Pittsburgh Camerata
Recounting the Nativity
St. Andrews Episcopal Church
This was the one concert on my list that I anticipated most. I’ve had the pleasure to sing with the Pittsburgh Camerata and was their assistant conductor for a year back in the early 1990’s. It was the most polished ensemble I ever had the opportunity to conduct and I had a blast.
The Camerata was a semi-professional choir back then; it is a fully paid, professional ensemble now and their sound yesterday evening was wonderful. For me, the litmus test for a choir’s sound, professional or not, is the tenor section – not because I sing tenor, but because fine tenors are typically in short supply and if a choir has a weakness, the tenor section is usually where it shows first. The Camerata’s tenors are first-rate. Their sound was always under control, well supported, with a warm tone and in balance with the rest of the choir. The Camerata’s soprano sound was just as polished, clear and lyrical with never a hint of excess vibrato. It’s easier to “hide” less professional voices in alto and bass sections, but here, again, the choir’s sound was focused and well defined. Overall, the Pittsburgh Camerata certainly lives up to the label professional choir.
When a concert is titled Reinventing the Renaissance or Romancing the Baroque one expects heavy doses of Renaissance or Baroque music on the program. I know the Pittsburgh Camerata is somewhat of a niche group, specializing in music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. They don’t live in those areas exclusively, but they do place significant emphasis on performing music from those periods with skill and accuracy. Still, at last night’s concert, Recounting the Nativity, I didn’t expect the selections to be so heavily weighted south of the 18th century. It’s not that the Camerata didn’t perform those pieces admirably; the soloists, especially, did fine work. Aficionados of early music may have been perfectly happy with the program, but early music is an acquired taste, and for me, a little of it goes a long way. To my ears, the Camerata sounded best on the contemporary works. The pieces by Joel Martinson, John Rutter, Robert Schultz and Paul Ayres are lovely works that sounded transparent and well balanced, warm and velvety. The Camerata’s sound was not lacking on the earlier music, the contemporary works simply were more flattering to the choir, allowing their sound’s warmth and fullness to effortlessly fill the space and live awhile. Those were the sounds I had hoped to hear and the sounds I treasured the most.
Two last notes on the program: for approximately half of the selections, director Rebecca Rollet performed as an instrumentalist, as well as conductor. I’ve never been convinced that a conductor performing dual functions can be as effective as one who is able to devote their complete attention to the choir. Not that I think it contributed to the one hiccup of the evening between choir, director and organist during Willkommen, süsser Brautigam, and I’d surmise that the multitasking was Mrs. Rollett’s choice, but I would have preferred the Camerata hire another instrumentalist, relieving her of that responsibility. Lastly, the selection, In the Shadows was perhaps the most striking and lovely of the evening, but unless I’m missing something very obvious, I don’t understand why it belonged on a December Nativity concert.