Sacred Music in a Sacred Space
at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
News & Reviews
- British Orchestral Review: St. Ignatius Loyola Choir & Orchestra - American Record Guide, January/February 2010
- Sacred Music in a Sacred Space Begins at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola - The New York Times, October 9, 2009
- Sounds of Bach and One of His Models, Buxtehude - The New York Times, September 19, 2009
- Some Sounds Embracing the Past, Others Straying Far - The New York Times, February 13, 2009
- CD REVIEW: Virtuosity and versatility lead to thrilling readings of these two contrasted works - Gramophone, August 2009
- Organ Recitals as Worthy as Concerts ArtsBeat Blog - The New York Times, February 12, 2009
- CD REVIEW: Lush Choral Textures from Park Avenue - Classical Voice of New England, May 2009
- CD REVIEW: Two remarkable discoveries of the highest order (Schnittke and Ginastera) - Audiophile Audition, April 2009
- European American Music Announcement of Gavin Bryars U.S. Premiere - February 2009
- The Top Ten Classical Events - New York Magazine, December 7, 2008
- MUSIC IN REVIEW: 'Petite Messe Solennelle' - The New York Times, November 10, 2008
- Rethinking Lenny - New York Magazine, October 5, 2008
- Challenging Concert in a Religious Setting - The New York Times, October 3, 2008
- Shaping a Work That Has Returned to Fashion - The New York Times, May 16, 2008
- Sometimes Those Magicians of Song Need to Show What's Up Their Sleeves - The New York Times, February 15, 2008
- A Young Shepherd's Ageless Trek - The New York Times, December 17, 2007
- Babylon, Persia and Israel in Full Voice - The New York Times, October 27, 2007
- 3 Soloists Give Voice to a Mighty Instrument - The New York Times, July 4, 2007
- CD REVIEW: Les Corps Glorieux - All Music Guide, May 2007
British Orchestral Review: St. Ignatius Loyola Choir & Orchestra
American Record Guide, January/February 2010
Music composed for a church space is about silence and reverberation. Silence acts as a bridge between phrases and is part of the sound decay. Conductors and performers figure it out and figure it in, depending on the shape of the church and the style of the music. To give that sacred echo feeling, silences must sustain interest and sound reverberations cannot accidentally overlap. Kent Tritle, who leads the choir-and-orchestra series “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space” at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, is attuned to its Park Avenue space as well as matters pertinent to church performance: height of the dome, length of the nave, width of the chancel. His thrilling October program – works in three languages informed by Russian and Eastern Orthodox faith – showed his talent for conducting and also for selecting works for their United States premieres. Tritle, organist at the New York Philharmonic, has climbed to the top of the New York choral scene. From a start at Dessoff Choirs, he succeeded Judith Clurman at Juilliard, Lyndon Woodside at the Oratorio Society of New York (where he sent some volunteer singers for voice lessons), and Richard Westenburg at Musica Sacra. He records for MSR and gives master classes – one of which, about oratorio form, is coming up in April at the Metropolitan Opera Guild. The 40-voice St. Ignatius Choir, with an orchestra of the same size plus organ, is a paid freelance ensemble. Its able members include the tenor and conductor Steven Fox, who is to succeed the troubled Owen Burdick as music director at Trinity Church. Rachmaninoff’s richly sonorous Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was a wise opening choice, foreshadowing recent pieces by Valentin Silvestrov and John Tavener that followed. The five languid excerpts rolled smoothly until the final responsive ‘Glory to the Father and Many Years’, a single chord loudly chanted. In its US premiere, Silvestrov’s 1995 Diptychon proved that you can indeed go home again. Formerly an avant-garde composer, Silvestrov turned back to Rachmaninoff’s “olden style”. A diptych is a two-panel painting, often iconic: this piece’s two musical sections were the Lord’s Prayer and a setting of a peaceful 19th-Century poem about death. Its spaciousness, like Messiaen’s, was for the end of time, and the singing was polished and graceful, with tenor solo over choral ooh and aah. (The music for “Bury me and then rebel, tear apart your chains” didn’t evoke any of the words.) What a find this piece is – completely tonal but harmonically surprising, reflecting access to bitonality and modern options. Tritle knew what he wanted but couldn’t quite elicit indigenous Russian depth. Tavener, England’s mogul of mysticism, has been looking East, in a phase associated with several American greats. Another US premiere, The Veil of the Temple with two Byzantine texts in major mode, had chords Ned Rorem might wish to emulate. Voices suddenly became layered at “Thou art the mystic tongs”, muddling into a sound swath that prepared the ear for the Requiem that followed. This imposing, intricate 2007 Mass is scored for choir, brass, and organist (here Nancianne Parrella) in the rear loft, with soprano, tenor, and cello soloists plus conductor and orchestra – whose varied percussion included gongs and Tibetan bowls – in the chancel. Some sections were call and response; others suggested Britten’s War Requiem with chorus intoning the Latin Mass text, while a soloist – soprano Jennifer Zetlan, tenor Matthew Garrett, or cellist Arthur Fiacco – had sacred poetry. The center section, ‘Kali’s Dance’, made a terrific noise with its steady timpani beat and plucked low strings. Zetlan’s slow, high, dignified ‘Primordial White Light’ was breathtaking and fabulous. Garrett’s “How beautiful on her brow the drops of moisture appear” had passionate leaps, declamations, and high notes. The choir’s ‘Dies Irae” roiled under the cello, and an instrumental interlude created the effect of thundersheets. Averting disaster, Tritle kept it together in the well-lighted cathedral space, where listeners could contemplate statuary, art, and gold. Leslie Kandell
Sacred Music in a Sacred Space Begins at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
The New York Times, October 9, 2009
By STEVE SMITH
Hearing the British composer John Tavener’s Requiem in its United States premiere at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday night, in the opening concert of the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, you felt literally engulfed in pantheistic ecstasy. The 2007 work, which features passages from the Requiem Mass, the Koran, the Upanishads and Sufi texts — was meant to be played by musicians dispersed at the four ends of a cruciform space.
