The opening piece, Let There Be, a creation formula for mixed choir and percussion, was written by Frederik Sixten, who was in the audience. I always applaud living composers, even when I'm not crazy about their pieces. This was the world premiere. The percussionist was Jack Van Geem, one of the SF Symphony's percussionists. He was kept quite busy, and did quite well, even though he was on crutches.
The piece has lots of tone-clusters, where the choir might be singing C, C#, D, D#, and E all at the same time. It's easy to lose your way as a listener and, I fear, as a singer. There were moments where the pitch was so uncertain, I thought the choir had aimed and missed. It wasn't microtonal, e.g., with pitches halfway between C and C#. Or perhaps it was, but they didn't sound very confident about it. Of course, this was "wet ink" music, so one expects a certain amount of struggling. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, only half the chorus sang the piece.
The next piece was Easy Listenin' compared to the first. It was Jorden oro viker by Ludvig Norman. Very pretty, with some moments that reminded me of Brahms.
While the chorus reshuffled themselves for the third time (was that really necessary?), Ragnar Bohlin, the director of the Chorus, told us what he liked about the next piece, called ... a riveder le stelle, by Ingvar Lindholm. I'm afraid I didn't like this piece at all. There's forte, and then there's just plain loud, and this had a lot of loud singing. The chorus was divided in 16 parts, and there was a lot more of this half-step-apart music that sounded like a disagreement about pitches. There was a solo part near the end, sung beautifully by Pamela Sebastian, but in some key unrelated to what the chorus was singing. Bohlin warned us that this piece was polytonal, but to pull that off, whether in a string quartet or a full-stage orchestra, you have to have nerves of steel and exude confidence. I didn't sense that here.
There were two more pieces on the first half, ending with a folksong that was supposed to be funny, perhaps a drinking song. It had a tenor soloist, Keith Perry, who was quite good but was so serious, we weren't sure whether the song really was funny. Some people just don't tell jokes very well.
After intermission, we heard six movements from the Rachmaninoff Vespers. The first one, Come, Let Us Worship (sung in Russian), restored our faith in humanity, tonality, and choral unity. Things went astray after that, however. Again, only a part of the choir sang. I wonder why; choirs love to sing this music, and I'll bet that everyone in the SF Symphony Chorus has sung the piece several times before. The sound was certainly in no danger of being too big, not in Davies. The mezzo soloist for this second movement was not up to the task. Fortunately, the tenor soloist in the fourth movement, Kevin Gibb, was terrific. The basses, or some of them at least, managed the incredible low B-flat at the end of the fifth movement, Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart.
Two things bothered me about this performance of the Rachmaninoff. First, the chorus had their noses in their books. I can understand that for the Swedish pieces, but not for the Vespers. The Russian is not easy to learn, but the notes are. I was sitting upstairs; they were all looking down; the result was a muffled sound. 96 singers exclaiming Rejoice, O Virgin! should rock the hall. Second, I think the tempos were simply too fast. Many of the subtle chord shifts got lost. I know Davies doesn't have much reverberation, so you can't use the hall in the way you could use a big ol' stone church, but Bohlin could have done a lot more with tempo and dynamics. As you might guess, I've sung this piece several times, and I remember every note, so I really missed all those great crunchy passing notes and the occasional floor-shaking bass lines.
We got some floor-shaking in the last piece, Chichester Psalms, courtesy of Robert Huw Morgan at the Ruffatti organ. I've never heard this arrangement (with organ instead of orchestra), but it started with a bang, lots of reeds in the Pedal, very exciting. Morgan, who is the organist at Stanford, is a fine musician, but after the first few measures, I feared he would drown out the Chorus. My fears came true. He had interesting registrations (choices of organ stops), but he simply overpowered the chorus, especially the basses, who are no match for a 16' Diapason, let alone a Bombarde. (The name says it all.) All I can imagine is that they had only one rehearsal, it sounded good on stage, and they didn't send anyone out into the hall to check the balance.
In the blazing-fast, tongue-twisting Lamah rag'shu, the synchronization suffered. The percussionist was back, but he was at center stage, surrounded by singers. The pipes, however, are way up above everyone, and it just takes a while for sound to move. An organist will play a little ahead of the beat to compensate, but at this speed, and with all the reeds Morgan was using (they "speak" more slowly), it was a race (who's ahead now?). Believe it or not, there was a harpist on stage. Organ versus harp? No contest! She could have been practicing scales for all we knew.
The singing, the singing... The Chorus was fine. A few false entrances (here and elsewhere in the concert), but they projected the fun of a quick, vintage-Bernstein 7/8 meter near the beginning, and the practically Hawaiian slow 5/8 near the end. Zachary Weisberg was the boy soprano, a little rough around the edges, in the affected style that is now so popular with this role. The final movement is an a cappella chorale, and it was really nice to hear the chorus sing all by themselves for a few moments, lingering over those major-sevenths Bernstein loved so much. (His Mass ends in the same way.) The very last few bars are accompanied, alas, and even then, the organ was too loud.
There is probably an arrangement for piano instead of orchestra (or organ), and I think that would have worked much better. Earlier in the evening, we heard the Chorus' own pianist, Matthew Edwards, doing a great job with the rich accompaniment for Sven-Eric Johanson's Fancies II. I'm sure he would have done a great job with this piece, too: nicely percussive and quick, an occasional booming chord, but all in all, a better match. And we would have heard the harpist.
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