Choral Review:  Local composer’s world premiere featured by SLCC in St. Peters

For its annual Christmas-themed concert, the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus ventured to All Saints Church in St. Peters for the first time in its history on December 22, the second-farthest out from core Central Corridor territory of its six concerts this season.  Tucked close to a strip mall, All Saints Church offers a visually bright (much white paint) and acoustically very fine space.  Similarly to the SLCC’s Christmas concert last year, all but one of the 14 works on the printed program featured in previous seasons.  A theme of “old friends” permeated this program:  four selections were by composers with direct SLCC personnel connections, while another four were by past and present SLCC composers-in-residence.  Like last year, the one new selection was a world premiere composition, but this time by a current singer in the SLCC rather than a composer based overseas.  Also, of this concert’s 13 composers, 12 of them are living.

The concert began with a selection by the SLCC’s artistic director, Philip Barnes, a 1985 setting of the text “The Lord At First Did Adam Make”, in evidently its third appearance with the SLCC (previous performances looked to be 21 and 14 seasons ago).  Mr. Barnes self-deprecatingly described his work as “derivative” and composed “with inordinate help” from his friend David Dunnett, who became the work’s dedicatee.  It features female and male solo passages, taken by soprano Lydia Hill and tenor Solomon Wilken.  Ms. Hill was more forthright in projecting the text, while Mr. Wilken was much more reticent in terms of sound balance with the group.  This writer is in no position to judge how “derivative” this work is, but it showed the qualities of the All Saints Church acoustic to very fine effect indeed, for a good start to the concert.

Next was an arrangement of an Irish carol from County Wexford, “Ye Sons of Men”, by Patrick Zuk (born 1968), a professor at Durham University in the UK.  Last performed by the SLCC 6 seasons back, Mr. Zuk’s arrangement is lively, and works in some pop music-like harmony at its close.  (Extended sidebar:  Mr. Zuk is also a scholar on Soviet-era music, in particular Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950), about whom Mr. Zuk has written a very fine biographical study.  It’s a somewhat dense read, but in a good way.  I heartily recommend it to anyone remotely interested in Myaskovsky.  I likewise strongly recommend Myaskovsky’s 13 string quartets to local chamber music ensembles, terrific music well worth programming, even if groups understandably might shy away from Russian music now, as even before late February 2022, Myaskovsky has received minimal attention outside his native land.)

The concert continued with Luciasvit, a mini-suite of carols In three(-ish) sections by the Swedish composer Mårten Jansson (born 1965), a past SLCC composer-in-residence.  Centered around St. Lucy (whose feast day is December 13), Mr. Jansson uses two traditional carols from southwest Sweden in the first section, but wrote his own original music and text for the second section about the stable boy Staffan.  The third section brought the biggest surprise to this writer (at least), as the melody is the traditional Neapolitan song “Santa Lucia”, but set to a Swedish text by Sigrid Elmblad (1860-1926). 

The next “set” opened with the Finnish carol “Joulupuu On Rakennettu” (“The Christmas Tree is up”) in an arrangement by former SLCC chorister Charles Collins (born 1962).  The SLCC most recently sung this arrangement 2 seasons ago.  Unlike then, no cell phones went off this time.  The paired selection after Mr. Collins’ arrangement was the first of the two “Tree Carols” by the SLCC’s first composer-in-residence, Sasha Johnson Manning (born 1963), previously performed by the SLCC 16 seasons back.  Ms. Manning and Mr. Barnes are old acquaintances, and the words for this work juxtapose an English text by Mr. Barnes with selected lines by the 19^th century composer Peter Cornelius (1824-1874).  While Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the English text jump-cuts to Good Friday in foreshadowing Christ’s ultimate brutal earthly fate.  Ms. Manning’s music fittingly has a slight hard edge to it.

