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Tuesday, March 6, 2001
By R.M. CAMPBELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MUSIC CRITIC
Performances of choral works by the 19th-century French composer Hector Berlioz are always cause for celebration. They are not heard with the regularity they deserve.
The composer is reported to have said he would sacrifice all his music to save the "Requiem." But his "Te Deum," written a dozen years later, in 1849, is also a sacred work of monumental scale and merit. It calls for two choruses and a children's choir.
The Seattle Choral Company, no stranger to large choral works in its 19-year history, took up the challenge of Berlioz and asked members of the Cascadian Chorale, Northwest Boychoir and Vocalpoint Seattle to join it for a performance Sunday night at Benaroya Hall.
All together that meant 230 singers, on stage and two boxes, with a 65-member orchestra and organ. Impressive as that sounds, there were even more at the premiere, in 1855, at St. Eustache in Paris, as Robert Scandrett's excellent program notes point out: two choirs of 100 adults, a children's choir of 600 and an orchestra of 150.
A product of his day -- and what a day that was in 19th-century France -- Berlioz was inflamed with romantic sensibilities. He was full of emotions that ran deep and passionately, was highly influenced by the world around him and possessed his own brand of spirituality. Everything about him had dramatic character, highs and lows, the air of freshness, the search for freedom.
The "Te Deum" was very much a part of Berlioz's psyche. It has the composer's sense of rebellion, grandness of scale, a life spent in the theater. Appropriately, the work closed the concert. Fred Coleman, founder and artistic director of the Seattle Choral Company, obviously enjoyed the task at hand. Not everything was in the best of shape in the performance, but there were moments of choral bliss and musical fervor. The combined choruses could sing piano effectively and sustain a line, yet gather the energy to make their fortes sweeping and impressive.
Kenneth Gayle was the tenor soloist in the "Te ergo quaesumus." He sang with distinction, his handsome voice ringing out into the hall with beauty and clarity.
Berlioz's "Te Deum" and Verdi's "Te Deum" were paired together, before and after intermission, which made a tidy and illuminating juxtaposition. While Berlioz wrote his "Te Deum" in his mid-40s, after his "Symphonie fantastique" and before his opera "Les Troyens," Verdi composed his "Te Deum" in the last days of his life, after "Falstaff" and the "Requiem." He died a few years after its premiere in 1898 in Paris, which he did not attend. It is a more serene work, yet it has its own sense of adventure and drama.
The performance had its moments of grace as well and one could readily hear the musical ideas of this great man at work. Monica B. Harris was the capable soloist.
David White, organist and choirmaster at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina, had a prominent role to play throughout the evening, including Haydn's "Little Organ Mass," which opened the concert. He was persuasive and made good use of the fullness of the Watjen organ at Benaroya.
P-I music critic R.M. Campbell can be reached at 206-448-8396 or rmcampbell@seattle-pi.com.