Boston Classical Review

“A man’s reach,” Robert Browning famously wrote, “should exceed his grasp.” How welcome when a concert program does the same.

Take the Boston Cecilia’s “Comfort & Joy.” Comprised of nineteen numbers loosely built around movements from Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, Friday’s program at Church of the Advent aimed to speak to the hectic season we’re currently in as well as, perhaps, our tumultuous historical moment.

True, no holiday concert can comprehensively address all of the day’s worries. Still, Friday’s performance succeeded in more than a few ways.

This was primarily due to the breadth of selections that Cecilia music director Michael Barrett compiled. Though Britten’s 1942 favorite (which sets, primarily, Medieval and Renaissance-era Christmas texts) provided the night its connecting thread, the concert’s selections ranged from the 16^th to 20^th centuries.

What’s more, a certain ecumenicism reigned, be that between Catholics (William Byrd, Isabella Leonarda), Protestants (Heinrich Schütz) and others (Britten, Herbert Howells, Hubert Parry, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Fauré) or Christians, Nones, and Jews (Salamone Rossi). As such, the night was rooted in a shared humanity.

Sometimes the focus was on the future. Parry’s touching “There is an old belief” traced the hope of an afterlife. Schütz’s energetic “Tröstet mein Volk” set Isaiah’s prophecy of a coming Messiah.

For their parts, Rossi’s “Adon olam” and Leonarda’s “Lauda Jerusalem Dominum” sought refuge in the words of the Old Testament. Byrd’s “Non vos relinquam orphanos” did the same with a text from the New, while Brahms’s “Geistliches Lied” channeled Alexander Pope’s maxim that “whatever is, is right”: “What God has decided,” one of its lyric runs, “that is and must be the best.”

Meanwhile, the promise of redemption and the miracle of birth informed the evening’s second half.

José Mauricio Nunes Garcia’s “Exsultet orbis gaudiis” delivered some enchantingly voiced four-part writing. Howells’ setting of Catherine Winkworth’s translation of the German hymn, “A spotless rose,” elicited some of the Cecilia’s finest singing of the night, richly blended and, in the middle stanza, sensitively supporting tenor Benjamin Kapp Perry’s lucid solo.

Further solos from soprano Grace Coberly and tenor Eli Ratner were highlights of the ensemble’s lovely account of Harold Darke’s echt-Anglican “In the bleak midwinter.” The ensemble did serene justice to the “In paradisum” movement from Fauré’s Requiem and brought tavern-worthy energy to bear on William Billings’ lusty “Brookline.”

While much of the concert’s latter part rang securely, the night’s previous one was dogged by moments of indistinct diction, diffuse tone, and suspect intonation. Nevertheless, the Cecilia’s delivery of Britten’s “Wolcum Yole!” was rhythmically agile. Edgar L. Bainton’s “And I saw a new heaven” emerged with appealing shapeliness.

Likewise impressive were the contributions of harpist Eduardo Betancourt. While he occasionally split accompanying duties with organist Kevin Neel, the Venezuelan instrumentalist had the platform to himself for three improvisations scattered across the evening.

That set drew a range of colors from Betancourt’s harp and offered a nice sense of progression, from the moll/Dur turns of phrase in the first to the bouzouki-like gestures of the second and the third’s unaffected, dancing figurations. Together, they formed a neat, virtuosic counterpoint to night’s lyrical deliberations on solace and hope.

The program will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at All Saints Parish, Brookline. bostoncecilia.org

Posted in Performances

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