Here the conductor Kent Tritle positioned three soloists, four percussionists and a string orchestra at the sanctuary apse. The cellist Arthur Fiacco, who represented primordial light, shifted between tender solo reveries and agile accompaniment; Jennifer Zetlan, a soprano, sang with an almost unearthly brilliance, countered with an earthier ardor from the tenor Matthew Garrett. Glowing responses emanated from the chorus and a brass octet in the organ loft behind the audience, directed by Renée Anne Louprette. A hypnotic stasis familiar from Mr. Tavener’s earlier works often took hold, punctuated with pealing Tibetan prayer bowls. But the central section, “Kali’s Dance,” featured ferocious volleys among two sets of timpani; a massive, squat American Indian powwow drum; and a variety of gongs.
The excellent choir was more conventionally deployed during the first half of the concert, in which a mesmerizing account of five sections from Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom set the stage for another United States premiere: Valentin Silvestrov’s “Diptychon,” which gently nudged Rachmaninoff’s austerity toward the opalescent harmonies of Ligeti.
Two hymns from Mr. Tavener’s “Veil of the Temple” were closer in spirit to these works than to the flamboyant spectacle of the Requiem.
Sacred Music in a Sacred Space continues on Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Avenue, at 84th Street; (212) 288-2520, smssconcerts.org.
Sounds of Bach and One of His Models, Buxtehude
The New York Times, September 19, 2009
The Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola is best known for the superb choral programs that Kent Tritle conducts. But Mr. Tritle, who is the church’s music director — and the organist of the New York Philharmonic — usually plays an organ recital as part of the series as well, and on Wednesday evening he opened the season by taking to the organ loft.
Just about everything on his program was either by Bach or had him in its sights. The exception was a C major Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne by Buxtehude, a master of the organ when Bach was still learning the craft and one of Bach’s acknowledged models.
As both a sample of Buxtehude’s art and a glimpse of what the young Bach might have heard when he traveled to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude in 1706, a year before the older composer’s death, the Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne (BuxWV 137) has plenty to tell us. Its point is virtuosity, both of the fingers and of the imagination: grand chordal passages present a harmonic notion, then brisk, fugal writing explores its implications. Free fantasy and structural formality (the fugue and the chaconne demand both) coexist, and Mr. Tritle deftly balanced the tension between them in a driven, rich-hued performance.
He also did as much for Bach’s expansion on Buxtehude’s techniques in the “Wedge” Prelude and Fugue in E minor (BWV 548), playing the prelude assertively and bringing remarkable transparency to the strands of involved counterpoint in the fugue.
The other two Bach works were from the more ruminative end of his catalog. Both were chorale preludes on “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein,” the first (BWV 641) a graceful, flowery setting from the “Orgelbüchlein,” from around 1714, and the second (BWV 668a) a more expansive but less florid version, probably composed at the end of Bach’s life, in 1750. In the later setting particularly, Mr. Tritle’s color choices — a reedy chorale timbre and a fluty elaboration — conveyed the subtlety of Bach’s subordination of invention to piety.
