Classical Review: Outstanding concert by The Boston Camerata + STL reinforcements at the Cathedral

Last Friday (April 19), Cathedral Concerts closed its 2023-2024 season with a return visit by The Boston Camerata, in a concert titled “Les Miracles de Notre Dame”, a program originally commissioned by the French government and first performed in 2019, several months after the fire at the Cathédrale de Nôtre-Dame de Paris that year.  Joining the eight touring Boston Camerata musicians were nine singers from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis Schola Cantorum, in line with a passage from the touring page for this program:  “This program welcomes the participation of an adjunct choir”.  The hall was not full, which Anne Azéma, artistic director of The Boston Camerata, acknowledged when she invited audience members towards the back of the Cathedral to move closer, during her welcome speech at the start.  It’s a shame that the crowd was not larger, but those present witnessed an excellent performance, one of the very finest concerts that this writer has experienced in the Cathedral Basilica.

    This program fell into eight sections, as listed in this November 2022 archival pdf of this program from a performance at Harvard.  At the very start, in the ‘overture’ titled “Introit: To The Beautiful One”, Shira Kammen opened the proceedings on vielle, a violin-like instrument, with Ms. Azéma then singing solo the text ‘Ma vielle’ by Gauthier de Coincy (1177-1236), in praise of “Notre Dame” (“Our Lady”), the Virgin Mary, the program’s obvious thread.  From then on, the ensemble size and composition varied most skillfully from movement to movement.  Just one example:  in the next section, “The Voice of Supplication”, the full choral complement from both The Boston Camerata and the Cathedral Schola Cantorum sang the anonymously composed chant from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (Lamentations 1), that section’s first movement, but then the likewise anonymously-composed second section, “De profundis clamavit” (“Out of the depths I cry to you”, from Psalm 130), switched to the four male Boston Camerata voices, tenors Corey Hart and William Hite, baritone Jacob Cooper, and bass-baritone Luke Scott.  

Later movements featured soprano Camila Parias and mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore, in duets or each individually, or in a trio with Ms. Azéma, or all four ladies together, with Ms. Kammen joining the singers while not playing either vielle or medieval harp.  The full choir sang in only in a very few cases, very well placed throughout the evening, most strikingly in the trio of drinking songs, ‘Quant je le voi’ / ‘Bon vin doit l’en a li tirer’ / ‘Cis chans veut boire’, that formed the final movement of the sixth section, “In The Flower of Youth, Life On The Rive Gauche”.  This sixth section was the concert’s most ‘secular’ portion, with several texts taken from the 13th-century collection Carmina Burana, the same collection from which Carl Orff selected texts for his eponymous cantata (performed earlier this season by the St. Louis Symphony), where this evening’s selections were more exhortations to take the path of virtue, however late in life, after a dissolute earlier existence.  This was also the moment where the full complement of musicians tossed concerns about the Cathedral Basilica’s acoustic aside, while still conveying clearly the text’s spirit, in its boisterous contrast to the more devotional tone of the rest of the program.

That point brings up the acoustic elephant in the room, namely the Cathedral Basilica’s prolonged reverberation, well over 5 seconds.  Classical musicians, because they generally perform unamplified, understand that the performing space itself is another “musical instrument” which one can “play” along with one’s own instrument, whether internal (voice) or external (vielle, medieval harp, or hurdy-gurdy, the instruments used in this concert).  As alluded to earlier, The Boston Camerata and Ms. Azéma have been to the Cathedral Basilica before, specifically in 2017 with their program “The Play of Daniel”.  They thus basically knew what they were getting into acoustically with this space.  More than once, Ms. Azema and Ms. Parias cast their eyes up towards the central dome, seemingly reveling in the reverberance.  The musicians evidently understood that in a space like the Cathedral Basilica’s, even just one or two musicians can impress the audience, as opposed to a large body that would risk creating an impenetrable wall of sonic mush.  

In this light, a friend at this concert astutely observed that “I don’t think that I’ve ever heard the Cathedral played like this”.  Indeed, The Boston Camerata showed their skill at “playing the hall” most judiciously and intelligently from section to section, varying both the musician lineup in the different movements and their placements in and around the nave, and thus varying the musical timbres throughout the evening.  In various movements, groups of musicians stood on one side of the hall, sometimes all facing the audience, sometimes in a circle, in the case of the latter with the singer with the principal line facing out towards the audience.  At other times, musicians would be just slightly off center and in front of the altar.  In another instance, again in the sixth section, Ms. Azéma sang from stage right / house left, while Ms. Kammen played her vielle from stage left / house right, in contrast to an earlier section where the two of them were both on stage right / house left.  

In fact, just before starting that movement, in a bit of sonic happenstance, Ms. Azéma warmed up her hurdy-gurdy just as the Cathedral chimes struck 9 PM, to enhance the atmosphere by sheer luck.  Ms. Azéma occasionally did double duty when she simultaneously sang and played the hurdy-gurdy.  Further adding to the concert’s theatrical element, to embroider the earlier theme of “playing the hall”, the musicians also gently breached ‘the fourth wall’ on select occasions, such as in that very extrovert drinking song trilogy at the close of the sixth section, sung just in front of the altar.  The last ‘coup de théâtre’ was in the final section, the “Recessional”, an anonymous setting of the ‘Ave Maria’, where the singers gradually recessed from the altar towards stage right as they sang.  They completed the movement from off-stage, with their sound carrying wonderfully through the space, for a perfect conclusion to this 80-minute, intermission-less concert.

It suffices to say that The Boston Camerata was stellar throughout.  Likewise, the Cathedral Schola Cantorum singers, Lea Zelaya, Emily Kennebeck, Sunshine Clay, Raphaella Zavaglia, Elizabeth-Lee Musch, Scott Kennebeck, Robert Limbaugh, Xavier Ojeda, and Daniel Cook were on strong form, and received their own group bow at the curtain call.  A subtle “dress code”, itself another quiet “theatrical” element, differentiated the STL musicians from the Boston Camerata members, as the former all wore basic black with the men specifically eschewing jackets, while the Boston Camerata gentlemen all had black jackets and the Boston Camerata ladies incorporated various colorful items into their wardrobe.

This concert deserved an audience like what Voces8 and the SLSO received at the Cathedral Basilica this season.  One hopes that The Boston Camerata will return to St. Louis and receive a comparable large crowd that they so very much deserve.