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Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31 and Antonin Dvorák's Serenade No. 1 in E Major, Op. 22 drew concertgoers to Visitation Church to hear the Chamber Players of the Kansas City Symphony on Friday night.  But it was an evening of bittersweet pleasure.

All the elements for an exceptionally fine concert were present:  the soloists, Nicholas Phan, tenor and Alberto Suarez, horn - evenly matched - are both outstanding artists who delivered exciting performances; the orchestra was in top form, as was Steven Jarvi, conductor; the program featured appealing works seldom heard; and the Spanish ambience of the church expanse offered glowing beauty in every direction the eye could gaze, crowned by its double-barrel vaulted ceiling.  But, another element made mince-meat of all that.  The invisible worm in the hall that night, to parody Blake's centerpiece poem of the Britten Serenade, was the acoustic, whose lengthy reverberation swallowed words whole and muddied fast passages.  Only a couple weeks ago that same "invisible" element at Visitation Church was used to tremendous advantage, when Dr. Ryan Board's Collegium Vocale superbly demonstrated the magic of antiphonal effects and how magnificently a pure a cappella vocal line can blossom at Visitation (on choral masterworks composed for the cathedral acoustic).  The Chamber Players concert would have attained near perfection had it been performed at the Folly Theatre or another venue suitable for instrumental chamber music. 

Those lamentations aside, there was much was to commend the performance. 

The golden tones of Alberto Suarez bathed the space in thrilling ancient intonation with the opening horn solo "Prologue" that utilizes the natural open harmonic series of the horn in F, evoking hunting horn intervals of fourths and fifths and raised partial tones that defy current standards of pitch.  Composed at the request of the great British horn player, Dennis Brain, Britten was 29 when the Serenade was completed in the spring of 1943, written at the same time he was also composing his opera, Peter Grimes.  The Serenade was the first piece to receive its premiere in the United Kingdom upon Britten's return from the United States, where he and his life partner, tenor Peter Pears, had lived during the time his application for conscientious objector status was being considered.  The work is a song cycle comprised of six poems by British poets that span four hundred years, framed by the solo horn prologue and epilogue. 

As the lustrous glow of Suarez' final tones faded in the "Prologue," Jarvi brought the strings in without pause to Joseph Cotton's "Pastoral" about the antics of looming shadows during sunset, sung in silken tone and phrasing by Tenor Nicholas Phan.  Just for a moment the horn's volume overpowered Phan's well-controlled and gentle phrasing, but Suarez adjusted his dynamics successfully to establish an excellent balance the rest of the work, acoustical challenges notwithstanding.  There was great dynamic build up between tenor and horn in the 'blow bugle blow' lyrics, and effective tonal and dynamic contrast in its repetition the second and third times around.  

 The focal point of Britten's Serenade is found in the fourth movement, "Elegy." The horn part worms its way above and below orchestral heart palpitations in a beautifully treacherous twelve-tone row to the tenor's pronouncement of Blake's text:
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

One of the most difficult and satisfying moments in the repertoire for horn comes toward the end of the movement when the horn enters on a pianissimo high c sustained with crescendo to double fortissimo as it jabs its descent a slippery half-tone lower, to mark the piercing of the heart, and all on the same breath continues then to sustain and ebb the high b natural into a triple pianissimo.  Suarez delivered it with ease.  As he concluded the movement on the horn's nasal stopped descending half tones, Jarvi brought Phan in beautifully without pause on those same two opening notes, ascending, to the 15^th century "Dirge," with its fantastic imagery and sounds of whinny muir and Brig o' dread: an amazingly demanding vocal part that never seems to end.

Phan's tenor tessitura was a marvel to encounter, with his formidable control of vocal and dynamic range matched by an exhilarating sense of musicality.  His power and endurance did not falter, but, if anything, shone all the more brilliantly in the final song, Keat's "Sonnet," 'O soft embalmer of the still midnight'.  The work concluded in an echo version of its opening, with the "Epilogue" delivered flawlessly by Suarez from the balcony.

Dvorák's Serenade in E Major for strings followed, composed in the same year that Dvorák married, 1873.  If Britten's Serenade was a journey of sunset into night, as Jarvi mentioned in comments given before the concert, Dvorák's Serenade represented the opposite phenomenon, namely the joyous bursting forth of light upon the world at day's beginning.  Composed at the beginning of Dvorák's career, a hint of Brahms seemed to color its lush, romantic themes in the opening movement of the five-movement work.  As it developed, Slavonic influence predominated.  Directed with brio by Jarvi, the string ensemble evoked wonderfully spirited music that seemed to dance to the golden glow in the hall emanating from the wall of flickering candles and chandeliers that seemed to brighten all the more as the sun outside darkened.  The customary champagne and chocolate reception that followed the concert provided friends and neighbors in the audience opportunity to share their enthusiasm with each other before stepping out into the balmy May evening to return home.  The offerings of the Symphony Chamber Players have been so fine this season that I am looking forward to hearing them again next season.

 REVIEW:
Kansas City Symphony Chamber Players
with Steven Jarvi Conductor
Nicholas Phan, Tenor and Alberto Suarez, Horn
Friday, May 1, 2009
Visitation Church
5141 Main Street, Kansas City, MO
www.kcsymphony.org

By Gayle G. Hathorne

Classical and Vocal Contributor (Past writer)