On July 5, 2011, at the Basilica of St. Denis, the hallowed place on the outskirts of Paris where most of France’s kings and queens are buried, we will have the privilege of making the fourth in an SDG-sponsored series of the greatest masterworks of sacred music. This time it will be the granddaddy of them all, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Mr. Tommasini, the lead critic of The New York Times, in his first article of the New Year, wrote poignantly about Bach as the greatest composer of all time, to which I would add that the St. Matthew is the greatest of the greatest. We are then talking about the crème de la crème, the very high point of Western classical music.
I could take your time by writing about the perfect structure, the incredibly powerful drama, the profound theology, the devotional character, and the achingly beautiful music of this masterpiece, but I’d rather simply tell you what this work means to me, why it is my ‘island’ piece and why I’m looking forward to filming it.
My first experience with the work was in my third year in college when my favorite and hugely influential choral conductor, Rolf Espeseth, chose to conclude his tenure with a performance of the St. Matthew and privileged me by letting me conduct all the chorales. Suddenly the composer, who had been for me methodical and complicated, became the composer of a world of images that mesmerized me and moved me to the depths. Bach became central in my studies at The Juilliard School in New York where, as a student, I conducted a number of his cantatas, sang in the Mass in B Minor and directed a community chorus, the Pro Arte Chorale, which in due course performed the St. Matthew at Lincoln Center. I shall never forget the first time I conducted the opening bars in rehearsal with the throbbing bass line under the wailing voices pleading, “Come ye daughters help me lament.” That this sublime music was actually coming out of my hands reduced me to a puddle of tears in front of my musicians.
Subsequent performances at Wolf Trap, at the Aspen Music Festival and in Indianapolis, where I was Music Director of the ISO, all brought enormous rewards and deepened my knowledge of the score. Then in 1985, the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth, I was asked to conduct both the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, plus the Mass in B Minor, during Holy Week at Carnegie Hall. This extraordinary experience bonded me with Bach for the rest of my life, and when I took the music directorship of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the first thing I did was to approach the Archbishop of Paris, Jean Marie Lustiger, about performing these three great Bach masterpieces in three-year cycles at Easter time in the Notre Dame Cathedral. His enthusiastic response allowed my orchestra to be the only professional ensemble to perform in the Cathedral, and for ten years this cycle became a Paris focal point at Easter and the high point in our orchestral season.
Now Soli Deo Gloria is launching the same cycle in Chicago, beginning this Easter with the St. Matthew Passion at the beautiful St. Vincent de Paul Parish on April 20. (It is not to be missed). But of all of these performances, the big one is still to come. And that will be the DVD filming at the St. Denis Festival this July. It will be the fourth in a series of five DVDs sponsored by SDG and filmed by Europe’s premiere classical music/video company, Ideale Audience. To date we have filmed Bach’s Mass in B Minor at Notre Dame, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in Lisbon, and Haydn’s The Creation in the Naarden Church outside of Amsterdam. They are all brilliant productions that will soon be available for commercial release. (The fifth production will be of the Messiah filmed in London with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, 2012.)
Why are we doing this, and why is the St. Matthew so important? First of all, I feel, and certainly SDG feels, that our world desperately needs this music. Great sacred music lifts us up from the heaviness of our world, the frequent drudgery of our lives, and gives us hope in the midst of tragedy. Sacred music is not itself the source of hope, but points to the Source and is a conduit for people who don’t darken the doors of a church or open the Scriptures. In Europe in particular, sacred music concerts, often given in otherwise empty churches and cathedrals, are what a secular generation substitutes for a communal spiritual experience. And I can tell you from experience with the St. Matthew performances that people are moved to the core. Minds and hearts are awakened to a dimension of life not previously experienced.
This is the purpose of these DVDs. They will be listened to by millions in their homes, on their computers, on television sets. In an age when pop music floods every corner of our lives, the music that has blessed, inspired, calmed and challenged countless generations throughout history has the capacity to transform and purify us today. I have high hopes that this particular St Matthew Passion DVD, with its great cast of spectacular soloists, chorus and orchestra, will capture an inspired performance born of great experience and passionate conviction.
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I decided to take a little ‘vacation’ prior to the DVD project coming up in Amsterdam, so as to immerse myself completely in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation). And so I find myself on a beautiful island off the coast of Brittany where the sunrise, the changing sea, the smell of flowers, the rocks and hills all inspire me to study the text (Milton and the Bible) and the notes of this extraordinary score which describe the beauties of God’s creation.
