pic from the Kennedy Center Mahler performance in the fall...Glorius Music in a Glorious Setting
That is actually a trademarked phrase belonging to the Cathedral Choral Society and perfectly describes the concert that we attended on Sunday afternoon at The National Cathedral. Comments regarding the Children's Chorus of Washington are near the end.
Following is a review from the Washington Post....
MUSIC
'Te Deum' Highlights National Cathedral Concert
May 12, 2009
The rapid string figures in the first and third movements of Camille Saint-Saëns's "Organ Symphony" were among the aural casualties of the National Cathedral's smearing acoustics at the Cathedral Choral Society's "A French Spectacular" on Sunday. And the composer's delicate writing for piano later in the symphony pretty much disappeared into the ether as well. Music Director J. Reilly Lewis took these intricately scored passages slowly with his orchestra, sapping a bit of their energy but allowing us to hear at least a hint of Saint-Saëns's canny orchestration.
Elsewhere in the music the vaulting, Gallic lyricism in the upper strings carried well, and the cathedral's magnificent organ (registered with apt pungency and played commandingly by Scott Dettra) made a mighty sound. Passages during which the organ and orchestra played together, though -- both in the Saint-Saëns and in Berlioz's "Te Deum" -- betrayed a slight, but wince-inducing, difference in intonation. Did the orchestra properly tune to the organ?
But those moments couldn't distract from the breadth and sensual beauty in Lewis's reading of the Berlioz. His large forces -- including the Choral Society, pure-toned and richly blended as ever; tenor Michael Gallant, lending a sweet timbre to his solo; and the Children's Chorus of Washington, making an ethereal, tightly focused sound under Music Director Joan Gregoryk (who shadow-conducted them a little farther down the nave from Lewis) -- expanded thrillingly for the fervent opening and closing movements, but pulled back to give the more introspective center of the work a tenderness and immediacy that was truly special.
-- Joe Banno
