Musical Madness
Woodley Ensemble
The Woodley Ensemble, one of Washington's leading chamber groups, sang with gusto and sophistication at St. Columba's Episcopal Church Saturday in a Renaissance program dubbed "Musical Madness."
A madrigal, "Moro, lasso," by the deranged Italian composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, offered the most notorious example of the theme, the prince having murdered his wife and her lover caught in flagrante delicto. Delivered expertly by the singers, Gesualdo's famously shocking madrigal is ripe with deliberate ambivalence, voiced in wildly shifting semitones and perversely contorted harmonies exposing the poem's tortured grief. (The politically powerful composer never went to jail, but the popular belief that his radically expressive music was due to obsessive guilt over his crime has lately been discounted: His psychopathy emerged in his youth.)
The Woodley also gave a magnificent performance of Orlando di Lasso's "Prophetiae Sibyllarum" ("Prophesies of the Sibyl"), a massive series of sacred motets. Under Music Director Frank Albinder, the ensemble met all the music's tortuous harmonic changes and other expressive extremes, including brash changes of pitch and rhythm. Here, as in works by Jacob Handl, Christopher Marshall, Till MacIvor Meyn and an Igor Stravinsky arrangement, the Woodley sang with clean, resonant vowels, immaculate entrances, precise diction and rhythmic agility.
In three settings of unsettling poems by New Zealand composer Marshall (present Saturday), the ensemble easily captured the disturbing essence of the texts, highlighted by absurd melodic twists and pointed dissonances. The singers also gave an expressive account of Meyn's lurid music for Edgar Allan Poe's maniacal "The City in the Sea."
-- Cecelia Porter
Washington Post
May 7, 2007
The Woodley Ensemble, one of Washington's leading chamber groups, sang with gusto and sophistication at St. Columba's Episcopal Church Saturday in a Renaissance program dubbed "Musical Madness."
A madrigal, "Moro, lasso," by the deranged Italian composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, offered the most notorious example of the theme, the prince having murdered his wife and her lover caught in flagrante delicto. Delivered expertly by the singers, Gesualdo's famously shocking madrigal is ripe with deliberate ambivalence, voiced in wildly shifting semitones and perversely contorted harmonies exposing the poem's tortured grief. (The politically powerful composer never went to jail, but the popular belief that his radically expressive music was due to obsessive guilt over his crime has lately been discounted: His psychopathy emerged in his youth.)
The Woodley also gave a magnificent performance of Orlando di Lasso's "Prophetiae Sibyllarum" ("Prophesies of the Sibyl"), a massive series of sacred motets. Under Music Director Frank Albinder, the ensemble met all the music's tortuous harmonic changes and other expressive extremes, including brash changes of pitch and rhythm. Here, as in works by Jacob Handl, Christopher Marshall, Till MacIvor Meyn and an Igor Stravinsky arrangement, the Woodley sang with clean, resonant vowels, immaculate entrances, precise diction and rhythmic agility.
In three settings of unsettling poems by New Zealand composer Marshall (present Saturday), the ensemble easily captured the disturbing essence of the texts, highlighted by absurd melodic twists and pointed dissonances. The singers also gave an expressive account of Meyn's lurid music for Edgar Allan Poe's maniacal "The City in the Sea."
-- Cecelia Porter
Washington Post
May 7, 2007
Love Songs
The Choral Journal
April, 2004
This recording, offered by the Woodley Ensemble, is seventy minutes of exquisite contemporary choral singing. From the lush opening chord to the last, conductor Frank Albinder leads the Washington, D.C. based ensemble with impeccable precision. Especially impressive is the vertical tuning displayed by this group while performing repertoire replete with difficult harmonies and tone clusters. Dynamic contrasts are thrilling and heartfelt and are indicative of the singers' connection to the poetry.
The disc highlights the work of three composers: Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas and William Hawley. The first work featured, "Canti d'amor," is a collection of fifteen love madrigals utilizing poems from James Joyce's "Chamber Music." Though the individual songs are brief, they are, nonetheless, delightful in their diversity. Joyce's poetry is marked by allusions to music and Rands makes the text come alive through contemporary harmonies and disjunctive melodic licks. It is worth mentioning here, to choral directors and voice teachers who enjoy banter regarding the use of vibrato, that even though the ensemble, as a whole, performs with a tone quality that lacks vibrato, the soloists perform with a vibrato that is natural, free, and vibrant. Whatever your view on this issue, the music-making here is stunning!
