KCMETROPOLIS - Octarium Continues Our Regions' Best Music Making
Classical Review
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The combination of Visitation Catholic Church and Octarium might seem to be a meeting of opposites, with the intimacy of the eight-voice chamber ensemble in such a large, open space. The venue turned out to be a wonderful place for listening to Octarium's beautiful singing, with the near perfection of their latest recording now reproduced in a live performance.
Make no mistake; this is a Kansas City ensemble of national stature, joining the justly illustrious Kansas City Chorale in the message that this city's choral moment seems to be arriving. What a joy they are! Their next concert on the afternoon of December 7 at St. Elizabeth's Church in Kansas City is a not-to-be-missed appointment for the Kansas City music community.
Krista Lang Blackwood's singers' work was secure and impassioned, ranging from delicate intimacy to the grandiloquent breadth that of the larger pieces called for, the essential sound of Octarium one of almost perfect balance.
The program's first half was modestly arched toward the Russian compositions of Rachmaninoff and Gretchaninov. These two pieces were beautiful presentations, particularly the emphasis on Gretchaninov's often piquant harmonies, giving his music a sense of freshness, of emotion.
Their breadth contrasted with the lively intimacy of Josquin's 15th century El grillo and Monteverdi's wonderfully calm and soothing madrigal Ecco mormorar l'onde.
The beauty of Palestrina's Sicut Cervus made me wish the second part ( secundo pars) of the motet had been included to give it the breadth and balance it deserves. To my ears the Palestrina and William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices excerpt presented some of the very best singing of the evening.
The inward turning music of Duruflé and Stanford offered heavenly beauty and virtually perfect execution. Ashley Elizabeth Winters sang Stanford's ethereal soprano lines in The Bluebird beautifully, if with a glint or two of edge through the middle voice.
The second half of the concert aimed for a much higher apex of breadth and size of work, notably Samuel Barber's classic Agnus Dei. The sheer concept of this piece, from its origins as a string quartet, expansion for string orchestra and Barber's final transformation for voices, adding the sometimes intrusive Agnus Dei text, dictates long, long soaring lines. Blackwood's singers had to meet demands for quietest moments to the super-human extended thrilling climax, almost more than can be expected from single voices, returning to final cloudlike whispers of sound at the conclusion. It was clear that Octarium understood all this, providing a constant movement and intensity of tone. One can understand if the loudest passage was difficult for the singers to maintain a perfect unity of ensemble even with their best efforts. It was, however, even then both captivating and moving.
Bruckner's devilish harmonic chromaticism gave the group their only frightening moment of the evening, but with a quick and successful recovery that kept this beautiful and exciting work alive.
Bass Benjamin Winters offers Octarium a magnificent base around which to build its sound, even though his constant swaying can sometime be distracting. He and Brady Shepherd are a bass section of truly excellent tone and quality. Sopranos Renee Stanley and Ashley Winters were appropriately flexible and most often exquisitely beautiful, while Leah Hamilton Jenkins and Andrea Coleman had some of the evening's best moments, full of warmth and beautiful sense of line. Tenors Jason Parr and Jay Von Blaricum sing with admirable and most often beautiful blended tone, though exposed melodic lines were very occasionally marked by moments of "almost" blurring, with top notes in arched patterns just under the pitch - just enough to be distracting.
For this listener it was, at least part of the time, easier to listen to Octarium than to watch them. No one could or should sing this music frozen in place, but a constant and overt activity (especially in the liturgical works) of some of the singers left me to wish for more moments when they and we could be lost in the music itself, without the intervention of personalities.
Octarium is a first-class musical ensemble and, I trust, all of us are glad to be a witness of their early years. More to come. Watch this space.
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