The New York Times
February 15, 2008 Friday
Late Edition – Final
Sometimes Those Magicians of Song Need to Show What’s Up Their
Sleeves
By STEVE SMITH
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 Peron had assumed
power in Argentina. But here climaxes were shrill, and finer points
of diction were lost to the resonant acoustic.
Sacred Music in a Sacred Space will present a recital by the organist
Stephen Hamilton on Feb. 24 at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola;
(212) 228-2520, smssconcerts.org.