Coronation Mass Concert
I had the pleasure of singing Mozart's Coronation Mass for the second time on Sunday night. This was the first time I got to do it with a full orchestra. The purely musical aspect couldn't have gone off better. We were under the baton of guest conductor Vance George and had gotten to work with him for the past week. Even that short amount of time taught me a great deal. He knew exactly what he wanted and he helped us to come a long way in a short time. Our director C. M. Shearer had already handled the phrase shaping and such with us, but George worked a great deal on articulations and vowel pronunciation with us. The piece came off extremely well and much expression was added by his hand. He handled the slow section of the Credo beginning with "Et Incarnatus est..." with particular beauty all the way through the transition back into the fast section at "Et Ressurexit." His added forte-piano marking on the word "Crucifixus" was a wonderful touch. He got the "Quoniam, tu solus sanctus" section of the Gloria to dance as it should. The performance was further blessed with four outstanding soloists.
All of that said, it is truly unfortunate when a performance that is musically spectacular has a shadow cast over it by unprofessionalism. For reasons still unclear to me, Vance George decided that during the brief minutes he spent talking between movements, the chorus should be seated. This works if you have seated risers. If you don't and instead have people in evening gowns and tuxedos seated on risers and worse still on the floor as we did, it looks absolutely awful and casts a pall over the entire performance. There was no excuse for this; without the talking in between minutes the Coronation Mass runs about twenty-five minutes. If a chorus can stand through Carmina Burana this should not have been a problem.
This admittedly very embarrassing and unprofessional display aside, the Mass was a great musical success, and the audience was well-pleased.
All of that said, it is truly unfortunate when a performance that is musically spectacular has a shadow cast over it by unprofessionalism. For reasons still unclear to me, Vance George decided that during the brief minutes he spent talking between movements, the chorus should be seated. This works if you have seated risers. If you don't and instead have people in evening gowns and tuxedos seated on risers and worse still on the floor as we did, it looks absolutely awful and casts a pall over the entire performance. There was no excuse for this; without the talking in between minutes the Coronation Mass runs about twenty-five minutes. If a chorus can stand through Carmina Burana this should not have been a problem.
This admittedly very embarrassing and unprofessional display aside, the Mass was a great musical success, and the audience was well-pleased.