The following set of three works brought in the one past composer, Tchaikovsky, juxtaposed with works by the Ukrainian composer Yakov Gubanov (born 1954) and Ms. Manning’s second “Tree Carol”.  Tchaikovsky’s work, “The Crown of Roses”, sets an English translation by the British poet Geoffrey Dearmer (1893-1996) of a Russian text by Alexei Pleshcheyev (1825-1893), on the cringe-inducing subject of the child Christ having a crown of rose thorns placed on His head, and pressed enough to break the skin and draw blood.  By contrast, Mr. Gubanov’s work sets Pleshcheyev’s Russian text (itself a translation from a German text, which in turn was a translation from a different English text than Dearmer’s – yes, it’s complicated), in a more modern style compared to Tchaikovsky, though by no means ‘harsh’.  Mr. Gubanov features two solo female voices and two solo male voices, taken in order of vocal appearance by alto Stephanie Ruggles, tenor Dereck Basinger, soprano Mary Ongjoco Chapman, and tenor Nathan Ruggles, where all involved did well.  For thematic contrast, Ms. Manning’s carol, “Christbaum” (“Christmas Tree”), sets the full Peter Cornelius text excerpted in her first “Tree Carol”.  The subtext of the full Cornelius text is quite cozy in its portrayal of a domestic setting with a Christmas tree festooned with candles.  Ms. Manning’s music here is more tender, fitting the mellower subject matter, although I myself found the work rather drawn out.

The concert’s first half closed with the world premiere of “Alleluia! A New Work Is Come On Hand” by Carter Datz (born 1993), a tenor with the SLCC and a teacher at Liberty High School in Wentzvile.  Mr. Datz’s carol juxtaposes a medieval English text with an anonymous French text of uncertain historical epoch.  His juxtapositions also extend to the music itself, with a very noticeable stylistic shift upon going from the English text to the French text into a more “ancient”-sounding style reminiscent of French late medieval vocal music, and without trying to “blend” the different styles.  The SLCC and Mr. Barnes clearly showed great commitment and enthusiasm in showcasing “one of their own”.  Mr. Datz moved from the side back rows closer to the center for this work.  As the picture above shows, received hearty applause from both the audience and the chorus for his composition.

The concert’s second half began outgoingly with “If Ye Would Hear The Angels Sing”, an old Dutch carol arranged in 1995 by a past SLCC piano accompanist, Martha Shaffer, continuing the concert’s ‘extended family’ motif.  Next was a 2012 SLCC commission by the British composer Bob Chilcott (born 1955), “Before The Ice”.  The work sets two texts, an Emily Dickinson poem and the Marian text “O Magnum Mysterium”.  Mr. Chilcott focuses on the Dickinson poem initially, brings in the Latin text later, and ultimately sets lines from both texts in juxtaposition. 

A setting of Christina Rosetti’s classic poem “In The Bleak Midwinter” followed, by the Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds (born 1980), an SLCC commission from 8 seasons back.  As Mr. Barnes noted in his introduction, it takes a brave composer to set this text, in the wake of past composers who have done so, especially Gustav Holst, whose setting is the standard modern benchmark with the general public (who don’t necessarily know that the same composer wrote The Planets).  To be honest, Mr. Esenvalds’ setting, while it does the job, is not nearly as ear-wormy as Holst’s, but then relatively few carols are. 

The penultimate selection of the printed program revisited a work premiered almost exactly one year ago, “Seeking You” by Kerensa Briggs (born 1991), the SLCC’s current composer-in-residence, to a text by the Kansas-based poet Charles Anthony Silvestri (born 1965), about a pilgrim who seeks the infant Jesus, but without specifically mentioning Jesus’ name, with the word “manger” as the only such allusion.  For health reasons, Mr. Silvestri was not present at last year’s premiere.  He was again absent this year, although presumably in the “no news is good news” sense, one hopes that his health has since stabilized.  Last year, I mentioned the music’s generally understated character, and that evaluation held up.  This contrasted with the official program’s final work, “Good Day, Sir Christëmas!” by the British composer Francis Pott (born 1958), premiered by the SLCC 11 seasons ago.  The work is quite extrovert, to the edge of “forced rejoicing”, IMVHO, akin to Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film of Much Ado About Nothing, which tried too hard to be exuberant.  Pott’s carol has an element of “shoutiness” about it, if the word isn’t inappropriate here.  By way of contrast, the encore, an old Czech carol titled “Rocking” arranged by Stuart McIntosh, dialed down the volume and the mood very notably, to fine effect.  McIntosh was a past assistant director of the SLCC, closing the concert’s “old friends” thread.

Throughout, the SLCC sang very well with their standard professional level of diligence and preparation, again not least with the Carter Datz world premiere.  If the repeat of the Kerensa Briggs carol on two consecutive Christmas concerts is any indication, one can predict a return for Mr. Datz’s carol in the SLCC’s December 2025 Christmas concert.