When word got out that Chanticleer was again seeking a music director, just a few years after Matthew Oltman took over for Joseph Jennings, many who love the singing of this prized male vocal ensemble expressed concern. Listening to Love Story, recorded live in September 2011 during two concerts at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, suggests that the ensemble remains in fine form under Interim Music Director Jace Wittig. The singing is as beautiful as ever, without the hooting that has at times marred the vocalism of Chanticleer’s male soprano and alto sections.
The program begins with one of Chanticleer’s strong suits, Renaissance vocal music. The composers, Sebastián de Vivanco and Claudin di Sermisy, are hardly household names, which makes the recording all the more valuable. It’s also wonderful to be able to enjoy music by Duruflé, Daniel-Lesur, and Richard Strauss. I’m a bit uncomfortable, though, with the assertion, in the collective-effort liner notes, that Strauss’ Drei Männerchöre (Three men’s choruses), composed in 1935, were “written after the height of his prowess as an operatic and symphonic composer.” Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings and the Four Last Songs may not technically be “operatic” or “symphonic,” but they are certainly masterpieces, and there’s plenty in the operas Daphne and Capriccio to love. Nonetheless, it’s great to hear Chanticleer in this music.
Listen To The Music
Vivanco (S): Veni, Dilecte MiArlen: Blues In The Night
A recording of Stephen Paulus’ first Chanticleer commission, from The Lotus Lovers (the liner notes don’t make clear whether the four pieces on the CD represent the entire work), plus a reprise recording of Sir John Tavener’s Village Wedding, balances the old with the new. Then the men break loose. Harold Arlen’s Blues in the Night, Duke Ellington’s Creole Love Call, Jule Styne’s Make Someone Happy, and Rodgers and Hart’s My Romance are simply delicious, and seem right at home with Freddie Mercury’s Somebody to Love. The men’s droll instrumental imitations in Harry Frommermann’s arrangement of the Ellington crack up the audience (I won’t give away what they do) and are not to be missed.
Quibbles about the liner notes extend to the track listings, which inexplicably omit timings. Nor is the recording itself ideal. Although Chanticleer’s concern for quality is evident in their choice of Five/Four Productions’ Thomas Moore and Michael Bishop for editing and mastering — that Five/Four team has won no fewer than 15 Grammy awards for its superb engineering for Telarc — the concerts were recorded by Jason O’Connell, not in high resolution, but in Red Book CD quality on what I suspect was less than state-of-the-art equipment. Those accustomed to hearing the ensemble live will miss some of the warmth and roundness of images that distinguish their presentations in venues as live as S.F. Conservatory’s Caroline M. Hume Concert Hall.
They will also miss some of boys’ bottom end. Chanticleer has long been known as an ensemble that places maximum emphasis on the sweetness of its upper voices — only one quarter of the ensemble’s members sing baritone and bass — but the richness of those lower voices present receives short shrift on this recording. Given that Telarc’s recordings were famed for their bass impact, this further suggests deficiencies in the source recordings themselves.