by Martha A. Fawbush
August 7, 2009, Raleigh. NC: Hinshaw
Music’s annual Celebration Concert,
always an inspiring evening of superb sacred music performed by excellent choirs,
sustained its reputation before an enthusiastic wall-to-wall congregation in
Edenton Street United Methodist Church’s capacious sanctuary. This concert
featured the beautiful singing of the Bel
Canto Company, based in the Triad and
known for 26 years as one of the best professional choral ensembles in the Southeast. Its
conductor, Dr. Wellborn Young, has a well-deserved reputation as an able
conductor and choral clinician presently teaching graduate conducting and seminars
in choral repertoire at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For this
concert he shared the podium with two other excellent conductors: Mark Hayes
and the internationally-known English composer and conductor John Rutter.
This concert moved along briskly from beginning to end and never allowed the
audience’s enthusiasm to falter. After a sparkling organ performance
of Gjiello’s Sinfonietta by Adam Ward, who also ably served the
choir as a fine accompanist, Wellborn conducted a majestic Mark Hayes arrangement
of “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,” which allowed the choir
and the congregation to join forces. Next came Howard Helvey’s motet of
great beauty, “Laudate Dominum Omnes Gentes,” with its tenderness
and air of contemplation sustained by superb harmony and choral intensity, and
Dan Forrest’s stirring, triumphant arrangement of “How Firm a Foundation.”
The second group of choral pieces, arranged and conducted by Mark Hayes, appealed
deeply to the minds and spirits of everyone present. The first of these, “To
Love Our God,” with a profound text emphasizing the truth that to love
God is the most important part of human life, is brought to life by rich harmony,
vocal power, and excellent writing for the piano which accompanist Adam Ward
realized with exciting technical skill. Two numbers in this group were arrangements
of well-known spirituals which revealed Hayes’ great gift: to make old
songs of inspiration seem as if they had never been heard before. The first of
these, “Go Down Moses,” is a tremendously effective narrative of
the old story recounting the exploits of Moses, with a jazz piano accompaniment
which rocked every corner of the great Edenton sanctuary. The choral lines were
rich with jazz rhythms and exciting harmony, and Hayes’ setting of the
text called for the best, most crisp diction of which the choir was capable.
The beloved “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” also seemed
new, with a swinging jazz accompaniment, a rocking choral bass line, a masterful
use of staggered breathing technique in one verse, and a final verse in which
Hayes’ writing calls for all voices to soar from earth to heaven.
After the intermission came yet another beautiful approach to the creation and
performance of sacred music as John Rutter enchanted his listeners with pieces
revealing his sweet, contemplative harmony and elegant lines in all choral parts. These
characteristics were made clear in his “I Wish You Christmas,” in
which simple words and pristine music combine to create a rare degree of beauty.
But for me the most profoundly moving music in the concert came at the end, with
Rutter’s exquisite conducting of Gabriel Faure’s beloved Requiem.
Accompanied to perfection by a select group of instrumentalists, the Bel Canto
Company revealed its great choral skills in the performance of this work in as
many ways as one can count. All voices were pure and clear, almost childlike;
the enunciation of the Latin text could not have been improved upon; the vocal
intonation was perfect; and all the singers and their conductor performed as
one in achieving the thrilling dynamic shifts which the composer called for.
Margaret Carpenter, soprano, and Ken Lee, baritone, sang their solo lines with
impeccable skill.
There were several especially lovely sections in the performance of Faure’s Requiem — for
example, the “Offertory,” with its impassioned lines imploring God
to grant deliverance from death to those who have left this world; Carpenter’s
pure, transcendent “Pie Jesu;” the bell-like vocalism of tenors and
sopranos in the “Sanctus;” and the power and passion of the “Libera
Me.” For a number of other persons I spoke with, however, the most effective
section of the Requiem was the concluding “In Paradisum,” with
the pristine, soul-stirring lines of the sopranos and the final phrases calling
upon choirs of angels to sing our loved ones to their rest, to raise them from
life’s end to eternal life. There is no more profound beauty in all the
great Requiems ever written than in the last bars of Faure’s work, and
the Bel Canto Company and conductor John Rutter captured all of it.
Edited/corrected on 08/18/2009