Mendelssohn’s music is rarely as harmonically adventurous as it is in the Prelude and Fugue in C minor (Op. 37), but his lyrical gift shines through as well, as does his debt to Bach in the freewheeling fugue. And Bach’s spirit turned up again, filtered through a Gallic prism, in the closing Chorale and Fugue of Félix-Alexandre Guilmant’s Sonata V in C minor (Op. 80). Mr. Tritle’s sense of color was at its most vivid (and fluid) in this 1894 work. You almost wished he would set aside the Bach theme and give some Messiaen a spin. By Allan Kozinn
Some Sounds Embracing the Past, Others Straying Far
The New York Times, February 13, 2009
Contemporary works were the main business of Kent Tritle’s Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert on Wednesday evening at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. But perhaps as a point of reference — as a way to show how far some sacred choral music has traveled, and how completely other works are linked to the past — Mr. Tritle opened his program with a setting of “Lux Perpetua Lucebit Sanctis Tuis,” by the 16th-century composer Philippe de Monte. The most immediate comparison was with Ligeti’s “Lux Aeterna” (1966). The works’ texts are similar: each asks God to shine eternal light on the saints. But where de Monte framed the request in the fluid, overlapping lines and sublimely consonant harmonies of the late Renaissance, Ligeti used close dissonances to create hauntingly eerie, slowly evolving clusters. Light, heavenly or mundane, tied other works to the Ligeti and de Monte. Morten Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux” (1997) is closer in spirit to the de Monte work, or at least its syntax is more conventional than Ligeti’s, and its harmonies have a Fauré-like bloom. Its text is a prayer. But though Gavin Bryars’s involved, rich-hued “On Photography” (1983) has the sound of a devotional work, its text is mostly drawn from a secular poem (an 1867 paean to the camera), in Latin, by Gioacchino Pecci, who became Pope Leo XIII. Mr. Tritle also led his choir in two pieces with texts from the Russian Orthodox liturgy. Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Song of Cherubim” (1986) is largely built on the steady rhythms and compressed melodies of unadorned speech. Its attraction is Mr. Penderecki’s flexible use of texture, which varies from quiet and thin to powerful and expansively harmonized. Its companion here, Rachmaninoff’s “Bogoroditse Devo” (“Rejoice, O Virgin Mother of God”), from the Vespers (1915), wastes no time on textural novelties; it presents its text with sweet, simple directness. The second half of the concert began and ended with works in English. Arvo Pärt’s “Beatitudes” (1991) trades less in neo-medievalism than many of his choral works, although that element is heard occasionally, amid more chromatic, modern passages. Kevin Oldham’s “Boulding Chorale No. 4” (1992), written a year before his death from AIDS, is a passionate, beautifully shaped setting of a prayerful poem by Kenneth Ewart Boulding. The works could hardly have been more varied, but they flourished consistently in the lush, seamless blend that Mr. Tritle’s 32-voice Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola produced. The next Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert, a Baroque program, will be on March 4 at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Avenue, at 84th Street; (212) 288-2520, smssconcerts.org.
CD REVIEW: Virtuosity and versatility lead to thrilling readings of these two contrasted works
Gramophone, August 2009
Virtuosity and versatility lead to thrilling readings of these two contrasted works
Alberto Ginastera's Lamentations of Jeremiah (1946) and Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Choir (1985) may at first appear to be strange bedfellows. It's clear from the fierce cries and dance-like, syncopated rhythms that begin the Ginastera, for instance, that the score is imbued with elements of Argentine folk music. And it is equally and immediately evident that the Schnittke belongs to the Russian Orthodox choral tradition. Yet despite the marked difference in style and ancestry, these works are really rather complementary. Both are richly textured, overwhelmingly lyrical, emotionally forthright, and (as the title of the Schnittke suggests) demand considerable virtuosity.
The Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola cope admirably with the numerous challenges. Yes, the sopranos struggle somewhat with the impossibly high notes in the Schnittke, but they survive (and it's conceivable that the composer did not intent for those passages to sound effortless in the first place). There is an edginess to the women's voices in the opening of the Ginastera, too, yet this actually suits the music's feral character well. Indeed, conductor Kent Tritle has made the choir's sound quite adaptable. They sing the Schnittke with a darker, more resonant tone than the Ginastera, for example; it's not the profoundly inky sonority one would get from a Russian ensemble, but it's stylistically apt.
Still, the most striking aspect of the choir's interpretations (recorded live in concert) is its warmth and depth of feeling. They sustain a breathtaking atmosphere of ethereal melancholy in the middle movement of the Ginastera (Ego vir videns), and the Schnittke is thrillingly ardent.
