NEITHER HEALTH SCARES NOR HIGH NOTES CAN SLOW CHANTICLEER

<>         NEITHER HEALTH SCARES NOR HIGH NOTES CAN SLOW CHANTICLEER
                    In its Millennium-Sized Repertoire & Wide Touring Schedule
                                              By Paul Hertelendy
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance
                                                                 Week of Dec. 17-25, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 49
          BERKELEY---The nomadic choral mini-caravan is brightened with intellect and inspiration to thousand-watt intensity this Christmas as Chanticleer once again offers fascinating fresh repertoire new and old on its massive migration.
           The Berkeley encampment Dec. 16 featured approximately a millennium of music, from church chants through Renaissance and some modern nuggets as the group has dug deep into the biggest chunk of your typical music library, listed under the rubric CHORUS.
            And what quality! As one older music-lover hearing Chanticleer for the first time exclaimed to us, “I simply can’t believe the quality of this group!”
            The magic comes from a dozen carefully selected professional male singers going all the way up to soprano. They bring off their a cappella works in a wide variety of venues, from the acoustically excellent First Congregational Church here, all the way to the vast Disney Symphony Hall in Los Angeles the next night. And sometimes even on its home base, San Francisco. Without the safety net of accompaniment, without even a conductor.
            And it’s always exactly a dozen singers. What happens when flu hits? “It doesn’t matter---everybody sings,” explains the Music Director Matt Oltman, a veteran who sang in this nonpareil group himself until two years ago.
            It begins as in the ancient Christian churches, with a candlelight procession through a blacked-out hall, singing Gregorian chant. Then complex Renaisssance motets by Josquin and the Slovenian Jakob Handl.
            Eventually, unfamiliar modern works, by 20^th-century figures Arvo Pärt, César Cui, Franz Biebl and the unfortunate Hugo Distler, who had a life span even shorter than Mozart’s.
            I was much taken by the Magnificat of César Cui, one of the most neglected of 19^th-century Russia’s Big Five composers. This work conveys a religious ecstasy in gorgeous harmonies, with prominence for a solo soprano (sung by Cortez Mitchell, then Gregory Peebles). The male sopranos are the unique feature of Chanticleer, sounding high, lyrical and accurate in many languages (eight of them, in this concert!). The Russian enunciation was good, in contrast to the German mushiness in the Distler “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” where the rolling of the German R’s appeared to be a forgotten skill.
            There are macaronic verses (i.e., parts in different languages), as in Santa Cruz composer Robert Young’s “There Is No Rose of Such Virtue” spilling into Latin. This vocal group is much too square to carry off a concluding set of African-American spirituals convincingly, but it is effective in the dance-like villancico spirit of the Spanish carol, “Esta noche nace un Niño” (Tonight Is Born a Babe), which Kathleen Battle used to sing and help popularize.
             Of particular interest to these ears was music of two totally unknown 16^th-century composers from opposite sides of the Atlantic. The earliest surviving examples of notated work by a New-World (non-European) composer are two lauds to the Virgin by the Indian, Don Hernando Franco, written to a text in his native Nahua (Mexican) tongue, pieces rich in color and Renaissance counterpoint.
            From the Roman school came Giovanni Maria Nanino, who may have studied with Palestrina, in yet another Nativity motet “Hodie nobis,” with soaring arching tones provided at the hallmark lines delivered by angels (or, at the very least, by angelic voices), “Glory to God in the Highest,” rendered in Latin.
            And no Chanticleer season medley is complete without the encore of “Silent Night”---absolutely sublime---and the group’s signature piece by the 20^th-century German Franz Biebl, who lived to age 95, “Ave Maria,” one of the most haunting selections in the rep with its seven-voice writing and ingratiating harmonies.
            Chanticleer, the all-male a cappella vocal group of 12, in Christmas concert. Continuing Dec. 17, Los Angeles; 19^th, San Francisco; 20^th, Davis; 21^st, Carmel, 22^nd Santa Clara, 23^rd Livermore. For info: (415) 252-8589, or go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2009
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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