OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Pasadena Master Chorale at La Crescenta Presbyterian Church

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily
News

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Pasadena Master
Chorale; Jeffrey Bernstein, conductor

Saturday, June 4, 2011 La Crescenta Presbyterian Church

Next concert: Today at 4 p.m. at Altadena Community Church

Info: www.pasadenamasterchorale.org

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Green is the predominant color as Music Director Jeffrey
Bernstein and his Pasadena Master Chorale conclude their third season this
weekend with a concert focusing on elements of nature. It’s also a program that
resonated with the baby boomer generation; even the two pieces that Bernstein
wrote while a college student in 1988 and 1989 and Randall Thompson’s 1959
opus, Frostiana: Seven Country Songs, were
firmly rooted stylistically in the post-World War II era.

 

Except for the ubiquitous Alleluia, Thompson’s work doesn’t show up all that much on choral
programs these days (and Alleluia was
sung last night at La Crescenta Presbyterian Church, led with somewhat
lugubrious tempos by Assistant Conductor Lauren Buckley).

 

Bernstein devoted the second half of the program to
Thompson’s setting of seven Robert Frost poems that the composer wrote for the
bicentennial of Amherst, Mass. in 1959. Frost, of course, was associated with
Amherst and he and Thompson knew each other, so the commission made perfect
sense. Although reports vary as to whether Frost liked the piece, the composer
deftly captured Frost’s familiar words with music that sounds unmistakably
Thompson.

 

The seven movements are arranged in an arch, with the entire
chorus singing the first, fourth and seventh movements, while the women and men
alternate in the other four sections. The Chorale sang The Road Not Taken with elegant simplicity and closed powerfully
with Choose Something Like a Star. The
men’s selections, particularly Stopping
By Woods on a Snowy Evening,
were more balanced and secure than the women’s
offerings. Pianist Shawn Kirchner accompanied with evocative elegance.

 

The other major piece on the program was In the Beginning, Aaron Copland’s 1947 setting
of the first Biblical creation story (Genesis 1:1-2:7). This is a challenging piece for any chorus, and while the PMC
delivered some moments of great beauty, there were others when it struggled
with intonation (first notes of several pieces proved to be shaky all night). The Chorale’s diction was crisp throughout most of the 20
minutes and mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmn was the powerful soloist. Kirchner
provided discrete piano support.

 

Bernstein’s The Elm at
the Crossroads
was an effective musical setting of a poem by Walter Hard,
which spoke of a 108-year-old elm tree that was cut down to make way for a road
intersection. The Chorale sang the poignant music with feeling and clear
diction; only some occasional stridency in the upper soprano ranges marred the
chorus’ rich sound. The conductor’s second work, The Echoing Green, a setting of a William Blake poem for women’s
voices, was less effective.

 

One of the Chorale’s educational efforts is to mentor young
singers and several of the students joined the chorale for Alleluia and Ye Shall Have a
Song,
a portion of Thompson’s oratorio, The
Peaceable Kingdom.

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Hemidemisemiquaver:

Guzmn sat unobtrusively in the back of the hall to listen
to the portions of the program in which she wasn’t singing. It was a classy
touch from a classy lady and something that’s not often done by other soloists.

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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted with attribution.

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