Karren LaLonde Alenier

The Folger Consort of Washington, DC can be depended on to maintain tradition while presenting something new. Often what is new, focuses on guest performers and insightful interpretations of old music. In its February 2, 2018, concert program “A Branch of Freshest Green: Music of Hildegard von Bingen” at the monumental Washington National Cathedral, the Consort stepped forward boldly to incorporate performances of new work by women composers inspired by old music.

While the Hildegard selections such as “Symphonia: O virga ac diadema,” “Kyrie,” and “Conductus: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem” provided angelic balm in our all too turbulent world, the instrumental sound was subdued and this reviewer found herself longing for the intimacy of the Folger Theatre where the Consort usually presents their concerts. Of course, the large audience in attendance in the Cathedral, which has a capacity for seating 4,000, could never be accommodated downtown in the 260-seat Folger Theatre, a venue that is housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

What stood out were vocal selections, particularly, the contemporary compositions comprising Susan Botti’s Bird Songs and Shulamit Ran’s abridged version of Credo/Ani ma’amin. The Trio EOS (sopranos Michele Kennedy and Jessica Beebe and mezzo-soprano Maren Montalbano) performed four of the seven Bird Songs based on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore’s Stray Birds using a dramatic variety of percussive instruments such as prayer bowls, nested mini-gongs, hanging key chimes, and drums.

When Bird Songs premiered in 2016, the singer used what Botti called her “nest of percussion,” a collections of instruments that the composer made or collected in her travels. Botti instructs the singers, “the percussion instruments used should match the tunings of the original instruments as closely as possible.”

Bird Songs “Silence,” “Listen, my heart,” and “Roots” were sung interspersed with instrumental compositions by anonymous old music composers. The fourth Bird Song was followed by Hildegard’s “O quam mirabilis.” What this order of programming accomplished was to show the influence of old music on a contemporary body of work. The dominant difference between the old and the new was the new composition’s use of dissonance. Judging on the lack of enthusiastic applause and a short interview with a fan of the Folger Consort, this reviewer believes that the contemporary compositions took many audience members by surprise—they had expected, given the title of the concert, that the Consort would be presenting music only by Hildegard.

Of course, that is why pre-concert talks such as the panel of Consort founders Christopher Kendall and Robert Eisenstein along with composer Susan Botti as moderated by Robert Aubrey Davis prove useful in not only educating audience on the featured concert but also setting expectations. This reviewer found Bird Songs vibrantly alive (kudos to Trio Eos) in contrast to the subtleties of the instrumental music which were mostly lost in the cavernous venue.

The second half of the concert emphasized voices not yet featured. Joining Trio Eos for Credo/Ani ma’amin werebass baritone Steven Combs and tenor Oliver Mercer. Ran’s Credo, drawn from the traditional text of the Latin Mass and from the prosaic Hebrew “I believe” text spoken by Maimonides which documented the thirteen-point Jewish principles of Faith, represented the first time in the “Branch of Freshest Green” program where male voices entered the concert. Other compositions such as “O viridissima” and “Song of the Flood” changed the tonal voice from sacred to folk music. Two guests joined Consort principals Eisenstein and Kendall for this program—Shira Kammen on medieval fiddle and Christa Patton on harp, recorder, and bagpipe. Medieval fiddle (also known as the vielle) lends itself to dance music and was associated with troubadours who traveled town to town entertaining ordinary people. Bagpipe is also associated with folk music.

The next Folger Consort program Il Lauro Verde: The Blossoming of the Italian Baroque is scheduled for February 23-25 in the Folger Theatre.