Clear, Pure & Holy

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The New York Sun

It has become one of New York’s best Christmas traditions – right up there with Santa Claus at Macy’s. (Does Santa still drop by, or have miracles ceased on 34th Street?) I’m speaking of the Chanticleer Christmas concert held in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum, right in front of the big tree and the Neapolitan Baroque creche. Sunday night’s concert was … it was sublime, really. It’s safe to say that everyone in attendance felt privileged to be there.


Chanticleer is the 12-man singing group from San Francisco. They have made almost 30 records, and Christmas is practically their specialty: This year, they’re giving 22 concerts between Thanksgiving and the big day. They are a “fun” group, yes – enjoyable to hear and to follow. But they are superbly musical, a splendid collectivity.


On Sunday night at the Met Museum, the group began out of view, and in separate clusters. They processed to “Veni, veni, Emmanuel.” They began to sing without any forewarning – and I have never heard a crowd hush so quickly. They stayed hushed for the next hour and a half, except for frenzied applauding and shouts of “Bravi.”


As this group processed, “Veni, veni, Emmanuel” blended with “Corde natus ex Parentis,” and those blended with “Adeste, fideles.” The singers were in perfect balance – as usual – and in perfect tune (or nearly perfect tune). Technically, they hardly put a foot wrong, and, musically, they are very sensible, and often moving. This is not a group of excess or emotionality or vulgarity – neither are they studiedly cool. “Adeste, fideles,” for example, was clear, and pure, and holy. And those three words can apply to most of the evening.


Some Eastern exoticism came with a work by an Armenian monk, that man being Komitas Vartabed (born Soghomon Soghomonian, in 1869). Chanticleer sounded like an organ set up in the ideal way. And when they end a piece, they don’t choke off the sound, but give the impression that the sound continues. Gaiety came in with “Hodie nobis coelorum Rex,” a six-voice motet from the 16th-century composer Philippe de Monte. Here, as elsewhere, Chanticleer showed their talent for keeping every part clear, while providing an overall richness. And that brilliant Spaniard Tomas Luis de Victoria was wonderfully represented by “Magi viderunt stellam.”


The 15th-century English carol “Nowell” requires vigor and virility, as indicated by its opening words, “Nowell! Out of your sleep arise and wake” – and Chanticleer delivered. After a still earlier English carol – “Ecce, quod natura” – came a piece by contemporary Estonian “holy minimalist” Arvo Part. This was “Bogoroditsye Dyevo,” a rapid, stirring thing. I thought, “Put it on a 45, and it’ll sell a million copies.” Well, maybe not, but few could fail to enjoy it. It deserves to be a hit.


The high point of the evening – and its centerpiece – came in the form of Cui’s Magnificat, Op. 93. Cesar Antonovich Cui was one of the Russian “Five” (with Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, et al.). The Magnificat is redolent of the Russian church, and Chanticleer sang it with extreme beauty and power. The audience responded as though at a rock concert, and Chanticleer beamed, seeming to know that they had done something extraordinary.


One of Britten’s main contributions to the choral literature was “A Hymn to the Virgin” (beloved of the late Robert Shaw, by the way). Chanticleer did not begin it cleanly, but this was a rare hitch. Also, they sang it too slowly for the music’s absolute good – but they still shone. Then, their “Rejoice and Be Merry” was quintessentially English, all figgy pudding. Later in the program, they did “Good King Wenceslaus,” which was crisp and even, if not deep. Chanticleer even proffered a page and a monarch (singers who took those “roles”).


Our 12 closed the printed program with a medley of Christmas spirituals, arranged by their music director, Joseph Jennings. Some were toe-tapping, some were heart-gladdening, some were both. Chanticleer sang in a manner both authentic and musical (and, of course, the authentic manner is musical).


Their encore was an inevitable one, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” the Chanticleer signature number. How does it transport and exalt, every time? Because – for one thing – Chanticleer never tires of it, at least outwardly. As the audience (reluctantly) filed out, one lady said to her friend, “Now it can be Christmas.”


Ah, yes, Christmas. This was a Christmas concert – not a “holiday concert,” and certainly not a “winter concert.” It almost counts as a miracle that Chanticleer continues to sing Christmas loud and clear. Sure, in their spoken remarks to the audience, they said “holiday” this and “holiday” that – “Have the happiest of holidays.” But in an age where the word “Christmas” is virtually taboo, Chanticleer is marvelously defiant.


A carol on this program – “See Amid the Winter’s Snow” – ends with the words, “Sing through all Jerusalem, Christ is born in Bethlehem.” That is the message, and the spirit, that blew through this concert, than which there will be none more satisfying, in any month of the music season.


The New York Sun

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