MASTERWORK CHORUS STAFF
Masterwork Chorus performs at The Concert Hall at Drew University in Madison.
Masterwork Chorus opened its 70th season with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a sprawling scenic cantata famous for its exuberant “O Fortuna” hymn to the Goddess of Fortune. Orff’s collection of songs about love, lust for life and drinking is always entertaining for concertgoers and it is no wonder that the performance, Nov. 16 at The Concert Hall at Drew University in Madison, was sold out.
Music director Martin Sędek took a made-to-measure approach, using a bright arrangement for piano accompaniment and percussion that was, well, percussive, and attentive to the work’s layers of text and choral music. It was well proportioned to the intimate concert hall, with the stage filled to the brim with a mixed choir, guest vocalists and the New Jersey Youth Chorus.
Sędek is in his second season with Masterwork, a nonprofit chorus of about 100 voices founded in 1955 and based in Chatham. He is its fifth music director and youngest ever, and it showed: There was a feeling of youthful spontaneity to the piece, with moments of good humor and amusement.
The voices of the choristers were uniform and well blended, and there was a sense of individuality among them. Over the traditional black concert garb, the singers added personalized accents in bright red: a silk bow tie here, a satin shawl there. Sędek joined in with a bright red belt.
The vibrant touch was appropriate for the work’s exciting, highly dramatic texts. Themes are based around the Wheel of Fortune, and all the pleasures and pains of life and love, religion and morality — and much in between.
MASTERWORK CHORUS STAFF
Conductor Martin Sędek, at right, and timpanist Andrienne Ostrander, with Masterwork Chorus.
The full orchestral score, which premiered in 1937, enlists every section of the orchestra plus two orchestral pianos, a celesta and an expanded percussion section. Here the instrumentation was pared back to two pianos and percussion, plus melodic timpani played attentively by Adrienne Ostrander. It was just the right amount of percussion to recreate the work’s strong rhythms and melodies, which also included tam-tam for the monumental opening and closing chorus plus sleigh bells for the hypnotic “Chramer, Gip die varwe mir.”
On piano, Carol Walker handled the melodies with David Maiullo on continuo. They carried much of the melodies of the woodwinds, brass and strings, and the musical language became a more modern and sometimes jazzy atmosphere. There was less emphasis on Orff’s manic shifts of mood and melodic richness, and more attention on the chorus and the directness of their words — a mix of medieval German, Latin and Old French poems written by Renaissance scholars, which Orff had discovered in a manuscript at an antique bookshop in Würzburg, Germany.
Sędek kept the chorus central to the work’s narrative and impact, and it was clear they were having a blast. They swayed along to the rhythms while he sang along from the podium. Orff’s manuscript asks for plenty of rubato and Sędek showed a fine sense with freely flowing rhythms, particularly effective in the more joyous moments, including the third section’s rousing “Veni, veni, venias” and the first section’s “Ecce gratum” with scintillating percussive bells.
MASTERWORK CHORUS STAFF
Baritone Erick Mosteller and pianist Carol Walker.
A trio of soloists tackled the incredibly high vocal tessitura. Baritone Erick Mosteller was clear-voiced and resonant throughout as the drunken monk. He is a sensitive singer and he kept an ear towards the work’s early music sensibilities. He sailed effortlessly through the towering (and falsetto) vocal heights of the lovelorn “Dies, nox” and “Omnia sol temperat.” The baritone soloist sometimes puts his own spin on the central “In Taberna” (“In the Tavern”) section and Mosteller did just that. In the “Ego sum abbas” parody, he staggered onto the stage affecting the abbot’s drunken stupor and even slurred some words. The men’s chorus was well integrated and capable of fine nuance and dynamics in the drinking songs that closed out the section.
Soprano Eunil Cho set the tender tone of the “Cour d’amours” (“The Court of Love”) section — a mini-drama of love, passion and seduction. She has a high, lyric coloratura that is bell-like, and delivered it with ease.
The episode opens with “Amor volat undique,” which featured the New Jersey Youth Chorus under the direction of Joanna Scarangello, with choristers from Wharton Arts’ choral education program for 3rd-to-12th graders. Bright and unified, they sang in one pure voice and placed meaning on every word.
MASTERWORK CHORUS STAFF
Soprano Eunil Cho.
Cho used some springy phrasing, which added a sense of hope to the song’s gloomy message about the pain of those who are alone. Her showstopping “In trutina” was meditative and pure-voiced, and she radiated sweetness in “Dulcissime” with a gentle and smiling demeanor.
Tenor Theron Cromer handled the small but memorable role of the swan being roasted alive on a spit. He sang from the mezzanine balcony above the stage (the same location as the children’s choir) for his solo “Olim lacus colueram,” in which he imagines himself being devoured by the hungry men who fill the medieval tavern. The men’s chorus comically donned white bibs and looked up at him with longing as they awaited their feast. Cromer was so charismatic that even the plaintive swan’s strangled laments came across as humorous.
This was a “Carmina” that understood the vicissitudes of fate and didn’t take itself too seriously. It’s always a good reminder to take things in stride.
Next up for Masterwork Chorus is Handel’s Messiah, Dec. 21 at Drew University and Dec. 23 at Carnegie Hall. The New York performance is an annual holiday tradition that began in 1961. Masterwork will also offer a sing-along version of Handel’s iconic oratorio, Dec. 7 at Chatham United Methodist Church (the event is BYOS: Bring Your Own Score). Visit masterwork.org.
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