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The concert began with the stage in darkness. Voices were heard from either side as the singers slowly walked onto the stage and continued in a kind of procession. The rich, autumnal sound of the choir swirled around in a stereophonic performance until it dimmed to a peaceful ending - a visual parallel was the switching off of electric candles that the singers held individually. This was the Moscow State Chamber Choir’s rendition of a Russian Christmas carol, Moon was passing by – has passed. In a music scene filled with choirs that are getting younger and younger, it is refreshing to hear a full bodied choir of mature voices with an astounding expressive and dynamics range. I was to be blasted with the choir’s full might from my seat in the fifth row.
The choir’s earth shattering vibrato was applied with great effect in the first two of four songs (‘Winter Morning’ and ‘Natasha’) selected from twentieth century Russian composer Syorgy Sviridov’s Pushkin’s Garland (1979), a choral concerto written in the neoromantic style. Every note was teeming with life, from the dramatic fortissimos to poignant pianissimos. The choir was one with the conductor, reacting to his every gesture with soul and intensity. In the third song, ‘Reveille’, soloist Andrey Borisenko sang with great clarity and emotive power over the crystalline humming of the choir. (It was as if the choir was trying to sing while being held mum by the instruction to hum.) The last song ‘Magpie Chatter’ saw the choir singing virtuosic rapid and continuous accompaniment to out of tune crowing from the soprano soloist.
Two movements from Rachmaninov’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (Op. 37) followed, and then a choral arrangement of Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (I have become lost to the world), one of the Rückert-Lieder. Both were well performed. However, the sound world of the choral arrangement could not match the orchestral palette which is so crucial to Mahler, and the German consonants were almost always inaudible. The choir next presented Mozart’s ‘Laudate Domimum’ (from Vesperae solennes de confessore in C) and Schubert’s Ave Maria with great stylistic understanding, a relatively difficult feat for a choir with a full bodied sound. Evgenia Sorokina did a much better job in Laudate than in the previous ‘Magpie Chatter’. Bella Kabanova was off to a good start in Schubert but the tempo slowed and the pitch slid up as the emotion power of the song began to overwhelm the performer towards the end.
Messiaen’s Choral called for singers to hum in the same manner as ‘Reveille’; this was performed with great accuracy and harmonic understanding. The highlight of the concert for the reviewer came at the end of the first half when bass Borisenko again took the stage with the twentieth century Russian composer Alexander Gretchaninov’s Credo from Missa Festiva, Op. 154. This is an incantation style movement that called with enormous reserves of strength and artistic intuition in pacing a movement that could have become monotonous. Instead, the bass soloist and choir soared with the music to a blinding climax.
The second half began with Kyrie Eleison and Cum Sancto Spiritu from Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. Both movements were convincing performed, although the music was somewhat repetitive and the polyphony was drowned by the piano accompaniment. This was followed by twentieth century Russian composer Vladimir Vavilov’s Ave Maria, one of his hoaxes, which was later ascribed to the Baroque composer Caccini by a Mark Szachin who made this ‘discovery’. The ‘monody’ was set to a romantic choral arrangement in the neoromantic style and the soloist Olga Popva had a gentle grace. Orlando di Lasso’s O La, O Che Bon is a jovial song for double choir in which the two choirs jest about echoing each other. Interestingly, this was performed with a small group of soloists performing the role of the second choir with muted voices; the effect was not quite the same as a double chorus though.
The concert ended with folk songs. Tenor Borislav Molchanov sang in the first and last of these - Song Bell is Ringing Monotonously (a Christmas song) and Kalinka (a love song; the encore). He showed great breath control like all the other singers. Molchanov gave an over the top performance in the love song, pulling out the whimpering love sick lad in him. However, the tenor’s tone was somewhat unsteady and he sounded scratchy in louder passages. Bass Andrey Kryzhanovsky told the story of how the sailor Stenka Razin (in the song of the same name) drowned his princess wife for fear that she is a Freudian castrator who had turned other sailors into women. This was done with great verve and gusto, like a good old drinking song - the choir let loose a little and swung their bodies in a sign of enjoyment. Baritone Evgeny Kapustin performed in Amur’s Wave and Black Eyes. The first is a patriotic song about the Russian Navy on the
In the last song in the programme, Unharness the Horses Boys, the choir unleashed its formidable vocal power, spicing up the music with wolf whistles and a hey ho here and there. The concert ended on a high note as the choir returned to its Russian tradition, although six folk songs in a row did not make for good programming.
