After trekking from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center and back
on a regular basis, it’s nice to encounter some grass-roots music-making that’s
a bit closer to home, and the Florilegium Chamber Choir’s Sunday-afternoon
performance at the Upper West Side’s Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church fit
the bill in all regards. Although a mixed ensemble of avocational and
professional musicians, the quality of musicianship was admirable and the
programming adventurous.
Sandwiched between Bach’s mysterious Cantata No. 131 and
Bruckner’s triumphant Te Deum, the group
gave a captivating premiere of Reiko Füting’s silently wanders/extensio for choir, mezzo soprano, organ, and solo
cello. Conductor Nicholas DeMaison navigated the ensemble through the spacious
score, one that alternated meditative organ solos with choral movements that
were both reflective and stuttering.
Comprising texts of E.E. Cummings and Reiner Bonack,
Füting’s settings made brilliant use of stammered consonants—often displacing
the first or last sound from their respective word, akin to Cummings’ own use
of avant-garde letter spacing and lack of punctuation. Mezzo soloist Nani
Füting traversed the wide-ranging solo, diverse in its use of both sweeping and
dramatic melodies, as well as Pierrot
Lunaire-esque points of speech-song. Here, too, the displaced consonant
added an incredible sense of text painting, with the final “t” of the German “zeit (time)” transforming into a ticking
clock that gradually faded into the hushed return of the pipe organ.
Both the Bach and the Bruckner were given dedicated readings,
making up for a lack of polished technique with a spirited delivery. Especially
in the Bruckner (in which the choir sounded particularly resonant while stationed
in the choir loft), DeMaison led the assembled forces through clear, articulate
entrances while producing a consistently uniform sound.
Beautifully coordinated moments were plentiful, especially
in the “Aeterna fac,” where serpentine melodic fragments built successively
while gradually gaining in volume—an effect that paid off in the final
evocation of “gloria numerari (eternal glory).”
Kudos must be given to DeMaison and the Florilegium singers
for regularly showcasing new music onto their programs. While the orchestral
world has become startlingly progressive in its inclusion of living composers, the
same cannot usually be said for their choral counterparts. To hear a work like
Füting’s in the midst of staples like Bach and Bruckner is to realize that the
human voice’s most thrilling counterpart is actually the consolatory hum of reverent
silence.