Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > January > 24 > Entry
Review: Conspirare & Robert Kyr
The church was dark. Tall wooden platforms holding rows of candles were being carefully lit, when a single, angelic voice reverberated from outside the hall.
A small chorus of voices joined in, slowly coming closer and louder, until they entered St. Martin’s Lutheran Church, where all the candles were now lit, casting an alluring glow from the altar. The voices swirled around the pews and the singers of Conspirare stepped in to begin a concert of work by Renaissance master Josquin des Prez.
Friday night’s concert — the first in a series of four for the Grammy-nominated Austin choir ‘Renaissance and Response’ festival featuring new compositions by composer Robert Kyr — was directed by Conspirare artistic director Craig Hella Johnson with effortless ease.
(Kyr’s challenge, a commission from Conspirare, was to compose a 21st-century responses to music of Josquin, Orlandus Lassus, Tomas Luis de Victoria and J.S. Bach.)
De Profundis began, appropriately, from the depths, with bass David Farwig and tenor Tracy Jacob Shirk’s stark duo. They established the beautiful straight-tone that would echo throughout the evening: the entire choir eschewing vibrato, which illuminated flawless tone, pitch and harmony.
The concert was a display of the flat-out power of these voices, without adornment. Only the string parts felt occasionally flat.
Josquin’s music was a revelation. Its sparse beauty contrasts with the bubbling of voices that whirl about each other. “Gaude Virgo Mater Christi” split into gusts of windy melodies, until the piece ended in unison, with a long, powerful reverberation.
Kyr’s response to Josquin was an expansive cap to the evening. Its haunting Latin blended with gorgeous English phrases as the choir again encircled the pews, leaving only Abigail Lennox‘s voice to fly around the bricks and domed ceiling, slowly bringing the circle to a close.
Certainly, the Josquin was Conspirare’s best program of the season, perhaps one of its best to date. It was a resounding success: solemn, serious, and gorgeous.
On Sunday, three concerts later on the four-concert program, the ensemble joined a last time to sing Bach and reconsidered all of the Renaissance composers in Kyr’s four responses.
In the daylight of St. Martin’s, Bach felt a little diminished next to the stark beauty of the Renaissance composers.
Bach’s influence looms so large that his style of bright polyphony and counterpoint is still emulated today. So there was an inevitable comedown after the alien beauty of Josquin.
Even on their last, exhausting concert, Conspirare sounded strong. Kyr’s cantata alternated his Renaissance responses with a duo that took its lyrics from “Dark Night of the Soul,” by St. John of the Cross. They told the entire story, reaching a poignant climax, though certain sections felt a touch drawn out.
Kyr’s responses to Lassus and Victoria loomed large, especially “From the Abyss,” which told the story of Jonah and the Whale through the music of Lassus. Conspirare’s singers captured this babbling brook of music, swelling like the sea with its dark, haunting chords.
Kyr’s works were impeccably envisioned. They reinvigorated the concerts as a palate cleanser while expanding on each composer’s musical and lyrical ideas.
Spiritual, contemplative music, with the dazzling arrangements and work of Kyr and Johnson, Austin has much to anticipate from the future of this partnership.
‘Renaissance and Response’ was performed at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church Jan. 21-23 by Conspirare. See Conspirare brings new vigor to Renaissance music.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Comments
When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.