New York Classical Review

Ted Sperling, a man of many projects, brought his MasterVoices chorus to Alice Tully Hall Monday night for a concert titled “Sins and Grace.” He might have added “not necessarily in that order,” since the opening work was Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem and the concert concluded with the world premiere of a work by multiple composers titled Seven: A Cycle of Sins.

In a program note, Sperling called the Fauré work “the gentlest of the famous requiems…so I thought it would be fun to pair it with something devilish.” The result: seven composers “from the concert and theater worlds” writing a movement each on the Seven Deadly Sins of traditional Christian teaching, using the same performing forces–chorus, chamber orchestra, organ, harp, soprano and baritone soloists–as the Fauré piece, in the 1893 church version.

It might seem incongruous to follow Fauré’s vision of solace and eternal rest with what Sperling called “what you had to go through to get there.”  But perhaps there is not such a wide gulf between the conductor’s idea of “fun” and Fauré’s answer when asked what occasioned his piece: “My Requiem wasn’t written for anything—for pleasure, if I may call it that!”

Nevertheless, the D minor foundation laid by cellos and double bass in the opening bars of Fauré‘s “Introit et Kyrie” was serious business. (For this performance, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s consisted of horns, bassoons, timpani and a string section topped by violas, all instruments in the human vocal range. A single violinist, concertmaster Emma Frucht, contributed ethereal solos from time to time.) 

Under Sperling’s direction, gentleness was the order of the day for the chorus, with subtly woven counterpoint, buttery legato, spacious tone, and no drama until the outburst “Hosanna” at the climax of the third movement, “Sanctus.”  Fauré viewed even the “day of wrath” (Dies irae) at the Last Judgment from a distance, and the chorus acknowledged that with only a modest crescendo in the movement “Libera me.”

Baritone Justin Austin adopted an appropriately priestly demeanor in the “Offertoire,” offering prayers and sacrifices in a well-supported, forward tone and no vocal theatrics. Leading off the “Libera me,” Austin delivered his wide-ranging melody with an underlying tension that would burst forth in the choral sections later in the movement.

Praying to “Pie Jesu” in the fourth movement, soprano Mikaela Bennett floated her long line over the undulating orchestra like a soul distancing itself from the cares of this world. Her clear, expressive tone remained consistent down to the last vanishing pianissimo.

Following Fauré’s vision of rest in “In Paradisum,” the concert continued to the new work without intermission or even a stage reset, only a few words of introduction from conductor Sperling.

Then it was straight on to a wholly different vision in Will Aronson’s “Everything in the World” (Gluttony), opening Seven with a crash of organ and chorus while soloists Bennett and Austin chanted their dialogue into microphones. Dolan Morgan’s text was a seduction scene: “Look around you at everything in the world. You cannot have enough. Have more!”  Pounding drums and a chorus singing “yum, yum!” brought on urgent crescendo after crescendo until the final shout of “Knock knock. Let us in…We will consume you.”

Gregory Spears’s “The Preacher” (Vanity) set the all-too-familiar words of Ecclesiastes beginning “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher,/vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  Dramatic over a surging organ, baritone Austin exhorted humankind to shed self-regard and understand God’s wisdom in the cycles of nature.

Jason Robert Brown composed “Envy” to his own slyly ironic poem that began “O, to be a thread on the sleeve of Jesus’ robe.”  The bitter emotion—the sin—seething under those mild observations became explicit in the chorus’s dogged marching rhythm and eventual explosion in dissonant chords. But solos for violin and soprano over twinkling percussion restored the mood of insouciant irony.

Composer Ted Hearne did a word search in a book by a former U.S. Treasury Secretary to generate the texts for “Greed, or Nine Results in This Book for Justice.”  Glimpses of a day in the life of a cabinet member–lunching with the Chief Justice, dropping in on a ball, citing the Old Testament to let a financial firm fail—produced a complex texture of abrupt phrases in speech rhythms for large chorus, small chorus (independently conducted by Julie Morgan, with impeccable diction) and an orchestra that spattered and sparkled, driven by double bass and snare drum.

In “Sloth,” with music by William C. Banfield to words by Michael R. Jackson, two characters, the Empress Sloth (Bennett) and the Conscientious Objector (Austin) debated each other, first singing and then in heated speech, while the singing chorus refereed. Ultimately, the C.O. won the debate, rousing the chorus from its initial languor to shout at the end, “We refuse to give in to sloth!”

A furtive low pizzicato introduced “Lust,” whose “text” consisted of sounds that might be heard in bed on certain occasions. Composer Michael Abels had the men growling, the women cooing, and finally everybody panting on pitch, accelerando and crescendo–followed, of course, by rallentando and diminuendo. Abels was not the first to create this special effect—Richard Strauss and the Beatles, among others, beat him to it—but he and Sperling did it well enough to evoke a nervous titter from the audience.

“Wrath,” music and texts by Heather Christian, bristled with its eponymous emotion, with two conductors, seven choruses, soloists preaching fire and brimstone, choral exclamations and rhythmic clapping, fierce string tremolos, and busy percussion laying down a swaying 5/8 rhythm. This was set to words of Thomas Aquinas, the Old Testament, and Dante’s Inferno, invoking not just the sin of wrath but the righteous punishment of an angry God, bringing this “cycle of sins” to a bracing, even scary, close.