Schütz pouring out of their basses

Just emerged from the Palm Sunday service at Emmanuel Church, famous for doing complete Bach cantatas with period instruments as part of the liturgy every Sunday morning since 1970. I make a point of coming here each time I visit Boston, just for the music. Today's services had one of Schütz's Kleine Geistliche Konzerte (SWV 289, soprano duet) for the psalm and, because it's Palm Sunday, Schütz's Seven Last Words of Christ in place of the cantata. How depressing that we have nothing even remotely comparable to this in San Francisco, and I'm stuck singing crappy hymns in unison out of an OCP missalette when I could be singing Schütz. I love those Konzerte, and apparently Schütz loved low basses. Surely he must have been sleeping with someone, because who else would write a trio for low basses? (Of course, if anyone does know for real why so many of his bass parts lie in a perfect range for me, leave a comment below...)

UPDATE: How come I'm just hearing about this now?!? From the Emmanuel Music website:

Boston Preview Performance of Bach Cantatas with mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Emmanuel Music is proud to present mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in a special Boston preview performance of Bach Cantatas on June 2, 8:00 pm at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. The concert features Peter Sellars's stagings of cantatas No. 82, Ich habe genug, and No. 199, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut. The Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Craig Smith, conductor, performs with Ms. Hunt Lieberson in this concert to benefit Emmanuel Music prior to European and New York engagements. Praising the original concert performance, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called the stagings "gripping and revelatory" and said that Ms. Hunt Lieberson's performance movingly conveyed a "miraculous blend of soft-spoken sadness and blissful longing."

Patron tickets for this special Boston Preview prior to European and New York engagements are $200 each, $115 of which is tax deductible. Patrons will receive choice seats in the Theatre, will be listed in the Concert Program, and are invited to attend a reception with the artists directly following the performance across the street in the Bill Bordy Theater at the Union Savings Bank Building.

For patron tickets, please call 617-824-8000. For other reservations, call TeleCharge at 800-233-3123 or go to www.maj.org.

Please tell me she's coming out west with this at some point! If anyone has details, let me know. So jealous right now.

Comments

[sfmike]

"How depressing that we have nothing even remotely comparable to this in San Francisco, and I'm stuck singing crappy hymns in unison out of an OCP missalette when I could be singing Schütz."

Dear Bass Dude: Why don't you start it yourself? There are certainly enough churches and enough sophisticated congregations in San Francisco who would greatly appreciate it. If you need any help with the organizing, email me.

And I think Ms. Lieberson has already done the Peter Sellars/Bach cantata thing at UC Berkeley some time ago, though I may be wrong. I have a problem with Sellars' productions, however. I think he's a great impresario a la Diaghalev (sp?) but a really crappy director. I went twice to Adams' "El Nino" at Davies Symphony Hall when it sort of premiered here, and the second time I made sure I was wearing a sleep mask so I didn't have to look at his stupid "art film" or silly dancers while Lieberson, Willard White and Dawn Upshaw were singing their hearts out in a great score.

[M. C-]

My reactions to Peter's directing vary widely from production to production. I've mentioned before that Dawn Upshaw's Kafka Fragments and For an End to the Judgment of God were exceptional theatrical experiences. And the footage I've seen of Nixon is totally great! On the other hand, there are certainly times—Ceiling/Sky and Marriage of Figaro come immediately to mind—when I've wanted to kill myself.

I think the El Niño production as it was designed was just not well suited for the SF venue. Once you see footage from the Châtelet premiere, this becomes immediately apparent. The Paris performance space allowed the production to be a staged work with the film upstage and the orchestra as a backdrop. The chorus was 1. significantly smaller, 2. uniformly costumed and 3. part of the staging. Plus they had memorized the piece. Your focus remained on the staged action and the singing, and everything else contributed to the picture instead of competing with it.

The SFS performances were obligated to have more of a concert feel because the chorus was so large and the staging area so limited. With the chorus in their motley dress lofted above the orchestra, the vertical space was already way too full. As a result the huge projected film felt visually superfluous. There was simply too much stuff on stage to look at. I'm not saying the film was good, but that perhaps in a different setting it might not have been so distracting from what, I agree, were AMAZING performances.

