Seraphic Fire wrapped its 11th season this past week with a new record release, a $12,500 NEA grant in hand to record the next one, and a concert of widely varied works that illustrated the range of its interests as well as the flexibility of its singers.
Dubbed Cathedral Classics, the potpourri concert featured 18 short works, many of them suggested by an email campaign in which the Miami-based concert choir asked its patrons what works they’d like to hear. And while there were several pieces that reflected that, there also were pieces that looked back to previous Seraphic Fire outings as well as music the group has rarely if ever done.
Saturday night’s concert at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale was a typically standout Seraphic Fire performance, with stellar singing, sonic beauty, and excellent, interesting repertoire. And it also reflected founder Patrick Dupré Quigley’s generally hard-driving style of direction, which made things sound fresh and strong, but with some occasional detriment to nuance.
The concert opened with five Renaissance and Baroque pieces, the first being an abridged version of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere; soprano Gitanjali Mathur soared nicely into her high C and her turn was smooth and natural at the end of her phrases, while tenor Vincent Davies, a former Chanticleer member, sang his chant sections with warmth and color. William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus, which followed, was rather fast, but had a lovely blend and a crescendo and diminuendo after O, dulcis that was deftly handled.
The next selection, unlisted in the program, was the O vos omnes of Carlo Gesualdo, with all of the Italian Renaissance composer’s fondness for harmonic surprise. The first chordal wrench at the initial cadence was not very smooth, but it went much better on the second go-round. An opulently sung version of Antonio Lotti’s Crucifixus, which came after the Gesualdo, demonstrated Lotti’s formidable power as a sacred composer, though he is better-known today for his operatic work. This piece would have benefited by a slower tempo and some quieter dynamics, which would have differentiated it more distinctly from the other selections around it. On the other hand, the plain, white-toned manner with which Seraphic Fire sang the next work, Thomas Tallis’s much-admired If Ye Love Me, suited it perfectly.
Two more recent English works followed; first, the exquisite miniature O Taste and See, by the greatest of all English composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and then a beautiful, very Victorian and once hugely popular partsong, The Long Day Closes, by Arthur Sullivan, written a few years before he met W.S. Gilbert and embarked on a series of popular comic operas. Soprano Rebecca Duren sang with a sweet, round sound in the Vaughan Williams, and in the Sullivan, the chorus gave its sentimental words (by music critic Henry Chorley) and music full involvement without overdoing it.
Heinrich Schütz’s glorious Ich bin ein rechter Weinstock came next, and the singers made much of the motet’s different musical motifs as they appeared, unfolding each one lusciously . The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s treatment of the same text from the Gospel of John — I Am the True Vine — is written in a vine shape in the score, as Quigley pointed out, which in practice means a good bit of sudden register shifting. The singers tackled this challenge very ably, but the music, like so much of the minimalist Pärt’s work, is highly static, and the audience at All Saints began to fidget before the ending.
Two works from the Russian Orthodox tradition, Nikolai Kedrov’s Otche Nash (Our Father) and Sergei Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo, from his All-Night Vigil, followed, the first quite pretty in its simplicity, and the second, a good bit less pushed than the reading it got when the choir performed the whole Vigil a couple seasons back. Felix Mendelssohn’s Lift Thine Eyes, from Elijah, had just the right light, airy quality, coming just after a coolly beautiful When David Heard, by Thomas Weelkes. After the Mendelssohn came a warmly expressive Abendlied, by the Liechtensteiner composer Josef Rheinberger, best-known for his organ music.
Three contemporary pieces closed the program, starting with Maurice Duruflé’s gorgeous Ubi caritas, sung with taste and restraint. Basses James Bass and Cameron Beauchamp did yeoman work in the next piece, John Tavener’s Song for Athene, with its almost uninterrupted drone bass, and the choir’s explosive crescendo toward the end gave the music a feeling of very bright light. The young American composer Jake Runestad’s I Will Lift Mine Eyes, featured on the new Seraphic Fire disc, closed the program proper. It’s a highly accomplished work whose sweet melody and pretty harmonies make it an instant favorite for choirs, and the singers gave it an expert performance.
The encore Saturday night was the Alleluia of the American composer Randall Thompson, unfortunately only known these days for this short work, and that largely for its annual appearances at the Tanglewood Festival. The audience was happy to hear it, especially sung as serenely as it was here.
At this point in its development, with 11 seasons under its belt and a raft of honors including two Grammy nominations, Seraphic Fire is one of the most important classical ensembles in South Florida. But at the risk of seeming ungrateful for all the fine work Quigley and his singers have done, it would be wonderful to see the group move to an even higher level.
Next season’s commissioned completion of the Mozart Requiem from the composer Gregory Spears will be a significant arts event, and it’s that sort of thing that could win this ensemble the chance to do things with a loftier national and international profile, much as the great British choirs (The Sixteen, for example, or the Tallis Scholars) regularly do.
Patrick Quigley has built a remarkably successful organization, both fiscally and artistically, which is an almost unheard-of achievement for the niche the group occupies. It’s always rewarding to hear a Seraphic Fire concert, and there is always at least one moment in every one where the listener can simply marvel that 13 people are capable of producing such a magnificent, inspiring sound.
All of us concertgoers in South Florida are proud to have this group in our community; they are one of the best arguments political leaders can make when it comes time to talk about how the arts drive economic development. This part of our state deserves to be better-known nationally and worldwide for its arts activities, and Seraphic Fire, which just finished a short tour away from Florida, is poised to be a standard-bearer for that idea. Here’s hoping more of the word gets out.
Seraphic Fire’s 12th season begins Oct. 12 with a private recital for contributors by the American mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, followed Oct. 16-20 by a program of Renaissance works called Music of the Sistine Chapel (the performance at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton is set for Oct. 17). For more information, call 305-285-9060 or visit www.seraphicfire.org.