SummerFest 2024’s Choral Feast with VOCES8

The British vocal ensemble VOCES8 took La Jolla SummerFest’s Friday audience on an amazing journey, charting the development of our western choral tradition from the early Renaissance to the present.

Starting with a mystical early Renaissance motet by Jean Mouton, VOCES8’s exhilarating survey quickly moved to an early Baroque anthem by Orlando Gibbons, then  to J. S. Bach’s Sacred Cantata 150 Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, a movement from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s beloved All Night Vigil, followed by three stunning motets by contemporary American composers Caroline Shaw, Reena Esmail, and  Jake Runestad.

To its great credit, the eight vocalists of VOCES8 accomplished this compelling survey on the first half of Friday’s concert. After intermission SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan and colleagues Stefan Jackiw and Alisa Weilerstein returned to The Conrad stage to offer a rousing account of Beethoven’s evergreen Archduke Piano Trio.

VOCES8 and four SummerFest instrumentalists, including Barnatan on the chamber organ, opened Friday’s concert with Bach’s Cantata 150 written in 1708, which scholars believe is the earliest extant Bach church cantata. Unlike the more familiar church cantatas based on sturdy Lutheran chorales, notably the cantatas Bach composed as the St. Thomas cantor in Leipzig, Cantata 150 is based on a few verses of Psalm 25 interspersed with pious poetic reflection. The instrumentation is modest, three instrumental voices  and basso continuo–violins, cellos and chamber organ at The Conrad program–but Bach’s agitated counterpoint resplendent with poignant harmonic suspensions not only supported the singers, but vigorously propelled the cantata’s dramatic arc. The impressive ensemble, articulate declamation, and immaculate intonation of VOCES8 as well as the superb SummerFest instrumentalists gave Cantata 150 a radiant, compelling  performance. Kudos to countertenor Barnaby Smith, tenor Euan Williamson, and bass Christopher Moore for their vibrant trio ensemble “Cedern müssen von den Winden.” Barnaby also serves as the Artistic Director of VOCES8, and he gave understated but assured direction from his placement within the group.

If I may politely correct La Jolla Music Society’s program annotator Eric Bomberger, music historians believe that over his career as a church musician J. S. Bach composed some 500 sacred cantatas, not 200. The 200-plus cantatas in the modern Bach catalogue, the Bach Werke Verzeichnis, are only those cantatas that have survived. After J. S. Bach’s death in 1750, his estate—including the composer’s manuscripts—was divided among his adult sons and his widow Anna Magdalena. Bach’s oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, a virtuoso organist and his father’s favorite offspring, unfortunately turned out to be an irresponsible alcoholic, so all of the cantatas that he inherited have disappeared. Bach’s widow was reduced to selling off her manuscript collection merely to survive and continue to raise the children who remained in the household. We are indeed fortunate to have Bach’s 200 sacred cantatas at our disposal, but this number is less than half of what we are certain he wrote.

VOCES8’s calling card is Orland Gibbons “O Clap Your hands,” and their jubilant, incisive account of this anthem generously anchored this SummerFest appearance of the ensemble in their own rich British choral tradition. The singers captured the intense spiritual devotion of “Bogoroditse Devo,” the most well-know movement of Rachmaninoff’s great a cappella All Night Vigil, and the ensemble’s discipline allowed them to traverse the complexities of their contemporary American anthems with astonishing strength.  From the short pianissimo phrases that float around high vocal pedal tones in Caroline Shaw’s 2017 anthem “and the swallow” to Jake Runestad’s poignant, understated  2015 work “Let My Love Be Heard” to Reena Esmail’s transcendent 2018 choral essay “When the Violin,” VOCES8 created the challenging sonic worlds of these pieces with breathtaking command.

Indian-American composer Esmail came to the stage to introduce her “When the Violin,” a piece that creates a sense of wonder by fusing the text of the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz with a Hindustani rāga and Esmail’s own postmodern musical style of overlapping lines and close harmonies. The piece opens with an intense, haunting cello prelude played by Alisa Weilerstein that allows the singers and a second cello, played by Leland Ko, to merge discreetly into this shimmering sound cloud.

Beethoven’s  Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, is named for Archduke Rudolph, brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz, who was both  a patron and music student of the composer. It is one of Beethoven’s most popular chamber works, and we heard Stefan Jackiw play this Trio with pianist Conrad Tao just three months ago in The Conrad on the La Jolla Music Society’s chamber music series. In terms of style, I am not certain it served as the best complement to the choral first half of this program, but the Trio’s performance certainly matched the high bar set by VOCES8. Barnatan reveled in the turbulence of the “Scherzo” yet deftly balanced  a sense of joy with a certain gravitas in the “Andante cantabile.” Weilerstein tempered her most effusive approach to match Jackiw’s Apollonian spirit to create a mood conducive to this spacious, ingratiating work.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society on August 9, 2024, as part of SummerFest 2024 at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center. The festival continues through August 24, 2024.