MSR Classics' engineering conveys a sense of immediacy within the reverberant church acoustic, though in loud passages the sound becomes muddied and slightly aggressive. But certainly this small caveat shouldn't dissuade anyone from hearing these superb performances. Andrew Farach-Colton
Organ Recitals as Worthy as Concerts
ArtsBeat Blog, The New York Times, February 12, 2009
Preconcert recitals are hardly anything new — the Mostly Mozart Festival has been offering them for decades — and lots of people skip them. But as the economy tightens, they can seem a welcome bonus, a significant expansion of what you get for the price of a ticket. Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Kent Tritle’s choral series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue, offers organ recitals as preludes to the formal programs. The church’s Mander organ, completed with considerable fanfare in 1993, is a magnificent instrument, and the preconcert recitals often include works that aren’t heard much otherwise. On Wednesday, just before Mr. Tritle led a program of mostly 20th-century works (to be reviewed in the Friday paper), Renée Anne Louprette, the church’s associate music director, played a program that nestled Ligeti’s 1953 “Ricercare per Organo (Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi)” among more familiar scores by Reger, Frescobaldi and Duruflé. Her thoughtful, rich-hued performance prefigured Mr. Tritle’s program, partly because he also presented Ligeti (“Lux Aeterna,” composed 13 years and a major style change later), but mainly because both programs were built on the links between the antique and the modern. In the Ligeti, that link is explicit: the composer had Frescobaldi in mind, and Ms. Louprette helpfully played the “Recercar Cromatico, Post il Credo” from Frescobaldi’s “Fiori Musicali” just before it. Ligeti pushed Frescobaldi’s adventurous chromaticism forward, to the point where it flirted with serialism. The contrast with the works surrounding it was striking — but not as striking as the contrast between this thorny piece and Ligeti’s eerie tone-cluster work in Mr. Tritle’s program. Ms. Louprette made a brief appearance in the main program as well, playing the gently chordal piano line near the end of Gavin Bryars’s “On Photography.” But the one big organ moment in the mostly a cappella choral concert — the explosive postlude to Arvo Pärt’s “Beatitudes” — was played by Nancianne Parella, the church’s associate organist. By Allan Kozinn
CD REVIEW: Lush Choral Textures from Park Avenue
Classical Voice of New England, May 2009
Alberto Ginastera: The Lamentations of Jeremiah, Op. 14; Alfred Schnittke: Concerto for Choir; Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola, Kent Tritle dir.; MSR Classics, MS 1251, Music from St. Ignatius, Vol. VIII, © 2008, 49:41, $14.95. As part of its ministry efforts, the St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish Choir in NY City presents myriad performances under the series heading “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space.” Under the direction of NY Philharmonic principal organist Kent Tritle, the choir has brought to light many gems of the sacred choral repertory, as well as released several live recordings of their concerts. The most recent addition to their discography features works by Alberto Ginastera and Alfred Schnittke.
Ginastera’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, Op. 14 was composed amidst a period of estrangement from his Argentine motherland during the Perón regime, which is evidenced on numerous levels in the selected text as well as the general aural aesthetic. His setting of the opening movement (“O Vos omnes”) is a markedly bombastic interpretation compared to the more traditionally subdued, pensive approach of his predecessor composers. Immediately, the depth of the St. Ignatius choir’s tone surrounds the notes and animates the intensity of Ginastera’s composition, the driving nature of the rhythms enhanced by the energetic articulation of the text.
The middle movement (“Ego vir videns”) is a disparate homage to Renaissance polyphonic models, its prolonged note durations and meticulous counterpoint dramatically offsetting the fury of the first movement. This drastic shift conveys the hopelessness of the text: “He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light,” and the choir convincingly darkens their aggregate blend, dragging the forward motion to a quasi-stasis befitting the setting. The 3rd movement (“Recordare”) makes use of the erudite fugal construction, betraying a certain yearning quality in its execution. Likewise, the musicians in the chorus betray their artistic connection to the setting and text, utilizing the full dynamic range of their ensemble and the acoustic possibilities the St. Ignatius church affords. Their remarkably rich texture not only does credit to the composition, it enhances it. Presented with special pride and affection by the St. Ignatius choir, the 2nd piece on the recording is Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir. Drawing its text from the book of “Lamentations,” written in 977 AD by Armenian mystic Gregory of Narek, it addresses expansive theological appeals and concepts. As the object of equal parts praise and criticism for his polystylism, Schnittke’s musical education provided him with numerous traditions from which to dip his artistic brush. What his education did not provide him, he gleaned from the master composers of his day from Mahler to Schoenberg. Although he did not acquire approval of the Soviet regime until the mid 1980s, his music had achieved notoriety in the West by the previous decade. Premièred in 1985, the Concerto for Choir has roots in the Russian choral music of the Romantic period, though it is harmonically enriched by Schnittke’s idiosyncratic additions, often featuring disorientingly frequent shifts in tonality. Also gleaned from the Russian tradition, particularly Rachmaninoff, the texture of the choral writing is orchestral in style and scope, requiring excellent vocal facility and flexibility to manage the dense harmonies and many-hued aural palette. The St. Ignatius choir is remarkably at home in this repertoire, its sound saturated with vibrancy and resonance throughout the variegated textures and demands it encounters. The music of the 4 movements is intimately connected to the text, as indeed the Russian translation of the \"Book of Lamentations,” a poem by Armenian mystic Gregory of Narek (Grigor or Krikor Narekatsi, 951-1003) written in 977 and published in Marseille in 1673, was Schnittke’s inspirational fountainhead. Although seldom programmed since its première, the St. Ignatius choir captures a performance of this choral masterwork imbued with artistic integrity, perhaps best evidenced by the incredibly masterful diminuendo that concludes the piece, as if the prayers of the author are ascending the heavens to God’s ears. The CD liner booklet is a very thorough and helpful supplement to the recording. It includes a brief biography and overlay of compositional education and background for both composers as well as an eloquent formal discussion of each piece by Kent Tritle\'s colleague Cleveland E. Kersh. In addition, the booklet includes a roster of the Choir of St. Ignatius of Loyola Choir at the time of recording as well as the text to each piece performed (in the original Latin and Russian with corresponding translations). © 2009 Robert Myers
