By Melissa Ingells, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-938162.mp3
EAST LANSING, MI – The next MasterWorks concert by the Lansing Symphony Orchestra is called "Songs of Winter," and features the MSU Choral Union and Chorale on music of Rutter and Bloch. MSU choral programs director David Rayl will be conducting Saturday's performance. He spoke with WKAR's Melissa Ingells about the pieces on the program.
AUDIO:
DAVID RAYL: The Rutter is a piece called "When Icicles Hang," and it's a setting of medieval English Christmas texts. So there's one called "Bring Us Good Ale," and another one called "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind." Typical John Rutter very tuneful, very colorfully orchestrated, with a tinge of sort of popular, John Williams-y kind of almost a movie music quality, but it's really well-written classical music. And they're all medieval poems from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries.
MELISSA INGELLS: The major piece is by Ernest Bloch, the "Sacred Service." I have to admit that in 14 years of playing classical music, I have not listened to it, and I'm real curious to hear what your take is on it.
RAYL: Well, I believe this is one of the overlooked choral/orchestral masterpieces of the 20th century. The actual title is "Avodath Hakodesh," which is the Jewish Sabbath Saturday morning sacred service; it's often just referred to as the Bloch "Sacred Service." Written in the early 1930s, Bloch was an immigrant from Switzerland, and actually written for a patron and a synagogue in San Francisco. It's a liturgical piece; it could be performed liturgically, although most often today it's performed on the concert stage. Baritone soloist, who is the cantor, with choir, and I just think it's a fantastic piece lots of call-and-response back and forth between the cantor and the soloists. In fact in this performance I'm going to put the cantor elevated behind the orchestra, right in front of the chorus because the interplay between the cantor and the chorus is so important. It's a piece that I first became acquainted with in 1973 as a college freshman. For some reason I listened to a recording of it that very first year of college and fell in love with it. Never encountered it again, never sang it, never heard it. And then about 12 or 15 years ago when I was at the University of Missouri, Columbia, I had the opportunity to conduct it. And you know, totally, totally am committed to it. I think it's a fantastic piece and I've been looking for an opportunity to do it here in Lansing and then with this particular program it presented itself.
INGELLS: I'm struck by you said Bloch composed this in the 1930s, and certainly, the 1930s a period of growing fear and darkness for Europe's Jewish community. Does that come through in this piece at all?
RAYL: You know, I'm not sure that it does, to tell you the truth. I think what comes through Bloch did not grow up as a practicing Jew. And as he grew older, he became more and more interested in his cultural heritage, and then he really immersed himself in the liturgy and the language as an adult and as a composer. I think what comes through is his connection with both contemporary Judaism in the early part of the 20th century and with its cultural roots.
INGELLS: You come from a vocal background and you conduct the choirs here at MSU. What are the challenges involved in adding an orchestra to that mix?
RAYL: The biggest challenge with this piece is that it's more like a Puccini opera (with a big chorus part) than a traditional choral piece like the Brahms Requiem. Which is to say, that it stops and starts, slows down and speeds up, about every three or four measures. The truth is that there's a lot to worry about in a Brahms Requiem, but there are probably 10 or 15 transitions that you have to worry about in a very serious kind of way, and in this piece, there are probably 80 transitions you have to worry about.
INGELLS: So you're not just marching along into the next section
RAYL: Exactly so the orchestra needs a lot of attention and a lot of clarity. The chorus also needs a lot of attention in a way that they wouldn't in a piece like the Brahms, where to be honest, once they get started in a section, the music just sort of propels itself onward. But I think the big challenge of this piece is that it's somewhat fragmented.
INGELLS: Your baritone soloist, David Small does he have training as a cantor?
RAYL: He does not have training as a cantor--
INGELLS: That must have been a challenge, then--
RAYL: --But he sings this piece fantastically. David Small is on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. He has a very distinguished resume, he's sung all over the country. I hired him to do this piece in Missouri, 12 or 15 years ago. And it's a piece he'd always wanted to do, nobody'd ever asked him to do it--hasn't done it since, so he was thrilled to get the invitation to come up here and do it.
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David Rayl is the director of Choral Programs at the MSU College of Music, and the guest conductor at Saturday's Lansing Symphony concert. WKAR's Jody Knol will host a PreView Conversation before the concert with guest Pamela Schiffer, the cantor from Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing. It begins at 7:15pm in the Jackson National Lounge.