"...among the voices...," another work by Rands, is a setting for mixed chamber chorus and harp of "Four Poems in English (Dieppe)" by Samuel Beckett. Rands' use of harp in these songs is quite interesting; it is not used exclusively as an accompaniment instrument. To the contrary, it is often used as a solo instrument to enhance the literary context of the poetry. The ensemble is wonderful in this hauntingly beautiful work.
"Love Songs," composed by Augusta Read Thomas in 1997, is a collection of seven love-song settings of laconic phrases by luminaries such as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Lord Byron. The songs are brief, with the shortest at fifty-five seconds, yet they do not lack for creativity or fun. Thomas is inexhaustibly creative and dramatic in her use of text painting, often generating poignant musical reflection within a single word. Again, the ensemble is exact in its rhythmic execution and tuning.
The recording culminates in "Six Madrigals" by William Hawley. These Italian madrigals, composed for Chanticleer in 1986, are settings of texts by sixteenth-century author Torquato Tasso. Not surprisingly, these songs remind the listener of choral works by Palestrina and other composers of the Renaissance. As with Palestrina, the polyphonic textures used by Hawley glorify and heighten text meanings. Obviously, madrigals are secular in nature. These settings, however, bring to mind sacred works of the Renaissance masters, as well. Frank Albinder and the Woodley Ensemble present an eclectic sampling of literature with precision and finesse. The disc is stylistically resplendent, rich in diversity, and first rate in every facet of performance. Whether one is listening simply to be entertained or in search of new and exciting literature, this recording will not disappoint.
April, 2004
This recording, offered by the Woodley Ensemble, is seventy minutes of exquisite contemporary choral singing. From the lush opening chord to the last, conductor Frank Albinder leads the Washington, D.C. based ensemble with impeccable precision. Especially impressive is the vertical tuning displayed by this group while performing repertoire replete with difficult harmonies and tone clusters. Dynamic contrasts are thrilling and heartfelt and are indicative of the singers' connection to the poetry.
The disc highlights the work of three composers: Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas and William Hawley. The first work featured, "Canti d'amor," is a collection of fifteen love madrigals utilizing poems from James Joyce's "Chamber Music." Though the individual songs are brief, they are, nonetheless, delightful in their diversity. Joyce's poetry is marked by allusions to music and Rands makes the text come alive through contemporary harmonies and disjunctive melodic licks. It is worth mentioning here, to choral directors and voice teachers who enjoy banter regarding the use of vibrato, that even though the ensemble, as a whole, performs with a tone quality that lacks vibrato, the soloists perform with a vibrato that is natural, free, and vibrant. Whatever your view on this issue, the music-making here is stunning!
"...among the voices...," another work by Rands, is a setting for mixed chamber chorus and harp of "Four Poems in English (Dieppe)" by Samuel Beckett. Rands' use of harp in these songs is quite interesting; it is not used exclusively as an accompaniment instrument. To the contrary, it is often used as a solo instrument to enhance the literary context of the poetry. The ensemble is wonderful in this hauntingly beautiful work.
"Love Songs," composed by Augusta Read Thomas in 1997, is a collection of seven love-song settings of laconic phrases by luminaries such as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Lord Byron. The songs are brief, with the shortest at fifty-five seconds, yet they do not lack for creativity or fun. Thomas is inexhaustibly creative and dramatic in her use of text painting, often generating poignant musical reflection within a single word. Again, the ensemble is exact in its rhythmic execution and tuning.
The recording culminates in "Six Madrigals" by William Hawley. These Italian madrigals, composed for Chanticleer in 1986, are settings of texts by sixteenth-century author Torquato Tasso. Not surprisingly, these songs remind the listener of choral works by Palestrina and other composers of the Renaissance. As with Palestrina, the polyphonic textures used by Hawley glorify and heighten text meanings. Obviously, madrigals are secular in nature. These settings, however, bring to mind sacred works of the Renaissance masters, as well. Frank Albinder and the Woodley Ensemble present an eclectic sampling of literature with precision and finesse. The disc is stylistically resplendent, rich in diversity, and first rate in every facet of performance. Whether one is listening simply to be entertained or in search of new and exciting literature, this recording will not disappoint.
Sacred Kaleidoscope
Woodley Ensemble
"Sacred Kaleidoscope" was an apt title for the program that Frank Albinder and his 17-voice Woodley Ensemble brought Saturday to St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill. The five featured composers (from Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia, Sweden and Estonia) explore colors, rhythms and textures in very different ways, and their superposition was in fact kaleidoscopic in its effect.