CD REVIEW: Two remarkable discoveries of the highest order (Schnittke and Ginastera)
Audiophile Audition, April 2009
GINASTERA: The Lamentations of Jeremiah; SCHNITTKE: Concerto for Choir – Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola/ Kent Tritle, director – MSR 1251, 49:41 ****1/2 [Distr. by Albany]: First the disclaimer—this would have been a five-star effort if the producers had seen fit to include a little more music—actually a lot more. Surely on this superb concert there were some other pieces available? Anyway, this live recording captures a couple of tremendously affecting pieces of a nature and type that might surprise a lot of listeners. Surprise No. 1: That Alberto Ginastera could write such a profound and appealing setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah as what we have here. These biblical canticles are an acquired taste for a lot of people due to their incessantly somber nature, set in musical stone by so many renaissance masters, including the brilliant Palestrina. The music is liturgical by nature, and recordings often fail to convey the total experience that these settings provide worshippers. In this case, Ginastera takes a different approach altogether and gives us an opening first movement that is strikingly aggressive and annoyed; this is no prophet that is melancholy and repentant but one who is angry as he speaks “all of you who pass through life behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” It puts a whole new spin on how you hear these things, and is a testament to the genius of the composer that he is able to grant us a fresh perspective on this age-old text and music. This is a wonderful discovery. Surprise no. 2: The Schnittke is a late work that uses a religious text from the third chapter of the Book of Lamentations by the Armenian monk Saint Grigor Narekatsi (951-1003). This “concerto” is divided into the four parts that correspond to the text of Grigor’s work, and is an extraordinarily moving and intricate piece that successfully marries the typical and well known techniques of the composer along with a passion and romantic sensibility that seems to come directly from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. There is an inherent difficulty to this work that perhaps does indeed deserve the concerto appellation, but be not deceived; this is a religious piece of music through and through with some gorgeous harmonies and profoundly heartwarming moments, perhaps enough to make many people reconsider the virtues of some of Schnittke’s other compositions. But even I will have to admit that this work is in a category of its own - a marvelous discovery for me, and, I’ll wager, for you as well. The Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola sings with an almost desperate affection in both of these works, while director Kent Tritle (also now taking over the reins of Musica Sacra) maintains a firm grip on the overall pace to wonderful effect. Highest recommendation. -- Steven Ritter
European American Music Announcement of Gavin Bryars U.S. Premiere
February 2009
The Choir of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola performs the US Premiere of Gavin Bryars' On Photography on February 11 under the direction of St. Ignatius Music Director Kent Tritle. The first choral work by Gavin Bryars, On Photography was written as part of the composer's collaboration with Robert Wilson on his large-scale operatic project the CIVIL WarS.
The Top Ten Classical Events
New York Magazine, December 7, 2008
(From #4 "Bernstein at 90"): One especially reverberant moment came during Chichester Psalms [October 1, 2008 Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert], which calls for singing the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew: When 11-year-old Andres Felipe Aristizabal intoned the word "Adonai," it was impossible to disbelieve those green pastures. By Justin Davidson
MUSIC IN REVIEW: 'Petite Messe Solennelle'
The New York Times, November 10, 2008
It seems too easy, given Rossini’s pre-eminent fame as an opera composer, to say that his “Petite Messe Solennelle” breathes the air of the theater as much as it does that of the church. But especially in the rarely performed orchestral version that Kent Tritle and the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola presented on Wednesday evening, the work does indeed sound theatrical, in much the way Verdi’s Requiem does, though with even a touch of the buffo about it. The Mass began in 1863 as a quirky, intimate creation for small chorus, vocal soloists, two pianos and harmonium, for the consecration of the chapel of friends. Rossini orchestrated it in 1867 to forestall the possibility that another composer might do so after his death, but left the larger version unperformed. That was the version heard here — “for perhaps the first time in New York City,” according to Mr. Tritle’s notes, “and certainly the first time in recent memory” — in the church’s invaluable Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, now 20 years old. And the St. Ignatius forces made a typically strong case for it. The Mass’s dual nature was reflected in the work of the vocal soloists. But the real star, along with the chorus, was Charlotte Daw Paulsen, a mezzo-soprano with real contralto gravity and power in her lower register; as she gradually shed her earlier restraint in the Agnus Dei, her performance grew dramatic in the best sense and utterly gripping. JAMES R. OESTREICH
Rethinking Lenny
New York Magazine, October 5, 2008
Bernstein glided through the sixties with such casual worldliness that it’s easy to forget that he was also a religious composer. The end of Rosh Hashanah brought a pairing of Bernstein’s and Beethoven’s great humanist pleas—Chichester Psalms and the Ninth Symphony—performed in the dazzling nave of St. Ignatius Loyola for the series “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space.” Bernstein would have been pleased at the sympathies between Beethoven’s rock-splitting radicalism and the hard-won simplicity of his own score, between the hortatory German of the “Ode to Joy” and the exuberant Hebrew Psalms. The lusty opening movement got softened a bit by the church’s reverberations, but the payoff was a final timpani blow that an archangel might have struck. Conductor Kent Tritle wrapped the rest of the Psalms in a golden shroud of sound, setting off the silvery soprano of 11-year-old Andres Felipe Aristizabal—yet another fine talent untouched by Lenny’s hands-on mystique. - Justin Davidson
Challenging Concert in a Religious Setting
The New York Times, October 3, 2008
In the last two years Kent Tritle has expanded his influence tremendously in the New York choral world by taking on the music directorships of the Oratorio Society of New York and Musica Sacra. But the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concerts he started 19 years ago at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola remain his best work.
