Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Camerata artistic director Rebecca Rollett has crafted the 24-voice professional choir into a gem of an ensemble that merits a bigger audience. The Camerata strutted its stuff on Saturday evening at Sixth Presbyterian Church in Squirrel Hill. The program, titled "Tidings of Christmas," was a series of exquisite miniatures spanning five centuries.
The concert opened with Guillaume Dufay's "Conditor alme siderum," a splendid example of 15th-century organum that the Camerata used to set the stage for the evening. The tuning of the octaves, fifths and fourths was pure and exciting, and the group responded to Rollett's conducting with spot-on precision.
Tuning remained perfect throughout the show, and blend and balance were exceptional in all but the highest fortes, which were slightly overborne by the sopranos. However, the tenors were weak with their entrance in Peter Warlock's "Tyrley Tyrlow."
One doesn't need to see Joseph Wilcox Jenkins' name on a score to know the music is his. The Pittsburgh composer has a compositional language that has remained fresh and distinctive over his long career, combining decisive harmonic progressions with lilting Celtic modalities. The Camerata embraced the shifting harmonies of his "As Joseph Was Awalking" but was careless with the text.
Rollett elicited elegantly shaped phrasing in contemporary composer John Tavener's "The Lamb," 16th-century composer John Sheppard's motet "Reges Tharsis" and a 19th-century arrangement of "In dulci Jubilo." The Camerata displayed superb German diction in Rollett's arrangement of "Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern."
The seamless ebb and flow of the concert was broken only by a cheesy sales pitch arranged by Rollett to the "Wassail Song." The program repeats at 8 p.m. Friday in Smithfield United Church, Downtown, and at 8 p.m. Saturday in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Highland Park.