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Professional musicians are a cynical lot.  Almost every one of us have participated in church work at one time or another, and as a rule a number of us make regular appearances alongside volunteer, that is non-professional, ensembles.  These experiences are sometimes positive, sometimes very negative but most often painfully mediocre.  It was this expectation of ‘pretty-good-but-not-spectacular’ that was shattered when I attended Sunday’s performance of Faure’s Requiem and Philips’ Dies Gratie given by the Choirs of Village Presbyterian Church.  On the whole the concert was expertly prepared and stunningly delivered.  

The Village crew wisely chose to use John Rutter’s edition of Faure’s work that corrects the numerous errors in the score perpetuated by the original edition prepared by one of Faure’s students.  Rutter’s reconstruction’ also restores Faure’s intent regarding orchestral forces and eliminates all violin parts with the exception of a solo obligatto violin.  With violas as the top sounding instrument, the choral timbre cut through the orchestra with remarkable effect and powerful clarity.  Not only were all parts easily heard but they meshed together is a rich sonic mélange that exhibited beautiful tone from all players and singers and was delivered with the rhetorical subtlety often missing in other performances of this work.  I think that the absence of the uppermost string lines allowed this to happen to great effect.  No offense to my many friends in the violin playing community, but if this is purely the result of letting the violas ‘drive,’ I’m all in favor of future works along this line. 

In a remarkable display of professionalism, the choir and players all seemed to take cues from each other to function as a well-oiled machine propelled by symbiotic synergy.  Singer’s phrasing was echoed by the instrumentalists and vice versa.   I never felt as though any singer or player ever undermined the communal effort. Apart from the excellent ensemble of adult voices and orchestral musicians, particular standouts in the Faure included Geoff Goyer’s skilled Hostias and Judy Bliss’ even and elegant Pie Jesu.  

The Village Voices, a small chamber group of Middle and High School age students also made significant and beautiful contributions in the Sanctus and in Paradisum.   Young violinist Ian Wisemann played his two obligatto passages with panache and all the indicators of continued success as a violinist.   He wisely played a beautiful, simple, and never over-romanticized tone.  Stephen Casurella conducted the work with a sense of stability and grace befitting it, and always seemed to be assisting the music rather than controlling it.  

Craig Phillips’ Dies Gratiae: Requiem Reflections with texts by John Thornburg was an excellent partner to the Faure, both in terms of sound and rhetoric.  Each movement was divided up into two sections.  The first, a direct quote or ‘prologue’ from the Requiem Mass; the second, a Reflection upon the Requiem text.  The musicians grappled well with Phillips’ sometimes thorny passages and delivered the text up with a sense of straightforward ambiguity that left room for many different levels of meaning to be discerned from the text.  Although well delivered, the prologues sometimes seemed a bit stilted, and left me wanting for a slightly more profound musical delivery of the ancient texts.  Thornburg’s text was rife with memorable lines such as “I searched to see if underneath my masks a person could be found.” His inclusion of a powerful series of ‘one-liners’ from the Torah and the New Testament in the penultimate movement, lent credence to the idea of a less exclusively Christian interpretation of the Requiem texts.  

The choir served up excellent and clear diction, and both Kathy Joyce’s tender solo in the third movement and Matthew Shepard’s organic and beautifully rendered solo in the second movement played effectively into the drama of the piece.  Echoes of the juxtaposition of Wilfred Owen’s texts with Requiem texts as constructed by Benjamin Britten in his War Requiem certainly seemed appropriate.  

It wasn’t a perfect performance; there were very occasional intonation issues, and some unclear releases of unvoiced consonants.  However, it was entirely successful and musically satisfying for me as a listener and I was seldom, if ever, distracted by these occasional ‘bumps’.  This concert, presented under the auspices of a benefit for the Village Food Pantry, certainly nourished my soul. In a society where many church music programs have abdicated their prior tasks of producing fine artistic content, or only pay it occasional lipservice, the music department at Village Presbyterian Church seems to really understand what it is to select fine pieces that have stood against the ebb and flow of trendy fads.  Furthermore, they have concentrated on presenting them in a fashion that is artistically sound rather than hijacking them for a particular event and then resorting to disposable music for the remainder of the year.  They stand amongst a handful of exceptional congregations in this fine city that deserve our admiration, respect, and support.  I can only look forward to future musical offerings from these upstanding members of our musical and broader community and wish Mark Ball and his crew continued success.   

The Village Choir, Village Voices, and orchestra
Faure Requeim and Phillips Dies Gratiae: Requiem Reflections
Sunday November 2 at 5 p.m.
Village Presbyterian Church 

By Jay Carter

Early Music and Vocal Contributor (Past writer)