God, love and nature, along the roads of the 19th century

On Sunday, in the Paraninfo of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, a new artistic meeting was held, organized by the Argentine Chamber of Construction, Santa Fe Delegation, together with the Santa Fe Choral Company, directed by Pablo Villaverde Urrutia. After several editions under the Opera Gala format, this year the choice was a chamber concert that led as “Songs of love and longing”. The proposal, considered an “immersive experience” due to its characteristics, had the stellar visit of the tenor Gastón Oliveira Weckesser (one of last year’s guest voices) and the Santa Fe pianist Mario Spinosi, with a recognized career both in instrumental ensembles and in accompaniment of choirs and soloists.

The concert was organized around compositions from the 19th century by French, German and Italian composers, around the topics of romantic ideology: love (especially lost or unrequited love), pastoral themes (the reunion with nature) and a fresh and close religiosity. The proposal was expanded with projections of pictorial works in the windows that appear on the stage of the room, also shared in the hand program and its digital expansion through QR through.

“The walker above the sea of ​​clouds”, an oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich, presided over the cover of the print (“Friedrich! The only landscape painter who had had the power until then to remove all the faculties of my soul, the one who really created a new genre: the tragedy of the landscape”, affirmed the sculptor David d’Angers), and the projected paintings were reproduced in the virtual one, where the attendees were also able to access the translation of the lyrics, a key element for the enjoyment of these plays. A repertoire that suits the Company very well, in an evening more focused on the adjustment and elegance in capturing the beauty of the arrangement than in the vocal feats (which there were also). It is worth noting the growth of the choir, especially the male voices (and more specifically the bass strings) when carrying out the program.

The set began with “Cheres fleurs”, the third of the “Songs of the amaranth forests”, a proposal for a cappella choir by Jules Massenet on a text by Marc Legrand: “Dear flowers, do not be fooled / by the wind that brush with his wing! / He speaks too much of faithful love: / Faithful love speaks less”. Already with Spinosi on the keys, they tackled the lively “Oiseau des bois” (“Forest Bird”), the second in the same series by said French creators.

At that time, Oliveira Weckesser’s first admission took place, which showed that his epic voice, ideal for the heroic characters of the opera, also shines in small pieces but full of feeling and lyricism. Thus, he opened with Massenet’s “Élégie”, on a poem by Louis Gallet. Alongside Spinosi’s melancholy performance he unfurled this piece of lost love: “The days of laughter are gone! / As in my heart everything is dark and frozen! / Everything has withered! / Forever!”, rising in intensity to the fortissimo final.

Immediately afterwards it was the turn of a crossroads of eras: “Pleurez avec moi” (“Cry with me”), a work for unaccompanied choir by the French-Venezuelan-German Reynaldo Hahn (born in the 19th but with development in the 20th), with lyrics by the baroque poet Agrippa d’Aubigné, which unites the loss of love with a dialogue with nature.

The French cycle closed with three works by Gabriel Fauré. The first of these was “Madrigal”, based on a poem by Paul Armand Silvestre, which plays at separating male and female voices, like an episode in the “war of the sexes”: boys and girls take turns reproaching each other for ignoring the effects that they generate in their wake, and claim: “Love, love when we love you!”. The end is together with both in “The madness is the same: / that of loving those who flee from us / and fleeing from those who love us”. The composer builds the work as if it were a lyrical choral scene: we can compare this duel between boys and maidens with the “Mazurka de los parasoles” from the zarzuela “Luisa Fernanda” (although this one is much more picaresque).

Then the guest soloist sensitively tackled “Lydia”, by the same creator, based on a love poem by Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle. The closing of the Fauré cycle was with “Cantique de Jean Racine”, a work of a sacred nature based on a translation by the writer of the “Great French Century” of an ancient Latin hymn. The composer exploits here, after a long instrumental passage, the different possibilities of the choir, both in the harmonies of the tutti as in the melodic lines, to give it a spiritual and worldly character at the same time.