Fortunately, I’m not learning notes, as I’ve done The Creation many times, but, rather honing them, searching for new meanings, and becoming so comfortable with them that the music will flow completely naturally for this once in a life-time occasion. The privilege of making this DVD with some of the finest artists in the business is enormous but daunting. A concert is a moment in time, the memory of which gradually dims, but a recording is like a printed book which cannot be changed. You had better get it right. To that end I am spending two weeks looking afresh and marking a complete new set of parts for the musicians.
Through all this preparation I am carried by Haydn’s incredible passion and exuberance. What utterly amazes me is the fountain of creativity that Haydn exhibits at the end of his life. Here he is pushing three score and ten years (the equivalent of today’s ninety year old) and his innovation and youthfulness are everywhere breathtaking, not to speak of his humor! I am, actually, the same age as Haydn when he wrote his masterpiece and I can only hope and pray that a fraction of his imagination and a generous measure of his faith will be in me as we perform. I invite you to catch the live webcast, Friday, June 25 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, at www.medici.tv, and join in the experience.
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Every year there seems to be a musical highlight, a moment that I either look forward to with great anticipation or that catches me by surprise. This season, so far, it clearly was the SDG-sponsored filming of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in Lisbon last week. Everything about this occasion was thrilling, from the soloists, chorus and orchestra (the Gulbenkian Foundation Choir and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe), to the filming and the response of the audience. I had done this monumentally difficult work with four previous ensembles, including the great Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, but none came close to this rendition. Part of the success stemmed simply from my deep immersion in the work over the past several months to the point of finally feeling ‘at home’ with it. But a greater part of the success came from a remarkable cohesion between all performers, especially the choir, which sang with a confidence and joyous commitment that blew us all away.
It was truly a privilege to be a part of such music making. We professionals that spend our lives making music day in and day out are blessed to do what we do. But it is not every day that we experience everything coming together in a kind of perfection. This was that day. I look forward to the DVD release later this year.
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Ξ June 26th, 2009 | → 3 Comments | ∇ SDG |
I’d like to share with you a most remarkable experience I’ve been privileged to have during these past several weeks.
For over a decade SDG has been sponsoring “Project Uplift” in countries around the world to promote glorious classical sacred music. This time it was Costa Rica, the country of my birth (my parents were missionaries there), a stunningly beautiful country the size of West Virginia, with a population of 5 million, whose claim to fame is its peaceful democratic history and its extraordinary educational system.
As a child I developed my love of music there, took my first piano lessons and heard my first symphonic concert. My first performing experience was playing accordion and singing in a trio at nine years of age with my father playing saxophone and my brother playing the guitar. We sometimes toured into the tropical outposts on horseback. Could I ever have imagined that someday I would return to conduct the first performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor in the history of Central America in two sold out concerts with an orchestra and chorus entirely of Costa Ricans?
My first acquaintance with Bach also took place in Costa Rica. My parents bought me a 33 RPM recording of Robert Shaw conducting Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden. I listened to it over and over again as a child of six or seven years. But I was not to reacquaint myself with Bach until my last years at Wheaton College where my choral director, Rolf Espeseth, conducted the St. Matthew Passion and Robert Shaw came to town on tour with the B Minor Mass. Then I was smitten for life.
To do the B Minor Mass in Costa Rica was not my idea. I didn’t have the courage to suggest this piece, it being the toughest choral sing in the repertoire. It was suggested by Ramiro Ramírez, the conductor of the Symphonic Choir in San José, who when we proposed a Project Uplift, assured me his singers could do it.
I was not surprised, however, to get an e-mail from Ramiro several weeks before flying to Costa Rica saying they had spent four months of three rehearsals per week learning it, but simply could not conquer two of the toughest numbers. I gulped as cutting these two numbers, both part of the Credo, would cause havoc with the precise structure of the whole work, not to speak of real injustice to the Nicene Creed. Under the circumstances I had no choice but to accept this cut, and in the larger context of this experience, it was not a serious problem.
The first choral rehearsal was quite encouraging. The 65 members of the Symphonic Choir were clearly nervous but excited. With five rehearsals to go before putting them together with the orchestra, we had enough time to solve problems and put everyone at ease. All in all, I was very impressed with the mature and beautiful sound they produced.
