HRO, HGC, and Radcliffe Choral Society

The Glee Clubs and the HRO seem to be good for each other. At least, when they combined for Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass Friday night, they sounded better than the individual groups have in most recent performances.

The program opened with the Men's Glee Club alone singing two Renaissance motets by Jacob Handl. A small soli chorus sang from the balcony; and, considering the difficulties that such division presents, the precision of the performance was laudable. The power that a men's Glee Club must have to be really effective was missing, however, and the pieces chosen were short and of little interest. Those who favor the pre-Classical could again complain of having been unfairly ignored.

As with most modern composers, Paul Hindemith's music is very difficult to sing. He takes full advantage of the emotional effects of modern consonances; but, unlike most, he never relies on purely intellectual contrivances, written more for the pleasure of musicologists than of audiences.

That is why the extraordinarily accurate a capella performance of his Mass (1963) by the Glee Club and Choral Society was a pleasurable emotional experience as well as an impressive display of musicianship. Except for one clunker that occured when the singers failed to listen to each other on the Credo "passus et supultus est" and an octave became a major seventh, the Glee Clubs exhibited a professional command of the difficult intervals and harmonies. Unfortunately, the great energy that was consumed in singing the right notes left nothing for interpretation, and the resulting dynamic inflexibility diminished much of the emotional impact of the work.

This was more than made up for, however, when the Glee Clubs combined with the orchestra in Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass. Haydn is easy to sing, and conductor Elliot Forbes took advantage of the situation to reveal a dynamic power and expressiveness that no one who heard the first half of the concert would have guessed the singers possessed. Particularly striking were the crescendo-decrescendos in the Sanctus, the contrasts in the Benedictus "Osanna in Excelsis," and especially the pianissimo "Dona Nobis Pacem" in which the singers produced one of those beautiful, sensuous sounds that are pleasurable in themselves, independent of melodic or harmonic movement.

The orchestra, too, performed unusually well in the Haydn. The inevitable false intonations among the violins were unusually infrequent; and although the strings occassionally played too loud, interfering especially with the female soloists, their quality of sound was much better than it has been in past performances.

The most impressive thing about the soloists was how well they blended on the soli passages. The only poor performance came in some low register passages that were clearly beyond the ability of the Bassist, especially in some sustained notes of questionable constancy in the Gloria; but he sounded fine in the higher registers. The star of the evening was soprano Marsha Vleck who, though lacking the heroic power of the Choral Society's previous sopratio soloist, sang beautifully, accurately, and gracefully.