concert review: Magnificat

[calimac]

B. and I ventured out Friday night to St. Patrick's Seminary, which I've driven past numerous times but had never actually visited. Deep inside the expansive wooded grounds is a large, impressive building with statues of saints all around it, and deep inside the building's institutional but decorated corridors is a large wooden chapel, the kind where the seating is choir stalls divided into individual seats along the sides facing inwards, rather than pews facing forwards, and deep inside the chapel, for it was rather large for such a small ensemble, were a director, five singers, and a tiny orchestra of eight including the positive (i.e. semi-portable) organ, and from deep inside themselves the musicians burst forth with sacred works by the French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier: his Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass), Dialogue of the Angels and the Judean Shepherds (one guess as to their topic of discussion), and the Elevation O pretiosum, the latter two works, along with organ and vocal presentations of some of the carols Charpentier used as themes, stuffed deep inside the Mass like a musical turducken.

While not the most transporting performance of such repertoire I've heard, it was compelling and smoothly rendered. The counter-tenor, Christopher LeCluyse, was particularly strong, which he needed to be, given his load of solos. The two sopranos interwove their voices enchantingly during the Gloria of the Mass. The bass was very deep. There was also a tenor, who opened his mouth, but I'm not sure if anything came out. The principal violinist's instrument virtually disappeared under his enormous Beard while he played, but it did manage to emit a strong, dry sound (little vibrato in this repertoire) nevertheless.