Camerata Notturna in Review
Camerata Notturna
David Chan, Music Director
Meigui Zhang, soprano; Siphokazi Molteno, mezzo-soprano; Alexander McKissick, tenor; Matthew Rose, bass-baritone
Downtown Voices: Stephen Sands, director
The Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, New York, NY
April 30, 2022
Sometimes you need a miracle. Less often do you actually get one. I got my miracle at Saturday night’s performance by Camerata Notturna. The talent pool in New York is so huge that there are numerous mostly “amateur” orchestras in virtually every neighborhood. These so-called amateurs may in fact be young conservatory graduates of professional quality. When they are helmed by one of the leading violinists in town, David Chan (concertmaster of the famed Metropolitan Opera orchestra), the results are, well, miraculous. His conducting star is rising internationally.
The Beethoven anniversary in 2020 (250 years since his birth) was seriously disrupted worldwide, as we know, and it’s not like Beethoven needs a publicist or anything. These touchstones however, have become essential nutrition for listeners everywhere and many conductors like to measure themselves against these works.
The program began with the brief subito con forza by Unsuk Chin, composed as an anniversary tribute. It is definitely not pastiche, though fragmented quotes of typical Beethoven gestures float and slash through it. Rather, as its title indicates, it portrays the sudden changes and contrasts typical of the composer’s music and spirit. The masked orchestra (except for the winds of course) played it very well, the sound mellow in the vaults of the church.
Now to the hoped-for miracle. How would a performance of the radical “Choral” symphony hold up? It is a work full of treacherous traps for any conductor, orchestra, and its punishing demands on the choral sopranos and the four soloists are legendary.
Maestro Chan rendered every part of the score with transparency and utter clarity, even in the potentially muddling acoustics of the church. The tempi were fleet when indicated, ritardandi, also when indicated, were never exaggerated. The numerous metrical modulations were handled expertly and without strain. He allowed me to hear the structure of the work clearly. Mr. Chan is not a flamboyant conductor: I almost wished he would allow his body gestures to ‘expand’ more, to indicate the arching lines. But even as I say that, I must congratulate him on the obvious details of what we as an audience don’t witness: the rehearsal process, so crucial to success.
There is no ‘weak spot’ in Camerata Notturna. With some community orchestras the strings are more developed, with some the winds are superb but the strings less confident. Everything was top-notch here. Perhaps in a different acoustic certain balances may have emerged or been more refined, but I could hear ‘beyond’ that.
Thus the first three movements passed along their emotional arc from coalescing music out of silence, to tempestuous anger, unbridled energy, even humor, in the scherzo, and a heart full of song in the adagio. After all that, what could possibly be added? The human voice of course, the ultimate instrument, the only one that resides inside the human body.
For this, the wonderful Downtown Voices provided the chorus. They had a difficult mission, since the space in the church didn’t permit them to be located behind the orchestra, but on the sides of the sanctuary, women on the left, men on the right. Somehow they overcame that and provided an unexpectedly thrilling sound, one with no strain at all, even as the soprano decrescendo on an impossibly long high G (lieber Vater wohnen). They were obviously trained well by Stephen Sands, their conductor.
None of this would have been possible without the four excellent vocal soloists, drawn from the Metropolitan Opera (soprano Meigui Zhang, bass-baritone Matthew Rose), or its Young Artist Development Program (mezzo-soprano Siphokazi Molteno), and the Washington Nation Opera (tenor Alexander McKissick).
Mr. Rose’s O Freunde, nich diese Töne! was truly terrifying, and appropriate. I thought about the audience in 1824 and how startled they must have been to hear a voice interrupting a symphony. The four soloists worked beautifully together, finding their own quartet balance at all times, the perfect ornament to this stunning finale.
Maestro Chan, bravo! And thank you for the miracle.
