Even if Seraphic Fire does not win either of the Grammy Awards it is being considered for Sunday, the performances the concert choir is giving this week of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor are nothing less than a milestone in South Florida culture.
Not everything was perfect Friday night at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale for the first of the three performances of the Mass, but what happened there – and surely will happen tonight in Coral Gables and Sunday afternoon in Boca Raton – was simply astonishing. Here was a muscular, joyous reading of this seminal work, sung by 17 singers who bounced along and smiled all the way through, and accompanied by a flexible Firebird Chamber Orchestra that could whisper intimately one moment and unleash the heavens the next.
It was marvelous, and the sold-out, overflow crowd at All Saints cheered the concert vociferously, jumping to their feet afterward and coming forward to the rail of the balcony overhead to boost the sound of the acclaim. This was a happy hometown audience that wanted to send founder Patrick Dupré Quigley on his way to Los Angeles with plenty of good wishes, and they did so amply.
All that would have been charming, and laudable from a community-support point of view, but of no more than incidental interest had the music not been so good. But it was good. Quigley’s usual hard-driving conducting style was more moderated this time around, with a wider variety of tempi and approaches, and he fashioned excellent joinings in the work’s tricky transitions, such as the end of the Domine Deus and the opening of the Qui tollis, or the arrival of the Et in terra pax in the heart of the Gloria.
Quigley judged all of these dramatic alterations in the sonic fabric expertly, and that showed that this was an ensemble fully in control of this hugely difficult music and not mastered by it. So completely did the performers own it that it seemed impossible to believe that a piece this alive and this vibrant could be nearly 300 years old.
The performance also showed the wisdom of Quigley’s initial decision to hire the best professional singers he could find for Seraphic Fire. Something like the Pleni sunt coeli, to take just one example, is out of the reach of amateur groups or second-rate professional ones, but here it flowed along in an ecstatic D major that epitomized the glory of the High Baroque.
And there were many such moments throughout the night. From the spot-on opening of the introductory Kyrie to the estimable clarity of the Osanna, the members of the choir sounded masterful, with scarcely a spot in their blend or accuracy. There were some: The soprano voices sounded a little fatigued here and there toward the end in the higher passages, and the last moments of the slip-sliding harmonies in the Crucifixus may have been just slightly off-center.
There were occasional moments like this instrumentally, too, with the very fine horn soloist Andrew Karr a bit under at the end of the Quoniam, the two oboes not quite in tonal synch in the Et in Spiritum Sanctum, and the violins a shade out of tune in the Christe eleison. But these are quibbles, one and all.
The soloists, drawn from the chorus (“They are all soloists,” Quigley said), all sang well, with some of the finer work coming from Graham Fandrei (Et in Spiritum Sanctum), Charles Wesley Evans (Quoniam), Kathryn Mueller (Laudamus te), Dann Coakwell (Benedictus) and Misty Bermudez (Agnus Dei). Countertenor Reggie Mobley sang with admirable lightness in his two duets (Christe eleison and Et in unum Dominum), and there was a sweet blend in the Domine Deus from Nacole Palmer and Brad Diamond.
Violinist Adda Kridler and flutist Ebonee Thomas offered beautiful solo work, and trumpeters Mary Bowden, Brian Neal and Billy Hunter gave the big climatic pieces great power, but with a Baroque softness that supported the singers, rather than overwhelm them as today’s preference for brilliant brass sound would have done.
There were times Friday night when you had to take in the fact that you were listening to a live, local performance, with all the instrumental and solo arias just as they’re supposed to be, of one of the most demanding pieces of its kind in all of Western music. Here was a collection of highly talented performers, most of them in their 20s and 30s, cooking away at this piece with a palpable sense of athletic achievement and total engagement.
They served themselves well, they served their audience magnificently, and most of all Quigley, Seraphic Fire and the Firebird Chamber Orchestra served Bach, reminding us once again of his titanic genius, and the indelibility of his creation. It was a special night in every sense of the word, and local music lovers with some time this spare this weekend would do well not to miss it.
Seraphic Fire and the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, with guest conductor Scott Allen Jarrett, will perform the Mass in B minor (BWV 232) of J.S. Bach tonight at 8 at the First United Methodist Church in Coral Gables, and at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton. Tickets are $50. Call 305-285-9060 or visit www.seraphicfire.org.