The church’s finely polished 53-voice choir is comfortable in everything from early Baroque works to conservative contemporary scores, and the freelance orchestras Mr. Tritle assembles have consistently played with the same energy and clarity that his choir produces. He has the vibrant acoustics of St. Ignatius on his side as well. Its bright reverberance is enough to magnify the choir’s sound without turning harmonies or diction into an indistinct haze. All this proved useful in Mr. Tritle’s first program of the season, on Wednesday evening, which posed several challenges — though clearly not insurmountable ones — for his forces.
Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” has a rugged rhythmic element, drawn mainly from its Hebrew text, but also reflects Bernstein’s passion for the syncopations of jazz and the sparkle of theater music. And Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is performed so often by the best full-time orchestras that you would think a freelance group might find the potential comparisons terrifying.
“Chichester Psalms,” for all its vigorous beauty, also had a utilitarian purpose here: it won the program a place in the citywide Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds festival, presented jointly by Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic, and lest listeners regard the Beethoven Ninth as too secular a work for the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, the sacredness of the Bernstein setting was unequivocal.
In Mr. Tritle’s reading, the opening movement of the Bernstein was a study in celebratory ebullience; subtlety and reflection were reserved for the remaining two. In the second, Andres Felipe Aristizabal, a boy soprano, gave a sweetly turned account of the verses from Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd”) that frame the movement’s darker glimpse of the first four lines from Psalm 2 (“Why do the nations rage?”). The emotional tug of that movement gives way to warmth and reflection in the finale, which the choristers sang with a velvety smoothness.
Mr. Tritle used a fairly small orchestra of 62 for the Beethoven, and if the musicians were intimidated by the work, you wouldn’t have known it. The playing was unified and electrifying, particularly in the second and fourth movements; and in the last, the balance between the orchestra, chorus and soloists was just about perfect.
The soloists — Susanna Phillips, soprano; Jane Gilbert, mezzo-soprano; Bryan Griffin, tenor; and Matt Boehler, bass — were well matched and contributed ably, sometimes thrillingly. But this was a performance in which the whole was greater than the sum of the parts, superb as those parts were. The next Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert, a performance of Rossini’s “Petite Messe Solennelle,” is on Nov. 5 at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Park Avenue at 84th Street; (212) 288-2520, smssconcerts.org. -Allan Kozinn
Shaping a Work That Has Returned to Fashion
The New York Times, May 16, 2008
Monteverdi’s “Vespro Della Beata Vergine” (1610) seems to be in fashion at the moment. Years go by when performances are few and far between (although recordings are always plentiful), yet over the last five years or so they have been turning up several times a year, sometimes performed by period-instrument bands and Baroque vocal specialists but often by church choirs supported by modern forces. The performance Kent Tritle conducted at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday evening as the season finale of the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series was in the second category. But it gave specialists and period-instrument fanciers no reason to feel smug. Mr. Tritle, his superb chamber choir and an orchestra of mostly modern instruments gave a viscerally thrilling performance. (Recorders and a theorbo helped suggest a more antique sound.) Mr. Tritle did not ignore stylistic niceties entirely. He regularly reconfigured his singers to make the most of the work’s antiphonal qualities, and he took St. Ignatius’s vibrant acoustics and appointments into account, both in choosing his tempos and in placing a second singer in the choir loft for the echo movements. (That seems elementary, but conductors sometimes don’t bother, thereby losing one of this score’s great effects.) He used a trim instrumental ensemble, and he clearly encouraged his singers to think carefully about the crisp execution of Monteverdi’s often floridly ornamental vocal lines. And although he used female sopranos and altos, he had his singers use scarcely any vibrato, a decision that yielded a purity of tone like that of a boys choir. But the soul of the performance was in the malleability of Mr. Tritle’s tempos and dynamics. He shaped the “Laudate Pueri” with the impetuousness you might expect in a Monteverdi madrigal more than in a sacred work, but that made all the difference: this setting of Psalm 112 should have an ecstatic undercurrent. At the other end of the spectrum, the dynamic gradations in the gentler “Duo Seraphim” gave the movement a mystical otherworldliness. The soloists, all from the choir, were a mixed lot: some projected beautifully, but several were consistently underpowered. And there were balance problems in parts of the Magnificat, where the instrumentalists sometimes swamped the singers. But these were fleeting problems. When Mr. Tritle and his choir were at their best — in their bright-edged rendering of the “Dixit Dominus” and their warm-hued “Ave Maris Stella,” for example — they tapped into the sublime joy of the work more thoroughly than any ensemble I’ve heard perform these Vespers in a long while. By Allan Kozinn
