Urmas Sisask: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Zoltan Kodaly: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Francis Poulenc: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Joseph Haydn: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Gyorgy Orban: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Antonin Dvorak: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Francis Poulenc: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Karl Jenkins: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Roland de Lassus: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Karl Jenkins: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Antonin Dvorak: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Roland de Lassus: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Joseph Haydn: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Zoltan Kodaly: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Zoltan Kodaly: Excerpt from Stabat Mater
Conductor: Eliette Roche
Piano: Marielle Covell
There is no rest of the music-loving brave in Dieulefit in summer, and that’s why my mom and I found ourselves in the town's Protestant temple last Sunday afternoon for a concert by the short-term choir appropriately called “chœur éphèmère” of the Appoggiature association, a 22-year-old organization we had frankly never heard of until last week, when I noticed inconspicuous flyers advertising the event on local message boards. Better late than never.
The concept is ingenious: Advanced voice students get together for three days in May and one week in July under the baton of choral director Eliette Roche to practice, practice, practice. They may not make it to Carnegie Hall, but they nevertheless get to perform twice in July, including in Dieulefit, and twice in October, so the pressure remains on.
Even better, this year, the intrepid maestra decided to embark choir and audience on a cool little adventure by putting together excerpts from a few Stabat Mater by various composers and create “a bright and colorful stained-glass window”, as she put it. And why not? The 13th-century Christian hymn to the agonizing Virgin Mary during the crucifixion of her son Jesus Christ has been a constant source of inspiration throughout the centuries, and we were curious to hear what would come out of this intriguing experience.
Well, it turned out that a very satisfying performance came out of it, and we were able to enjoy it even more than expected since we had been handed concert programs that contained the various stanzas in Latin and French, the names and nationalities of their composers, and their dates of publication. Much appreciated bonus: The different versions of some of those stanzas would be sung consecutively, which would allow for fascinating comparative studies.
The concert started and finished with 20th-century Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, who was paired with 20th-century Estonian composer Urmas Sisask for the “Stabat mater dolorosa” stanza at the beginning and with 18th-century Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi for the “Quando corpus morietur” stanza at the end. They were all attractive compositions sung by attractive voices, but if there had to be a winner, the Baroque maestro Pergolesi would probably be it.
Another exciting passage was the “Virgo virginum Praeclara” stanza, which was handled by the outstanding trio of 20th-century Welsh composer Karl Jenkins for the delightfully hot-blooded version, 19th-century Czech composer Dvorak for the gorgeously lyrical version, and a 16th-century Belgian composer Roland de Lassus for the slightly more subdued version. Other highlights included 20th-century French composer Francis Poulenc making two grand appearances that were both romantic and fiery as well as 18th-century Austrian composer Joseph Haydn making his own rather muscular, deeply emotional contributions.
Throughout the non-stop challenging patchwork composition, the choir members sang their hearts out, accomplished pianist Marielle Covell provided discreet but indispensable instrumental accompaniment, and maestra Roche succeeded in making sure that everything would work out flawlessly. I bet that Mary would have been extremely flattered by all the interest she arose and all the stunning music she inspired.
Once the performance was over and we were finally allowed to express our gratefulness, we applauded copiously. In return, we were served some more Stabat Mater that gloriously filled up the temple as an encore. But then again, one cannot get too much of a good thing.
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