HANDEL, MOZART AND THE PSALMS OF DAVID
This is the first in a three part series outlining the upcoming season for The Boston Cecilia. The next two articles will focus on the December and April concerts, but we begin our 141st season with a spectacular program of Handel and Mozart in Jordan Hall at The New England Conservatory in Boston. The two works to be performed are Handel’s youthful and exuberant setting of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus, and Mozart’s oratorio that draws on the Psalms of David…and substantial quantities of music from his Great Mass in C Minor…entitled Davide Penitente.
BY NICHOLAS WHITE
This is the first in a three part series outlining the upcoming season for The Boston Cecilia. The next two articles will focus on the December and April concerts, but we begin our 141st season with a spectacular program of Handel and Mozart in Jordan Hall at The New England Conservatory in Boston. The two works to be performed are Handel’s youthful and exuberant setting of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus, and Mozart’s oratorio that draws on the Psalms of David…and substantial quantities of music from his Great Mass in C Minor…entitled Davide Penitente. Falling during the year that would have marked the 80th birthday of my predecessor, Donald Teeters, who died exactly two years ago, this concert reflects many of Don’s musical tastes. By many accounts, Dixit Dominus was one of his favorite pieces of music.
Beyond the musical selections, however, there is another very important aspect of Donald’s work that we are honoring. After Don’s death in 2014, the Board of Directors established The Donald Teeters Fund. Several key mission-related uses for the funds have been established, and one of the purposes is to continue the engagement of new, young singers, in order to give them some exposure to Boston audiences. This was something that Don did consistently, supportively and intentionally. I am pleased to say that our excellent soloists for October 14th fall under that category, and I am excited to work with them all this Fall.
Soprano, Sarah Yanovitch is a recent graduate of the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, where she was a student of James Taylor. Recent appearances as concert soloist include such works as the Fauré Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, and Dixit Dominus.
Soprano Emily Nöel, praised for her “sparkling performances” and “sheer vocal beauty” by The Washington Post, concertizes throughout North America and Europe in a wide variety of repertory expanding from the Medieval to the contemporary.
Countertenor, Dr. Daniel Roihl has appeared as a soloist with numerous professional choirs throughout New England and Southern California, performed at early music festivals in Bloomington and Corona del Mar, and been featured on the soundtrack of the 2007 film I Am Legend.
Tenor Alexander Nishibun’s vibrant, youthful instrument and sensitive stage presence have been characterized as “a delight…” and “capable of stealing the show with a gesture” (Portland Press Herald).
Bass, Charlie Evett is a giant in the field of a cappella bass singing. His thumping lines and Richter- scale solos powered Rockapella to national prominence, and now he is the sturdy foundation beneath The GrooveBarbers, which he co-founded.
This is my first time conducting both of these works, although my love for each of them goes back three decades. I first performed Dixit Dominus as a singer with the Cambridge University Chamber Choir in 1988. Concerts in Cambridge, London and Rome of this masterpiece, in the context of the Carmelite Vespers of 1707, sealed it as one of my all-time favorite pieces of baroque music. Shortly after this, I presented Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor (along with his oboe concerto) to an overflowing audience in Clare College Chapel. Mozart pulls in an audience, there’s no doubt about it, and this was a memorable occasion. As mentioned above, Mozart draws most of the musical material for Davide Penitente from the Kyrie and Gloria of this mass setting and adds two spectacular original solo arias.
Both of these works rely heavily on two outstanding soprano soloists, and these arias are not for the faint of heart. A memory that stays with me, from the 1988 performance of the C Minor Mass, is that I had casually asked a friend if she would sing the soprano solos for the Mozart Mass in C Minor, to which she agreed enthusiastically. One week before the performance, she contacted me all of a flutter, saying that there was no way she could do the concert. She hadn’t realized that this was not just any old Mozart mass! We found a replacement…at very short notice!
With an orchestra of Boston’s finest historically-informed players, on period instruments, at an unusual pitch of A=430 in order to perform Handel and Mozart on the same program, the five soloists named above, the dedicated and powerful chorus of The Boston Cecilia, and the elegant surroundings of Jordan Hall, this opening concert of our season is sure to have you wanting to return for Britten, Copland, Barber and others later on in the season.
The next entry in this blog will focus on Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, A Boy Was Born, Nicholas White’s Alleluia! Puer Natus Est Nobis, the Women’s Ensemble of St. Paul’s School, Concord, NH, and the two remarkable concert venues: The Church of the Advent and All Saints, Brookline.
IN MEMORIAM: JOHN GRIMES (1946-2013)
BY DONALD TEETERS
John Grimes was a musician’s musician. He loved performing. He also loved the preparation for performance and the research that went into determining the right instrument and mallets for the work being performed, be it opera, oratorio, or symphony. And there was a stylistic integrity that he brought to his work, the knowledge that music by Handel or Haydn or Brahms or Britten required different sounds and techniques. John’s attention to these matters, coupled with his great natural gift, earned him the admiration of his colleagues. Audiences, too, enjoyed his musical company. His enthusiasms were a delight to hear and to see. He wanted people to see how much fun he was having.
His first performance with The Boston Cecilia (then The Cecilia Society) was on April 14, 1977. The work was Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Benjamin Zander was the conductor. I was on sabbatical leave for most of that season. When I last visited John at his home two weeks before he died, he was working on orchestral contracting details related to Cecilia’s forthcoming performance of that work, on Bach’s birthday, March 21, 2014. Cecilia’s new music director, Nicholas White, will conduct. There is a poignant symmetry, I think, in musing on that span of thirty-six years between John’s first and final collaborations with The Boston Cecilia, and on all the fine music-making that took place in between, and that at the core, both at beginning and end, was Bach’s magnum opus.
I have conducted many Cecilia performances over the years in which John played a central role: a great deal of Handel, of course, and Bach, but also Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and from later times Fauré and Britten and some fine composers of right now. John Grimes was not only a frequent performer with Cecilia, but also a valued contributor to its management team as a member of the Board of Directors during his final years. Speaking personally, the relationship between John Grimes and me grew from a formal, professional one into, in the last decade or so, one of great personal friendship and mutual respect. We had great conversations about everything. He liked my cooking. I liked the wines he brought as accompaniments. His circle of friendships was wide, professional connections maybe even wider. Stories of his kindnesses and support are legend, markers of the respect and affection this most remarkable man and musician so fully earned. He is missed.
—Donald Teeters, Conductor Emeritus
Timpani photo: courtesy of Flickr user, vxla