There were three knockouts among Albinder's choices for his D.C.-based group. Christopher Marshall's five-part "O Fragile Human," written over the course of the last three years on texts drawn from Saint John of the Cross, the medieval composer Hildegard of Bingen and several contemporary poets, draws on a remarkably rich palette of colors and textures and handles them with astonishing restraint and delicacy. Even with the four vocal lines going their individual and busy ways, textures were transparent and balanced. Some of this is due to Marshall's sensitivity, but a lot was thanks to an ensemble that can produce sounds both rich and gloriously focused, that can field fine soloists but also a blend to die for, and that can move seamlessly from a brilliant fortissimo to an equally brilliant pianissimo almost instantaneously.
Daud Kosasih's 2003 "Haleluyah! Puji Tuhan" was a study in intricate rhythms in constantly evolving patterns that built from quiet serenity to ecstasy, and Arvo Part's stunning ". . . which was the son of . . .," a chantlike setting of the "begats" running back 75 generations from Jesus to Adam and then to God, built up tremendous tension in a context of almost surreal tranquility.
The other two pieces on the program, an Ave Verum Corpus setting by Imant Raminsh, and "Fem Latinska Motetter," a set of five Latin hymn texts by Michael Waldenby, were comfortably in the mainstream of contemporary church music, well constructed and, perhaps, more useful as music for the church than for the concert hall.
The soloists, soprano Jolene Baxter and mezzo-soprano Marjorie Bunday, handled their assignments beautifully.
-- Joan Reinthaler
Washington Post
"Sacred Kaleidoscope" was an apt title for the program that Frank Albinder and his 17-voice Woodley Ensemble brought Saturday to St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill. The five featured composers (from Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia, Sweden and Estonia) explore colors, rhythms and textures in very different ways, and their superposition was in fact kaleidoscopic in its effect.
There were three knockouts among Albinder's choices for his D.C.-based group. Christopher Marshall's five-part "O Fragile Human," written over the course of the last three years on texts drawn from Saint John of the Cross, the medieval composer Hildegard of Bingen and several contemporary poets, draws on a remarkably rich palette of colors and textures and handles them with astonishing restraint and delicacy. Even with the four vocal lines going their individual and busy ways, textures were transparent and balanced. Some of this is due to Marshall's sensitivity, but a lot was thanks to an ensemble that can produce sounds both rich and gloriously focused, that can field fine soloists but also a blend to die for, and that can move seamlessly from a brilliant fortissimo to an equally brilliant pianissimo almost instantaneously.
Daud Kosasih's 2003 "Haleluyah! Puji Tuhan" was a study in intricate rhythms in constantly evolving patterns that built from quiet serenity to ecstasy, and Arvo Part's stunning ". . . which was the son of . . .," a chantlike setting of the "begats" running back 75 generations from Jesus to Adam and then to God, built up tremendous tension in a context of almost surreal tranquility.
The other two pieces on the program, an Ave Verum Corpus setting by Imant Raminsh, and "Fem Latinska Motetter," a set of five Latin hymn texts by Michael Waldenby, were comfortably in the mainstream of contemporary church music, well constructed and, perhaps, more useful as music for the church than for the concert hall.
The soloists, soprano Jolene Baxter and mezzo-soprano Marjorie Bunday, handled their assignments beautifully.
-- Joan Reinthaler
Washington Post
Richafort Requiem
Washington Post
Monday, February 12, 2007; C03
Woodley Ensemble
The Woodley Ensemble made a persuasive case for the all-but-forgotten Renaissance composer Jean Richafort Saturday afternoon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Music Director Frank Albinder elected to present the seven movements of Richafort's Requiem, in their local premiere, dispersed between motets by 20th-century French composers Saint-Saëns, Duruflé, Messiaen, Villette and Poulenc.
By alternating Renaissance and modern works, Albinder was able to showcase his ensemble's stylistic versatility. The 17-voice group etched line and harmony clearly in music dense with interweaving voices and rife with dissonance. Albinder is to be praised for creating a clean and unified sound, one that bears the imprint of Tallis Scholars Director Peter Phillips, with whom the ensemble has collaborated on several occasions.
While providing a vehicle for the ensemble's mastery of 20th-century style (notably the choral-tuning-as-extreme-sport heroics of Messiaen's "O Sacrum Convivium" and the simply beautiful lyricism of Villette's "Jesu Dulcis Memoria"), the sandwich approach did not necessarily enhance the audience's first hearing of Richafort's Requiem.