The musical journey through the German 19th century was primarily led by Johannes Brahms, starting with “Der Abend” (“The Night”), based on a poem by the romantic poet par excellence: Friedrich Schiller: Cupid, love, unites Tethys, sea ​​nymph, with Phoebus, solar god, at dusk. Oliveira addressed the “Minnelied” (“Love Song”), exponent of the lied Germanic, where the poet Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty exploits romantic love in a pastoral context: “Redr valleys and meadows bloom, / greener are the meadows, / where the fingers of my beloved / May flowers gather”. A work where the soloist was able to show off his expressive abilities with the restraint that the work asks for. This Brahms trilogy closed with Rhapsody Op. 79 No. 2 for solo piano, a tribute from the company to Spinosi, so that he shines as a soloist in the handling of climates and intensities.

The return to the sacred was with “Abendlied” (“Song of the evening”), a work by Josef Rheinberger, on a biblical text: “Stay with us, / because it will be night, / and the day comes to an end”. A cappella and full of religiosity, the author explores the counterpoint between the strings and the celestial harmonies. Spirituality continued with another of the most demanding works on the programme: “Jauchzet Dem Herrn, Alle Welt” (“Hail the Lord with joy, the whole earth”), by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. From a Jewish family and a Lutheran creed, the composer connects with the spirit of the Old Testament by setting Psalm 100 to music, employing an octet of soloists (which on the occasion included Judith Rippstein, Carolina Basualdo, Luciana Actis, Soledad Galetti, Martín Tuninetti, Lorenzo Zapata, Agustín Corvalán, José Ortiz, Juan F. Ellena and Geronimo Veltri).

The entry into the Italian repertoire was at the hands of Francesco Paolo Tosti, the king of Italian song at the turn of the century, whose works were performed by celebrities such as Enrico Caruso, Tito Schipa, Alfredo Kraus or Luciano Pavarotti. precisely the color spintoPavarottian, with the voice of Oliveira Weckesser, was the ideal vehicle for this melodic and cantabile: a terrain that the soloist trained at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón knows and enjoys, exploiting all its power in the final climax. In this case it was “L’alba separa dalla luce l’ ombra” (“Dawn separates light from shadow”), based on a poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

There began a triptych dedicated to Gioachino Rossini (the same one who invented meat cannelloni covered with bechamel and au gratin). It was with “L’ Asia in faville è volta” (“Asia has gone up in flames”), the “Quartetto pastorale” from act 2 of the opera “Aureliano in Palmira”, with a libretto by Felice Romani. There the choir puts itself in the shoes of shepherds awaiting freedom from the Roman siege (with more hope than pain in the music), with Spinosi taking charge with a grand performance of the complex piano reduction of the orchestral arrangement.

The guest tenor starred in another crossover of temporalities: “La promessa”, where Rossini musicalizes for voice and piano a text by Pietro Metastasio, the greatest librettist of baroque opera. “That I would ever be able to love you / no, don’t think so, dear eyes. / Not even playing would fool you”, says the text, which is usually performed by both tenors and sopranos, wrapped in an emotional and triumphant musicality. The closing of the triptych was with the sacred “Salve, o Virgine María” by the choir, religious but not solemn.

The end was a return to the French repertoire, with the “Sanctus” of the Solemn Mass of Saint Cecilia No. 5 by Charles Gounod: in it the soloist opens with particular praise the “God of hosts”, to give way to the choral mass, which shines in the female voices, to close on the last lines of the piano.

As an encore, before the applause of those present, the Santa Fe Choral Company repeated the “Cantique de Jean Racine”, before the last greeting until the next stop: this concert will be repeated in its entirety on Sunday, September 4 at the Kirchner Cultural Center of the City of Buenos Aires, in what will be a worthy embassy of Santa Fe music in the majestic “Ballena” symphony.