Sometimes Those Magicians of Song Need to Show What's Up Their Sleeves
The New York Times, February 15, 2008
Magicians are generally ill advised to reveal their tricks, but when the conductor Kent Tritle let the audience in on a few crafty secrets during a concert by the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday night, the tactic paid off. The major work on the program, presented at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola as part of its Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, was the Concerto for Choir by Alfred Schnittke. Mr. Tritle and his choir performed the piece here in 2005; this time it was being recorded for a CD. The concerto, a 1985 setting of texts from the “Book of Lamentations” by the 10th-century Armenian monk St. Gregory of Narek, is one of Schnittke’s most sublime and mysterious creations. In place of his usual stylistic juxtapositions and brittle humor, he drew here on Russian liturgical music. To the spare a cappella textures and solemn pace of ancient tradition, Schnittke added a patina of generally mild dissonance. Some passages acquire an almost heartbreaking luminescence, others a terrifying edge. Ghostly voices seem to hover in the thickened air during climaxes. Before performing the work Mr. Tritle had his singers demonstrate the methods Schnittke used to create his special effects: a juxtaposition of similar melodies in slightly different rhythms to create a shimmer in the first movement, spreading the syllables of words among multiple singers to fashion a bell-like pulsation in the second. As it happened, understanding how Schnittke’s effects were created did not undercut a sense of awe inspired by the intense emotions they conjured. In the actual performance the singers did themselves proud, delivering a deeply heartfelt account with polished tone and excellent diction. Another elucidating gesture at the beginning of the concert had the choir deployed around front and side aisles to clarify musical strands in the dense, intricate 40-voice motet “Ecce Beatam Lucem” by the 16th-century Italian composer Alessandro Striggio. The choir sang passionately in Alberto Ginastera’s “Lamentations of Jeremiah,” a substantial, moving work composed in 1946 during Ginastera’s exile to the United States after Juan Perón had assumed power in Argentina. But here climaxes were shrill, and finer points of diction were lost to the resonant acoustic. By Steve Smith
A Young Shepherd's Ageless Trek
The New York Times, December 17, 2007
Few composers in the 20th century devoted more time and craft to opera than Gian Carlo Menotti, who died in February at 95. Yet from a sizable body of work that includes two Pulitzer Prize-winning works (“The Consul” and “The Saint of Bleecker Street”), only one of Menotti’s operas can truly be said to have achieved lasting popularity: “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” a brief, modest work created for NBC television and first performed in a live broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1951.
New York City Opera brought the work to the stage in 1952. “Amahl” is said to have been performed more than 2,500 times since then, a tally surely due to its eager adoption by semiprofessional and amateur opera companies, schools and churches. One of several New York presentations of “Amahl” this season was mounted on Friday at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola as part of its valuable series Sacred Music in a Sacred Space.
Menotti’s opera isn’t sacred music; still, presenting it in a church seems fitting. “Amahl” is the modern equivalent of a medieval mystery play, except that its story is not biblical but an invented fable. The libretto, written by Menotti, involves Amahl, a lame shepherd given to little white lies, and his destitute mother, who are visited by the Magi as they follow the star of Bethlehem.
The work’s appeal is obvious. Menotti’s music is attractive and unfailingly lyrical. Gaps in logic are countered by humorous touches. When Amahl’s desperate mother tries to pocket a bit of gold meant for the Christ child, the effort is all too relatable. And a selfless act on the shepherd boy’s part culminates in a Christmas miracle.
The director, Kate Bushmann, made resourceful use of the church in a semistaged production that relied on minimal props, evocative lighting by David Castaneda and a long central aisle to create a sense of setting. Kent Tritle, the conductor, performed a near-miracle in balancing performers spread throughout the imposing space.
Andres Felipe Aristizabal, a boy soprano, was the alert, confident Amahl. His voice seemed unruly at times, but this only served to heighten the character’s excitable personality. Both Mr. Aristizabal and the mezzo-soprano Ory Brown, who played his mother, were amplified. Their voices carried well enough, but climaxes were harsh, and their diction was rendered muddy by the church’s resonance.