Written in about 1521, the work is structured around two musical snatches borrowed from Josquin des Prez and set strictly in canon form throughout. This is challenging stuff: To trace Richafort's elaborate manipulation of borrowed material, listeners might do better to hear the whole Requiem uninterrupted, rather than have its movements interspersed with other music. Programming quibbles aside, Albinder and the Woodley Ensemble are to be commended for resurrecting this unjustly neglected Renaissance work.
-- Sarah Hoover
Monday, February 12, 2007; C03
Woodley Ensemble
The Woodley Ensemble made a persuasive case for the all-but-forgotten Renaissance composer Jean Richafort Saturday afternoon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Music Director Frank Albinder elected to present the seven movements of Richafort's Requiem, in their local premiere, dispersed between motets by 20th-century French composers Saint-Saëns, Duruflé, Messiaen, Villette and Poulenc.
By alternating Renaissance and modern works, Albinder was able to showcase his ensemble's stylistic versatility. The 17-voice group etched line and harmony clearly in music dense with interweaving voices and rife with dissonance. Albinder is to be praised for creating a clean and unified sound, one that bears the imprint of Tallis Scholars Director Peter Phillips, with whom the ensemble has collaborated on several occasions.
While providing a vehicle for the ensemble's mastery of 20th-century style (notably the choral-tuning-as-extreme-sport heroics of Messiaen's "O Sacrum Convivium" and the simply beautiful lyricism of Villette's "Jesu Dulcis Memoria"), the sandwich approach did not necessarily enhance the audience's first hearing of Richafort's Requiem.
Written in about 1521, the work is structured around two musical snatches borrowed from Josquin des Prez and set strictly in canon form throughout. This is challenging stuff: To trace Richafort's elaborate manipulation of borrowed material, listeners might do better to hear the whole Requiem uninterrupted, rather than have its movements interspersed with other music. Programming quibbles aside, Albinder and the Woodley Ensemble are to be commended for resurrecting this unjustly neglected Renaissance work.
-- Sarah Hoover
Vaughan Williams Mass in G minor
Choral Society: Comfort In an Uncertain Time
By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page C04
An audience of several thousand spent what may turn out to have been the last Sunday afternoon of peacetime at Washington National Cathedral, as J. Reilly Lewis led the Cathedral Choral Society in a program of music by Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Stephen Paulus and William Strickland.
Hours well spent, for the gravity of the day was complemented by the dedication of the performers, the solemn beauty of the music and the hallowed grandeur of the cathedral. Moreover, it was reassuring to be with other people -- a lot of them -- in a time of such uncertainty. The taken-for-granted habits of an ordinary day in Washington -- the paper on the doorstep, the smile of recognition at the market, a routine call from a friend -- seemed sweeter and more precious than ever. Rarely has a mild, lovely late winter afternoon been so suffused with autumnal reverie.
The program began with William Strickland's "Jubilate Deo," a succinct, exuberant piece for chorus, organ and orchestra written during the composer's tenure as principal guest conductor of the Cathedral Choral Society during World War II. Strickland, who died in 1991, left an endowment to commission new works for the society. The first of these, Gregg Smith's "Earth Requiem," was first performed in 1997, and Sunday saw the premiere of the second, composer Stephen Paulus's "Mass for a Sacred Place."
Few composers write so lovingly and appreciatively for the human voice; moreover, Paulus took the famously damp acoustics of the venue into account while writing his score. "Because of the reverberant quality of the cathedral, I was very careful to organize sounds and words so that they could often be distinguished -- even in this vibrant edifice," he observed in his program notes.
The "Mass" works. It is music intended to be sung, listened to and enjoyed rather than to proffer any new and cosmic statement. To call it conventional is not necessarily a put-down: There are a lot of "conventional" plays, novels and films that catch and hold our interest more surely than avant-garde experiments. Paulus is an absolute pro -- he knows exactly what he wants to do and then goes ahead and does it, and if his syntax is not especially original, his powers of expression are genuine and personal. I especially admired the effulgent blooms of sound that pulsed and echoed their way through the cathedral as the music took its time dying away at the end of each movement. Soprano Kendra Colton's voice soared radiantly in the "Sanctus."