As for starting my own churchy gig, yeah, I've wondered about that. To be honest, I don't think it's possible to find a congregation and clergy to support such an elaborate music program here. With only a very few exceptions, SF churches aren't even able to support an all-pro choir of 12, something you regularly find in NY. Emmanuel's program costs a huge amount of money, and as far as I can tell it must live off of its endowment, because their congregation is actually pretty small. There are a few musically sophisticated congregations scattered around the area, but their programming is necessarily quite limited due to their financial resources and the sizes of their congregations.

[sfmike]

Part of what made the San Francisco performances of El Nino so great to hear was the huge chorus (which I assume you sang in). The First Act finale, for instance, was much more powerful and exciting live in Davies Hall than on the recording. That was also true, in fact, of "Klinghoffer" at the San Francisco Opera with their wonderful chorus outsinging the chorus on the Nagano recording by a wide margin. "Klinghoffer" was also a major bitch to sing live as evidenced by all the choristers with flesh-colored band-aids on their fingers covered with personal counting cues for their ridiculously complex and beautiful "Noah" chorus during Marilyn Klinghoffer's final aria.

But back to Sellars' crappy directing. I also saw "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky" and may be one of the few people who loved much of the music and thought John Adams was brave to try his hand at pop songs. The female trio "Bad Boys and the News" is simply a great piece of music. However, the staging was grotesquely clunky with the singers wearing "Madonna" microphones over their faces in front of the graffiti wall.

The PBS broadcast long ago of "Nixon in China" in Houston was wonderful, and the addition of Walter Cronkite showing footage of the real events was inspired. If they hadn't shown them, I wouldn't have realized how many of the weirder scenes in the opera (Pat's visit to the pig farm, for instance) were direct from life. Unfortunately, I went to the Los Angeles Opera where Sellars had "restaged" the piece during the Tiannamen Square uprising. Instead of the beautiful Mark Morris Cultural Revolution parody dance, there were badly directed supernumeraries running about putting dunce caps on people's heads.

When I finally lost patience with Sellars altogether was his post-modern version of a classic Chinese opera, "The Peony Pavilion" at Zellerbach in Berkeley starring a great, older Chinese female superstar who had moved to Los Angeles and was working in her sister's laundry. I've forgotten her name but when she was onstage singing and posing, I was totally involved and fascinated. The minute she stopped doing her simple thing (which meant most of the second half), we were overwhelmed with Sellars' very threadbare bag of tricks -- the tiresome video screens, the bad dancing/movement, the skeletal set.

Sorry to go on so long, but as you can see the subject interests me. As for replicating the Bach Cantata Experience at the Emmanuel in San Francisco, all it requires is one very rich person who is part of a smallish congregation who would appreciate the music. Plus, it's not like we'd have to re-invent the wheel. I believe it was Craig Roberts, Peter Sellars' conductor from his Cambridge days, who started the project.

[M. C-]

Thanks for this detailed commentary! Everything you mention about Sellars's directing, I can say that I too have felt at one point or another. And yet, for me there are times when from that bag of tricks a honest, beautiful moment emerges—or sequences of moments, or even whole evenings of moments. Peony Pavilion I didn't see... I can't remember why. But I can certainly imagine being irritated in the way you describe.

I have to ask you, though, not to close your ears to what he has to say. Even though his mannerisms, both as a speaker and a director, might be offputting (in different degrees depending on the listener), what he is trying to communicate is often fascinating. I've heard him speak numerous times over the years and got into the habit of flipping off the listening switch. But recently I started to pay attention again, and realized that I've been denying myself some incredible ideas and perspectives by choosing to tune him out.

As for the one rich person... Thoughts?

[sfmike]

Peter Sellars is totally brilliant and has already made his way into the history books for his Adams opera co-creations (can't wait for "Doctor Atomic"). He's also a complete imp and a major trickster. I also find him fascinating. But I cannot be dissuaded on this subject -- his directing sucks.

As for the one rich person...nah, I thought YOU were the one who hung out with those people. Actually, it wouldn't be very hard to find the perfect rich, older lady who would be totally committed to such a beautiful musical project in San Francisco, and since it's such a small town, the number of candidates shouldn't be TOO large. I'll get back to you.