber, and organist Justin Blackwell, the evening’s program celebrated the upcoming holiday with a mix of favorites that was slanted towards American composers. 

One of those boasted a direct tie to the city with Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata. Written in 1957 for the New England Conservatory Chorus, this ten-minute score channels everything from plainchant to Stravinsky with a directness and enthusiasm that’s hard to resist.

The evening’s performance ensured as much, with an account of the first movement that was, by turns, muscular and agile. For all the central “O magnum mysterium’s” affecting, chant-like qualities, Spinelli ensured that the larger section was well-shaped and warmly blended. In the finale, sprightly rhythms carried the day, with each “Gloria in excelsis” refrain snapping vigorously.

A comparable vibrancy marked the Chorale’s renditions of Julia Perry’s onomatopoeic “Carillon Heigh-Ho” and Margaret Bonds’ typically fresh and alluring “Sing Aho.” Meantime, the burbling textures in the final verse of Jonathan Dove’s “The Three Kings” were dispatched efficiently.

Like the Dove, the rest of the night’s non-American fare hailed from the British Isles.

Benjamin Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin unfolded with precise diction, glowing tonal blend, and a strong dynamic shape, its antiphonal episodes discreetly realized across Old South’s sanctuary.

In Will Todd’s “My Lord Has Come,” the Chorale navigated the music’s hazy, added-note sonorities with surety, though their powerful enunciation of the lyric “His love will hold me” left the greater impression. Likewise charming was the group’s gently lilting account of “The Wexford Carol.”

Filling out the night’s choral contributions were Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium and a trio of carols by Abbie Betinis and her grandfather Alfred Burt.

Lauridsen’s 30-year-old hit traffics in the world of diatonic tone clusters that, partly because of its success, has become a cliché in contemporary choral composition. Yet, when sung well, O Magnum Mysterium sounds lovely. It was just that on Friday, the quiet moments beautifully, intensely offset, while its occasionally piercing dissonances were smartly prepared and resolved.

Betinis’ “Behind the Clouds” proved the night’s most unpredictable effort. Its blend of woozily chromatic melodic writing and off-balance text settings don’t make for a natural congregational song.

But in the Chorale’s performance, the score’s structure—solo voice, then with wordless choral accompaniment, finally everybody singing the last verse together—made compelling sense. It was also, on its own merits, a composition of singular beauty.

The Alfred Burt numbers, “Caroling, Caroling” and “We’ll Dress This House,” were cut from more traditionally lusty, tripping fabric.

Sung by the Chorale plus the Bridges ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Chorus and led by Community Engagement Coordinator Riikka Pietiläinen Caffrey, the set charmed the ear. So did the night’s parade of carols with audience participation: “Once in Royal David’s City,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Silent Night,” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” all but the penultimate heard in David Willcocks’ masterful arrangements.

Between those favorites, the concert’s two instrumental selections (an excerpt from Charpentier’s Te Deum plus Thomas Quigley’s arrangement of the Welsh carol “Suo Gan”), and a robust encore of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” one left Old South Church rejuvenated to face the unremitting natural elements with good cheer—or to contend with weightier matters in a similar spirit.

The program will be repeated 4 p.m. Saturday at Old South Church. bbcboston.org

Posted in Performances

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