The afternoon concluded with Mozart's "Great" Mass in C Minor, K. 427, in the performing edition by H.C. Robbins Landon. Here, one could admire the extraordinary discipline of the Cathedral Choral Society -- especially the way that such a large chorus in such a cavernous space managed to keep its musicmaking from devolving into seraphic muddle. Crisp articulation does not preclude full-throated singing, however: The lowest notes from the basses rumbled through the cathedral as if they had been produced by a pipe organ, while the higher voices sounded fresh, focused and tireless throughout the afternoon. Soprano Elizabeth Futral joined Colton for an ecstatically intertwined "Domine Deus," while the "Laudamus Te," with its joyful lyricism, might have been taken from one of Mozart's operas. Tenor Michael Denham and baritone Jon Bruno handled their disproportionately small roles with dedication.
In the middle of the concert, singing from the middle of the cathedral, the Woodley Ensemble, under the direction of Frank Albinder, offered a pristine, immaculately calibrated rendition of Vaughan Williams's a cappella Mass in G Minor. A small choir -- 20 people -- makes a very different impression from the 180-odd singers in the Cathedral Choral Society; the fragile intensity of the performance, in such a huge space, made for an unforgettable poignancy altogether appropriate to the occasion.
By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page C04
An audience of several thousand spent what may turn out to have been the last Sunday afternoon of peacetime at Washington National Cathedral, as J. Reilly Lewis led the Cathedral Choral Society in a program of music by Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Stephen Paulus and William Strickland.
Hours well spent, for the gravity of the day was complemented by the dedication of the performers, the solemn beauty of the music and the hallowed grandeur of the cathedral. Moreover, it was reassuring to be with other people -- a lot of them -- in a time of such uncertainty. The taken-for-granted habits of an ordinary day in Washington -- the paper on the doorstep, the smile of recognition at the market, a routine call from a friend -- seemed sweeter and more precious than ever. Rarely has a mild, lovely late winter afternoon been so suffused with autumnal reverie.
The program began with William Strickland's "Jubilate Deo," a succinct, exuberant piece for chorus, organ and orchestra written during the composer's tenure as principal guest conductor of the Cathedral Choral Society during World War II. Strickland, who died in 1991, left an endowment to commission new works for the society. The first of these, Gregg Smith's "Earth Requiem," was first performed in 1997, and Sunday saw the premiere of the second, composer Stephen Paulus's "Mass for a Sacred Place."
Few composers write so lovingly and appreciatively for the human voice; moreover, Paulus took the famously damp acoustics of the venue into account while writing his score. "Because of the reverberant quality of the cathedral, I was very careful to organize sounds and words so that they could often be distinguished -- even in this vibrant edifice," he observed in his program notes.
The "Mass" works. It is music intended to be sung, listened to and enjoyed rather than to proffer any new and cosmic statement. To call it conventional is not necessarily a put-down: There are a lot of "conventional" plays, novels and films that catch and hold our interest more surely than avant-garde experiments. Paulus is an absolute pro -- he knows exactly what he wants to do and then goes ahead and does it, and if his syntax is not especially original, his powers of expression are genuine and personal. I especially admired the effulgent blooms of sound that pulsed and echoed their way through the cathedral as the music took its time dying away at the end of each movement. Soprano Kendra Colton's voice soared radiantly in the "Sanctus."
The afternoon concluded with Mozart's "Great" Mass in C Minor, K. 427, in the performing edition by H.C. Robbins Landon. Here, one could admire the extraordinary discipline of the Cathedral Choral Society -- especially the way that such a large chorus in such a cavernous space managed to keep its musicmaking from devolving into seraphic muddle. Crisp articulation does not preclude full-throated singing, however: The lowest notes from the basses rumbled through the cathedral as if they had been produced by a pipe organ, while the higher voices sounded fresh, focused and tireless throughout the afternoon. Soprano Elizabeth Futral joined Colton for an ecstatically intertwined "Domine Deus," while the "Laudamus Te," with its joyful lyricism, might have been taken from one of Mozart's operas. Tenor Michael Denham and baritone Jon Bruno handled their disproportionately small roles with dedication.
In the middle of the concert, singing from the middle of the cathedral, the Woodley Ensemble, under the direction of Frank Albinder, offered a pristine, immaculately calibrated rendition of Vaughan Williams's a cappella Mass in G Minor. A small choir -- 20 people -- makes a very different impression from the 180-odd singers in the Cathedral Choral Society; the fragile intensity of the performance, in such a huge space, made for an unforgettable poignancy altogether appropriate to the occasion.