James Archie Worley, Peter Stewart and Matt Boehler, who portrayed the Magi, and Gregory Purnhagen, their page, sang clearly and powerfully without amplification and brought a winning spirit to their roles.
Mr. Tritle’s orchestra, tucked to one side of the altar, sounded splendid. And the combined forces of St. Ignatius Loyola’s professional choir, children’s choir and Parish Community Choir sang with passion and finesse in the opera and in a group of Christmas carols that preceded it. By Steve Smith.
Babylon, Persia and Israel in Full Voice
The New York Times, October 27, 2007
One of the most unusual musical moments in Handel’s magnificent oratorio “Belshazzar” comes when the blasphemous King Belshazzar of Babylon is warned of his impending doom by a disembodied hand’s writing on the wall in a mysterious script. Handel accompanies this portentous moment not (as might be expected) with a thundering chorus but with strange, stark, unaccompanied fragments in the violins.
There are plenty of magnificent choruses, beautiful arias and dramatic recitatives elsewhere in this seldom-performed oratorio, which has mostly fallen through the cracks in the continuing Handel revival. It received a vibrant performance at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday, with Kent Tritle conducting the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola as part of the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series.
Handel composed “Belshazzar” to a libretto by Charles Jennens in 1744 (soon after “Semele”) but revised it at the last minute the following year when the singer scheduled to perform Daniel became ill. Handel gives the chorus, which represents the Babylonians, Persians and Jews, a full workout, and the St. Ignatius singers sounded superb, singing with plenty of bite, dynamic shading and mostly clear enunciation. They conveyed both the earnest determination of the captive Israelites and the conquering Persians and the belligerence of the pampered, oblivious Babylonians, whose hubris seems disturbingly familiar today.
The orchestra’s lean, taut and fiery playing fully revealed the theatrical turbulence of the colorful score. Mark Bleeke was suitably odious in the title role, conveying the indolent king’s swaggering insouciance with a powerful tenor and dramatic flair. In the difficult role of his mother, Nitocris, Leslie Fagan sang with a bright, nimble soprano and aptly portrayed the anguish of a parent who despairs of her vile son yet still loves him. By Vivien Schweitzer
3 Soloists Give Voice to a Mighty Instrument
The New York Times, July 4, 2007
About 350 organists are registered participants in the regional convention of the American Guild of Organists this week in New York. Some of them could be overheard on Monday night talking with admiration about the organ at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue, before a concert there with the church's orchestra.
Those who know more about the subject than I do say this church's organ, completed in 1993 by Mander Organs in London, is a magnificent instrument that combines modern technology with historical elements. The organ certainly sounded glorious in three concertos and one de facto concerto, Samuel Barber's "Toccata Festiva," during Monday night's concert, which was conducted by Kent Tritle, the director of music ministries at St. Ignatius...
Renée Anne Louprette, a technically nimble and dynamic organist who is associate music director at St. Ignatius, was the soloist in the next two works. First came the Chorale and Waltz from Ned Rorems 1985 Organ Concerto...Mr. Rorem's music became, in effect, a prelude to Poulencs Concerto in G minor, one of the best-known organ concertos...The performance won a deserved ovation.
So did the performance of Stephen Paulus's substantive 1992 concerto for organ, timpani, percussion and strings, by Nancianne Parrella, associate organist at St. Ignatius. - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
CD REVIEW: Les Corps Glorieux
All Music Guide, May 2007
One wouldn't naturally think of the combination of organ, harp and cello as being a particularly practical or well-matched ensemble. However, this MSR Classics disc, Les Corps Glorieux, which is part of their Music from St. Ignatius Loyola series, may well surprise you. Featuring organist Nancianne Parrella, harpist Victoria Drake and cellist Arthur Fiacco, this unassumingly designed disc has a gorgeous sound and a very pleasing selection of unfamiliar – mostly French – literature. Fiacco plays with a very rich, old-fashioned cello tone that makes extended use of portamenti and blends very nicely with Parrella's organ. Drake's harp playing is tasteful, rather darkly colored and not plucky, and, like Fiacco, relates very well to the organ. The three of them playing together, as they do on Henri Büsser's Le sommeil de l'enfant Jesus, results in a fabulous tonal blend that almost automatically places one in a state of devotional relaxation. Yet the musical program is serious and not New Agey – here is short-lived contemporary composer Chris DeBlasio's setting of "God is Our Righteousness" and a gorgeous "Aria" from a Suite for Organ and Harp composed by Louis White so intriguing that it strongly makes one wonder what the rest of the suite sounds like. Parrella, Drake and Fiacco do not play the whole disc through together, but everyone gets a solo showcase, which is an intelligent choice in such an unusual program. MSR Classics' Les Corps Glorieux is a perfect disc for late night reading, or even for taking a bubble bath in the dark surrounded by candles, and its music will prove strongly accessible to both those of a religious inclination and non-believers as well – all one needs is a desire for a little peace in one's life to enjoy this. ~Uncle Dave Lewis