Our Brookline Chorus concert on Saturday night surprised me with the size of the crowd -- who knew that around 250 people would come out on Saturday night to hear a community chorus sing Bach and Britten?
We performed the pieces (Bach Cantatas 149 and 19, and Britten's cantata, "The Company of Heaven") better than we had ever sung them before. Lisa Graham, our conductor, had moved us through the preceding rehearsals just right. She radiated energy. The soloists (Alexandra Lang, Ethan Bremner, Stephanie Kacoyanis, and Sepp Hammer) were each terrific. The basses rolled through the endless snaking sixteenth notes of the Bach more crisply than ever before.
And the Britten piece sounded almost shockingly modern, by contrast. And yet, its subject was angels and Satan, and St. Michael. As if to talk and sing of such things in the 20th century was somehow still possible. How can you not feel captivated by lines that refer to God with, "...He, Whom angels with veiled faces adore...."?
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