Something very important happened here last week for the classical music scene in South Florida: One of its performing organizations came into its own.
The Master Chorale of South Florida, which rose out of the remains of the Florida Philharmonic some 10 years ago, has presented some fine programs over that time and enjoyed regular gigs backing Italian poperatic singer Andrea Bocelli, among other things.
But what it has not had until now is an identity as something other than a big collection of voices that comes out each season to remind us of the larger works of the orchestra-and-chorus repertoire. In other words, it was always good to see them, but what was at the core of their artistic project?
Now we have a much better idea, and that is because of its new director, Brett Karlin, who in his inaugural concerts as artistic director of the chorale showed that he has already begun to transform it into something special. Raised in Boca Raton and a graduate of Florida State and the University of South Florida, Karlin joined the Seraphic Fire organization as its assistant conductor in 2009 and then worked with that group’s choirmaster, James Bass, at the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay while picking up his master’s at USF.
What he shares with them is boundless enthusiasm and ferocious dedication to the art of choral music and its extraordinary repertoire; that belief in this music as serious business was all over the Nov. 23 concert at Lynn University’s Wold Center for the Performing Arts. Originally, the fall concert of the chorale was to feature Mozart’s C minor Mass, a great piece (if incomplete), but one very much in the mode of previous Master Chorale outings in that it has a lot of solo writing and not that much choral work.
Karlin presented a completely different program, choosing to feature parts of three works written for St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, whose feast day is Nov. 22: Purcell’s Hail, Bright Cecilia (from his Ode to St. Cecilia), excerpts from Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, and the first two sections of Haydn’s St. Cecilia Mass. And it was accompanied by The Symphonia of Boca Raton, which made a very fine Baroque-style orchestra. What Karlin did by programming this way was use what he had rather than make a pale copy of what he didn’t — i.e., a giant orchestra and a professional choir — and the result was one of the most encouraging, positive developments on the local classical scene in a long while.
The chorale, which has about 90 members, was joined by four excellent soloists: soprano Sherezade Panthaki, mezzo Amanda Crider, tenor Brad Diamond and baritone John Buffett. The opening chorus by Purcell (one of Karlin’s favorite composers) found the Chorale in good overall voice, hefty and accurate, and moving along ably with Karlin’s rather swift tempo.
In selections from the Handel ode that followed, Karlin did not include three of the solo arias, which put more emphasis on the Chorale. That said, tenor Diamond’s From harmony and The trumpet’s loud clangour showcased his tense, powerful voice to good effect; his voice seems especially well-suited to this genre. Soprano Pathaki, who sang But, oh! What Art can teach and Orpheus could lead the savage race, has a huge voice and an enviable command of the kind of breath control needed for unbroken strings of melismas. But she tended to oversing in both arias, especially at the top of her register, and ended up sounding shrill when she was at her loudest.
The Chorale’s discipline was notable, with each of the call-and-response answers in As from the pow’r of sacred lays carefully and precisely clipped off, and each section more than held its own in the fugal writing that came afterward. Even more importantly, their singing had the bigness and grandeur that Handel requires, and they were supported by an orchestra in crisp fighting trim, led by an energetic, passionate conductor.
The Haydn St. Cecilia Mass (Hob. XXII: 5) is, as Karlin pointed out in brief remarks to the sizable audience at the Wold, a masterwork, and an underappreciated one. Although it is now known to be a mass written “in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” it may have gained its name as the St. Cecilia Mass because of performances given by a Cecilian musician’s fraternity in Vienna. In any case, it is a remarkably rich, inventive composition, with major challenges for the chorus in its multiple fugues.
In the first Kyrie eleison fugue, Karlin kept the tempo a little slower and more cautious than he might have wanted to go, but it worked well, and showed that the Chorale’s various sections are strong enough to stand alone. The tenors, usually the smallest and weakest section of any community chorus, entered impressively well when it was time, and throughout the concert, there was a gratifying uniformity of force from each section, and no particularly noticeable dropoff in presence when each stood alone.
The Kyrie fugue transitioned to a zippy Gloria in excelsis Deo, strongly sung by the Chorale, and energetically played by the Symphonia. Panthaki sang with much more control and sweetness in the Laudamus te that came next, though there was an unattractive scoop up to a high note that opened a window from Haydn into the excesses of the late Romantic era.
The chorus handled the imitation of the Gratias agimus tibi with aplomb, and the subsequent trio, Domine Deus, opened with beautiful singing by mezzo Crider; her dark, pretty sound blended well with Diamond and baritone Buffett (who sang with the chorus when he wasn’t needed as a soloist). Panthaki’s melismatic fireworks were impressively on display for the Quoniam tu solus sanctus that came after the Qui tollis, and she sang them with the center-stage confidence of an opera heroine.
The minor-key Qui tollis demonstrated the Chorale’s skill at navigating some tricky exposed lines, and the closing In Gloria dei patris showed that the individual sections of this group still had enough stamina left to launch yet another fugue and supply the sense of ecstatic praise the ending of this massive section needs.
Karlin is a young and energetic conductor, and he moved around very aggressively on the podium, which added to the impression of a man passionate about his work. With the exception of a less-than-spotless string passage here and there (the Christe eleison), the orchestra sounded strong and well-suited for this task. Trumpeter Jeff Kaye was particularly effective in the Handel ode (in The trumpet’s loud clangour), and the orchestra went about its task of changing from Baroque to Classical glory with clear dedication.
This was a very cannily chosen program that gave the Master Chorale much more to do than it has had to do in previous seasons, and it was thrilling to see this institution remade and repurposed. The spring concert, which will feature Fort Lauderdale-born operatic soprano Nadine Sierra (Orfeo at Palm Beach Opera, Rigoletto for Florida Grand Opera), will contain a number of motets by Mendelssohn and Mozart, plus the Mass No. 2 (in G) of Schubert. It’s a sign of things to come for this chorus, and all of them right now are looking good.