The first orchestra rehearsal was also encouraging as I found the players very receptive to my comments on a baroque style of playing, which was quite foreign to them. They also showed great interest in my theological and textural comments (American orchestras have little patience for such commentary), which I feel absolutely essential to understanding and performing this music.
My childhood friend, Jaime Cabezas, arranged a lecture session in the new and stunning wing of the Clinica Biblica, the hospital founded by the Latin American Mission (under which my parents served), and it was here that my mother was head nurse for 40 years. The little auditorium seated 175 people and was quite full for the lecture. A very emotional moment came at the beginning of the session when Jaime announced that the maid who lived with my family when I was a boy of four was in attendance. Florita, to my utter surprise (she must be close to 90 years old), came forward and we hugged. Also in the audience were many friends from my youth, some of whom I had not seen in 55 years.
The lecture, in which I delved into the secrets of Bach’s utterly fascinating compositional style and the theological underpinnings of the Mass, was followed by a recital by the four remarkable soloists that came from Chicago for this project: Michelle Areyzaga, Denise Gamez, Edward Mout and Stephen Morscheck. They were accompanied by pianist Daniel Horn, Denise’s husband, who added some solo piano pieces to the program as well.Before getting to the performances, let me tell you about the orchestra. When I was a child the National Symphony was a ragtag group of half nationals and half foreigners directed by an Italian conductor who was fired by Toscanini at the NBC orchestra in New York for being perpetually inebriated. Now 50 years later, it is a solid orchestra made up entirely of ‘Ticos’ (the nickname of Costa Ricans) who were trained in a remarkable musical program initiated in the 70’s by the then cultural minister, Guido Saenz. This program was picked up by Venezuela and developed into the largest youth musical program in the world, called Sistema, in which 250,000 kids are given free instruments and lessons, and in which 500 orchestras have been formed. This ’system’ has now returned to Costa Rica in a big way and is supported by the government that gives 3 million dollars of instruments every year to the youth of the country.
This is the remarkable environment into which our B Minor Mass project came. No doubt the two sold out performances were due in great part to the vibrant musical culture being promoted by this educational program.
The performances took place in the National Theater, a gorgeous and elegant Italian style opera house built thanks to the coffee boom of the late 19th century. It is the jewel and the pride of all Costa Ricans. Here, as a child, I heard Martha Argerich, then a child prodigy, as well as many others, so it is no wonder I still get chills walking into the foyer.
The first performance was on a Friday evening. As we entered the theater there was Chandler Branch setting up a table where SDG’s Bach in Notre-Dame DVD of the B Minor Mass would be made available for purchase. He was accompanied by SDG board member Paul Ten Elshof who with several other SDG friends had come to San José to help in any way they could. A beautiful story was told by Tom Marks, an SDG friend from Chicago, who when he saw a young choir member so excited to buy a DVD turn away dejected because he could not afford it, took the young chorister back to the table and bought it for him. The boy wept. I could fill pages with similar moving episodes. (for videos, photos and comments from participants, visit www.SDGmusic.org/news/?cat=21)
Back to the performances. Friday night was a good performance, even brilliant in moments, but there was a touch of nervousness especially in the chorus. The feeling of doing well in the first performance gave way to a confidence that resulted in a thrilling second performance Sunday morning. At the end of the first part when the chorus bursts forth in the most joyous fugue Bach ever wrote (Cum Sancto Spiritu—“With the Holy Spirit in the Glory of God the Father, Amen”), I felt the tears running down my cheeks. It was here that I told my musicians in rehearsal that they all had to be Pentecostals and speak in tongues! They did, and the house erupted in applause.
One of the contributing factors to the success of these performances was the presence of subtitles which gave the translation of the Latin text on a screen above the proscenium as the music went along. Many people told me that this allowed them to worship while listening to the text. Bach would have been pleased.
I shall bring this to a close by recounting one of the many responses from people back stage after Sunday’s performance. Walter Field, an eighty-year-old former concertmaster of the National Symphony, said to me while holding his personal pocket-sized score of the B Minor Mass, “Costa Rican musical history will forever be divided into two parts: before this B Minor Mass performance and after this B minor.”
That a piece of sacred music can make such an impression is what SDG is all about.
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