The Feast of St Nicholas is December 6, so it was fitting for Opus 7 to devote its Christmas performance largely to celebrate this third-century saint, the original of Santa Claus—though not the commercial-style Santa we know today. This one, the Bishop of Myra, was not only a loving, generous helper of the poor, the disenfranchised and the deprived, he was also a stern, moral, uncompromising Christian leader who thundered against those who went against the Word of God as he understood it.
Benjamin Britten composed his cantata, St. Nicolas, as his first of a dozen works intended for community groups to perform with a few professional soloists. Britten never wrote down to the performers in these works. St. Nicolas is harmonically sophisticated and musically expressive and tells a stirring tale complete with storm at sea, prison to bishopric, miracles, and the life and death of the saint.
However these Britten works can be a mammoth undertaking, and so is St. Nicolas, this one requiring several choirs, small orchestra and tenor soloist, plus professional level duo-pianists, percussion and timpani players, and solo violinist. Eric Crozier’s libretto narrates the story clearly with rich detail, including the resurrection of the pickled boys.
Opus 7 is highly commended for essaying this and achieving it with such success Sunday night at St. James Cathedral. Along with its own singers, the performers included the Cathedral-based adult group, Schola Cantorum, the Cathedral’s high school girls’ Jubilate, the O’Dea High School boys’ choir, plus Bothell’s Skyview Junior High treble choir, tenor Brendon Touhy, concertmaster and solo violinist Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi, duo-pianists Christina Siemens and Allan Dameron, and organist Paul Thornock. Also the St. Nicolas Chamber Orchestra, which included several students, along with professional players (and crucial anchors to the whole cantata) timpanist Matt Drumm, and percussionist Karen Sunmark. Britten even included two hymns to be sung by the entire congregation. All was ably conducted by Opus 7’s director Loren Ponten, who held it all together and kept it exciting throughout in a moving performance by all forces.
From the start, a steady drumbeat pervades the work. It feels like pilgrim steps, later those of the exhausted travelers trudging through the snow, at other times the evocation of thunder and storm at sea (with the lightning provided by violin streaks of sound and cymbal clashes), and rumbles of portent before Nicolas’ death.
Britten keeps it all lively with changes of mood like the steady introduction to Nicolas as an adult, back to his life as a child in a lively waltz time sung by the trebles, to the agitated hurried mood of his jail time, particularly in the piano part, while an impressive and stately fugue, almost Bach-like, comes as he is anointed bishop. The tenor solo is an expressive recitative almost throughout, beautifully realized by opera singer Touhy. Words were, amazingly, possible to hear at least most of the time, unusual in the Cathedral’s resonant acoustics.
The cantata took up the second half of the program, the first half being Opus 7 alone, performing contemporary cappella works for Advent by Stephen Paulus, Rudi Tas, Francis Poulenc, Robert Scandrett, and John Muehleisen. None of them easy to sing; they are, except for the Poulenc, also works which don’t speak immediately to the listener without prolonged hearing and familiarity. It’s possible to appreciate them intellectually but less so to feel them emotionally. Tas’s Magnificat, with its high solo soprano sung by Lisa Ponten and its three singers as mini-chorus along with the full chorus, was the most appealing.
It’s to be hoped that Opus 7 or other forces will present some of Britten’s other community works , such as Noye’s Fludde, intended for a cathedral performance with children. They are worth the effort.