Three lesser-known works sure to wow choral audiences
The Richard Eaton Singers have built up an enviable reputation over the last 67 years for their large-scale choral concerts.
Edmonton’s major symphonic choir (currently with 115 singers) has regularly presented great blockbuster choral works such as the Bach Passions, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Britten’s War Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, as well as commissioning new Canadian works.
For their concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in the Winspear on Friday, however, conductor Leonard Ratzlaff has decided to present lesser known choral works by two well-known composers. They are works he has long wanted to champion, and to introduce to both the choir and to Edmonton audiences.
The first is Schubert’s Mass No. 5 in A flat major, D. 678, completed in 1822 and revised in 1826, but never performed in the composer’s lifetime. Schubert is, of course, best known for his symphonies, his wonderfully lyrical chamber music and his marvellous songs. But he started his public musical life as a choirboy, and his first public success came with the first of his six Mass settings.
The Mass No. 5, written for a quartet of soloists, chorus and orchestra, will come as a surprise to those who don’t know Schubert’s choral music. It’s intense, as vivacious as a Mozart mass, fast-moving, often dramatic and yet with all the composer’s skill at word setting and melodic invention. Ratzlaff is pretty sure this will be the first time the work will have been heard in Edmonton.
“I’ve wanted to do this Schubert Mass all my lifetime,” says Ratzlaff. “We did Schubert’s E flat Mass some 20 years ago, but in this piece, Schubert’s melodic instincts come through in so many places. Then there are his dramatic responses to certain passages. It breaks ground in so many ways — I hope I can convince audiences!”
Brahms has also been central to Ratzlaff ’s career. His first big orchestral conducting experience was with the Brahms Deutsche Requiem for the University of Alberta’s 75th anniversary, and it’s a work he has performed with the Richard Eaton Singers. He describes the Brahms motets, which he has also performed with the choir, as “elemental to my own feelings and experience.”
Brahms was one of the first composers to realize the importance of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry, and one of the first to set his verse to music. Schicksalslied, Op. 54 (Song of Destiny) for chorus and orchestra describes the hero’s rapture in the heavens (with echoes of the Deutsche Requiem in the orchestral opening), contrasting it with humankind down below, suffering and finding no resting place.
Brahms’ Nänie for chorus and orchestra, Op. 82, opens with what Ratzlaff describes as “one of the most beautiful melodies Brahms had ever written,” setting the words “Even the beautiful must die.” The poet Friedrich Schiller then describes three such deaths from Greek mythology: Orpheus having to leave behind Eurydice in the Underworld; the goddess Aphrodite mourning her lover Adonis, killed by a wild boar; and the famous Greek warrior Achilles being lamented by his mother after being shot in his heel at Troy.
The choir has been working on the background to these stories, and have, says Ratzlaff, “really bought into the mythology.” He — and the choir members — have also noticed “a huge difference” following an innovation a couple of years ago: the hiring of four experienced professional singers to act as leaders in each section of the amateur chorus. He hopes they will soon be able to double that number.
The four soloists in the Schubert are also well-known to Edmonton audiences. Soprano Sherry Steele teaches voice at the University of Alberta. Calgary-based mezzo-soprano Sara Staples has sung with the Richard Eaton Singers before. Tenor John Tessier needs little introduction, and was most recently seen in Edmonton Opera’s Don Giovanni. Bass Paul Grindlay is artistic director of the Calgary Boys Choir, and has sung all over Canada, including an appearance with Pro Coro.
The Richard Eaton Singers will end their season May 6 at the Winspear, when they will be appearing with the Edmonton Youth Orchestra. The program includes Michael Massey’s Tom Pinch Ride, setting several scenes from Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit.
They have also announced one of their major concerts for next season, for Remembrance Day on the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. They will be giving the Alberta premiere of Allan Bevan’s Last Light Above the World (Edmontonians may remember EdMetro’s performance of Bevan’s best-known work, Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode, in 2016).
This new work was co-commissioned with choirs in Ontario, where it has already been performed for the anniversary of Vimy Ridge, and judging by the excerpt on YouTube, promises to be quite an event.
In the meantime, there are those three surprising and powerful choral works to encounter at this Friday’s concert.