The Chamber Choir of the Bucks County (PA) Choral Society is an excellent ensemble whose experience, technical accomplishment, and obvious adventurous spirit has resulted in this ambitious, challenging, and thoughtfully constructed program. In the mid-1960s Jean Berger’s Alleluia from Brazilian Psalms was a popular concert work, as was his excellent setting of Psalm 145, The eyes of all wait upon Thee. While these pieces remain somewhat common on choral programs, much of Berger’s work continues in relative obscurity, in spite of random appearances of a handful of titles on recordings by groups such as the St. Olaf Choir, Gloriae Dei Cantores, and the Rockefeller Chamber Choir. This disc offers the beloved Psalm 145 and another favorite, How beautiful upon the mountains (Isaiah 52), along with four less-familiar pieces primarily from 1965, the best of which is the lively–and very well sung!–Arise, shine (Isaiah 60) that opens the program. While solidly tonal, Berger’s music is driven by harmonic structures that often veer off the triadic track into chords built on close dissonances and seemingly ambiguous function–but, while the going sometimes becomes craggy, everything always returns to a satisfying, sonorous finality. He’s also fond of Hovhaness-style long, undulating runs in thirds and of low-register, organ-like effects from men’s voices. It’s wonderful stuff, and these singers really know how to dig into and relish Berger’s often edgy harmonies.
Hans Gál’s choral music is rarely if ever heard these days (for a review of his piano preludes, type Q5514 in Search Reviews), and if these two sets of part-songs are any indication, it’s easy to understand why. These pieces, set to various poets such as Keats, Blake, Shakespeare, and Shelley, are difficult–and they sound so, meaning that the listening (and singing) is often taxing, even tedious, the style sounding enamored of Viennese atonalism (without the true atonality). Don’t get me wrong, there’s also much beauty among these eight songs, evident in Gál’s obvious passion for the poetry, giving lots of expressive room for the singers in pieces such as To Sleep (text by Keats) and Invocation (Shelley).
The choir’s efforts are impressive throughout this program, and its renditions of the familiar Berger works are as good as any on disc. But the ensemble’s performance is not without some problems, not surprisingly regarding intonation–and also not surprisingly, in several of the Gál pieces. But overall, this is a commendable production that gives choral music lovers a chance to hear some fascinating and often beautiful works from a transitional and often neglected period in American choral history.
