Choral Review:  Vienna Boys Choir returns to the Cathedral Basilica

Friday evening, November 15, the Vienna Boys Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben) returned to the Cathedral Basilica as part of the Cathedral Concerts series and the choir’s 26-concert “Christmas in Vienna” tour this concert season.  More precisely, the “Brucknerchor” contingent of the Vienna Boys Choir is covering this US tour, under the direction of the Italian conductor Manolo Cargin.  It should be explained that the Vienna Boys Choir divides into four subchoirs of equal status for touring purposes, with each subchoir given the family name of a famous Austrian composer (Anton Bruckner, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert – thus, Brucknerchor, Haydnchor, Mozartchor, Schubertchor).  This concert marked the second of three Missouri concerts by the Brucknerchor contingent of the Vienna Boys Choir, after a concert at Truman State University in Kirksville the previous night and ahead of their concert the next evening at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff.  This intermission-less concert featured the largest crowd that this writer has seen at the Cathedral Basilica in a good while, spilling over into each transept, where video screens were set up for patrons without a direct sightline to the choir.

As with other reviews of choral concerts, this review gives the “set list” at the outset for convenience, since the concert featured over 20 short selections.  The order of the program selections also differed from the originally printed listing in the program booklet.  In addition, several selections featured Mr. Cargin at the piano (marked with a (*)), and several of the choir boys stepped forward to play instruments as well (hand-held drum, tambourine, trumpet, violin).  The official program was as follows:

Henry Purcell:  “Come, Ye Sons of Art” (*)

Lodovico Grossi da Viandana:  “Exultate iusti”

Mozart:  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – 1^st movement (arr. Gerald Wirth)

Haydn:  “Mutter Gottes, mir erlaube” (“Mother of God, allow me”) (*)

Ferdinand Schubert:  “Regina coeli” (*)

Franz Schubert:  “Der 23. Psalm” (Psalm 23) (*)

Giuseppe Verdi:  Nabucco – “Va’, pensiero” (*)

Ennio Morricone:  The Mission – “Nella fantasia” (vocal version of “Gabriel’s Oboe”) (*)

Ola Gjeilo:  “Ubi caritas”

Heinz Kratochwil:  “Jubilate Deo”

Anonymous (from the Piae cantiones, Finland @1582):  “Gaudete”

Christmas carol:  “Joy To The World” (*)

Joseph von Eybler:  “Omnes de Saba venient” (*)

Christmas carol:  “Maria durch ein’ Dornwald ging” (“Mary walked through a thorn bush”)

Max Reger:  “Mariä Wiegenlied” (“Maria’s Lullaby”) (*)

John V. Mochnick:  “Ave Maria”

Heinrich Reimann (attributed):  “Shepherd Song”

Andrew Lloyd Webber:  Requiem – ‘Pie Jesu’ (*)

Andrew Carter:  “A Maiden Most Gentle” (*)

Christmas carol:  “God rest you, merry gentlemen”

Oscar Peterson:  “Hymn to Freedom” (*)

Stephen Schwartz:  Godspell – “Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord” (*)

At the start, Mr. Cargin generously recalled his past concert experience of the Cathedral Basilica on tour with the Vienna Boys Choir.  He also let each of the choristers introduce himself by his first name and country of origin, speaking into the wireless microphone. 

The choir did an admirable job throughout the concert.  Likewise, Mr. Cargin was clearly having a good time directing the proceedings, from the piano and otherwise.  Each chorister who did “double duty” by both playing an instrument and then switching to singing in the same piece, or in the case of the tambourine player and the hand-drum player, playing and singing simultaneously, deserves additional praise.  For any choir of any age/demographic to sing 22 selections in a concert straight through without intermission is admirable, all the more so when the choir consists of kids (albeit kids of great musical talent).

However, it must be said that the prolonged reverberation of the Cathedral Basilica’s acoustic, the proverbial sonic elephant in the room regarding concerts there, factored even more than usual into at least this writer’s experience of the concert, even with a large-sized audience that might have helped mitigate the echo a bit.  It was particularly necessary to follow the texts as much as possible, to glean as clearly as possible the words that the choir was singing.  Ironically enough, with the vocal version of the first movement of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, its wordless status meant that the acoustic didn’t interfere, because pretty much everyone in the audience knew how the tunes would go and could mentally fill in what they were supposed to hear in case of “sonic mush”.  In other selections with texts where the choir sang truly a capella, without other instruments, their vocal quality and qualities were far more noticeable.  To my personal musical taste, highlights of the concert were the Ola Gjello “Ubi caritas” (1999) and the Heinz Kratochwil “Jubilate Deo” (1976), both works with just the choir, without piano or other instruments.  The Gjello work was slower in pace, and a textbook case of how to use the long reverberation time of the Cathedral Basilica to excellent effect.  Kratochwil was a new composer name to me, and his work is quirky and certainly of its time, but IMVHO, strong enough to sustain interest now, almost five decades on.  Even the faster passages in the Kratochwil, which in principle should have sounded simply like a sonic blur, worked well.  The Vienna Boys Choir has kept this work in its repertoire, so their artistic judgement seems comparable.  It was also a rare treat to hear something from Franz Schubert’s brother Ferdinand Schubert, even if the direct comparison shows Franz to have been the far superior musical talent.

The choir and Mr. Cargin treated the audience to three encores, with two Austro-Germanic selections (which I unfortunately couldn’t identify exactly) framing a medley from the film Sister Act which included “Shout” (because again of the acoustic, it took a moment for the presence of that one song to sink in).  Mr. Cargin solicited “audience participation” in the final selection, with a “call and response” of the choir singing out themes and the audience singing back.  The great majority of the audience clearly enjoyed the experience.  One wonders if some may have been new to concerts at the Cathedral, because in many instances, the audience began applauding before the echo of a piece had gone fully silent.  Cathedral Concerts regulars generally know to let the last traces of the music and the echo fall into silence before applauding.  One interesting reaction was when a good portion of the audience stood after the choir sang the Oscar Peterson work, which was a 1960’s civil rights anthem, perhaps in recognition of the results of November 5 and of what is to come, especially for the families of the choir members from Ukraine.  The audience was clearly pleased to see the Vienna Boys Choir live, whether for the first time (like for this writer), or for the nth time.