Chestnut Street Singers present 'For Cherishing'

A cooperative can be a wonderful thing, but only if it works for the benefit of its members.

Buried treasure

The space of Proclamation Presbyterian, a cavernous church on the outskirts of Bryn Mawr, does not have a lot of aural resonance. (Unlike historic St. George’s Church, where their March program, Where the Truth Lies, took advantage of a small resonant nave.)

In Bryn Mawr, the group’s Renaissance pieces sounded weak – with the sopranos straining in their efforts to reach treacherous high notes and lower voices hanging back to avoid overshadowing them. The result provided less support and harmonic grounding.

The “Songs of Farewell” by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) had more reasonable ranges and all parts sang freely under the subtle conducting of fellow singer Emily Sung. This unleashing of the lower voices made harmonic shifts and blends much richer – especially in “I know my soul hath power to know all things.”

John Tavener’s “Funeral Ikos,” a setting of text from the Orthodox Burial of Priests, was a great vehicle for this group, with a lovely introduction by the sopranos and altos and a striking duet of soprano and bass. The Singers’ excellent male voices are their gold mine and should be featured more.

Herbert Howells’s “Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing” was the program’s most moving selection. Singer/conductor Nathan Lofton led the choir through a wilderness of dissonance and a beautifully shaped arc of crescendo in the phrase “Guard him well, the dead I give thee.”

The line sounded like the wailing of a sobbing parent giving up a child to death. That is, unfortunately, what inspired Howells to pen this tribute. Although written in 1964 for a memorial for John F. Kennedy, he actually began this study of Prudentius’s fifth-century Latin text when his nine-year-old son Michael died of polio in 1935. He nursed both his grief and composition skills in the interim until they yielded this beautiful musical pearl.

Nodding off

The program’s last official piece was written by Robert Convery. His “Beautiful Land of Nod” sounded like a number from the Lawrence Welk show, which is surprising from a contemporary U.S. composer.

The encore, Richard Cumming’s arrangement of the folk song “Lonesome Valley,” was also less interesting than the more intricate pieces the group sang.

It is likely that the complex Renaissance pieces will sound much more resonant in the Chestnut Street Singers’ home church. The reverberation of a space tends to help singers hear each other and also magnifies the softer voices.

Nevertheless, the Chestnut Street Singers, even if they persist in staying leaderless, should have their composers and singers hear and vote on repertory. After all, the group should not strain to present songs -- like the Renaissance pieces here -- which just did not work for them.