By Anne W. Semmes
The town of Greenwich is in for a special treat Saturday week with a concert crowned as “The Marvelous and Mystical” presented by the Greenwich Choral Society (GCS) at Christ Church on March 28 at 4 p.m. Celebrating 100 years of hundreds of performances, the GCS is featuring two classics, by Benjamin Britten and by Leonard Bernstein, with a newly commissioned piece by Greenwich composer Rob Mathes, with all three works inspired by great poetry and biblical scriptures.
Up first Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” is taken from an 18th century poem by Christopher Smart, then Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” and lastly Mathes’s “Ah, Love, Let Us Sing” inspired by poet Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” composed in honor of the Choral Society’s centennial as a veritable “love song to choral music.”
With a full orchestra, its choir of 120 will include 40 Vassar College Choristers of boys and girls brought by Vassar associate professor of music and GCS Music Director and Conductor Dr. Christine Howlett. “The Vassar College Choir has never performed with the Choral Society,” told Howlett. She described it as a 55-member SATB or soprano, alto, tenor, base choir. Her 27-member Vassar College Treble Choir performed with GCS two years ago.
Howlett has performed the Benjamin Britten piece numerous times and the Bernstein piece once before at Vassar. But she learned only recently, “Both pieces were commissioned by the same man, Walter Hussey,” a British priest. “A conductor’s job is to highlight and bring to the fore new music,” she noted, “And that’s what Walter Hussey was doing with these pieces with Britten in the 40s and Bernstein in the 60s. And we’re doing the same with Rob – with GCS [board member] Anne Marie and husband Jim Hynes supporting his commission. Rob has created this wonderful new piece – so high energy and memorable. It’s at the very end.”
Howlett would learn that Mathes’s daughter Emma had attended Vassar and sung in the Vassar Women’s Chorus. “That’s how I came to know Rob and I can’t tell you what a kind and generous human he is… He’s so excited about this project and he’s doing all sorts of unbelievable things with famous people. He seems to be putting us on the same plane as all of his other work – and that feels very special.”
The poetical inspirations of the program selections
But back to Howlett’s program selection of Britten and Bernstein. “The Britten was originally written for the organ, and the text is by poet, Christopher Smart. He lived during the 1700s.” she told. “But he was in an insane asylum hospital when he wrote this piece – it’s from a long poem he wrote, ‘Jubilate Agno.’ It’s like everything in the world is there to glorify God. So, there’s a movement about the cat Jeffrey, and the mouse… There’s one about flowers that the tenor sings…it’s quirky, funny, then suddenly, you’re presented with the most moving dramatic passages.”
“But what’s interesting,” told Howlett, “is that soon after it was performed, Britten had it orchestrated by friend Imogen Holst to perform in concert halls. People don’t perform this orchestration and maybe it’s the expense. I didn’t know this existed, and neither did pianist and organist Johnny Vaughn. And Rob’s orchestration is based on this orchestration.”
Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” she described as “one of the great pieces in the world.” And, curiously, commissioner Walter Hussey had suggested to Bernstein, “I think people would really like a little bit of ‘West Side Story’ in whatever you write,” she told. “So, there’s a section in the middle movement – this beautiful, very famous treble solo that’s soft and gorgeous and very moving that’s actually a discarded section of music from ‘West Side Story.’ Isn’t that cool?”
With Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” to debut in the Chichester Cathedral, Bernstein would bravely request to perform it first in New York “to get all the kinks out,” said Hewlett. “It premiered in Philharmonic Hall in New York… and one of our Vassar choir basses Allan Ruchman [now a GHS chorister] sang in that premiere! Isn’t that fun? What are the chances that we had someone in that premiere from the 1960s!”
Rob Mathes history with Greenwich Choral Society
And what greater connection could the Greenwich Choral Society have but composer Rob Mathes. With both his parents’ musicians, Joan (clarinetist) and George Mathes (bassoonist), playing in the Greenwich Philharmonia (later Symphony), Mathes shared, “Whenever there was a Greenwich Choral Society concert in the ‘70s and ‘80s, my parents were playing in the orchestra. And they would bring us [kids] along, and I saw all those Choral Society concerts, the ‘Mozart Requiem,’ the ‘Brahms Requiem,’ the ‘Verde Requiem.’
“And so, the Choral Society was a hallowed institution in our house,” continued Mathes, “because the choirs always sounded really good… And choir music was always something I had such a strong feeling about, partially because of the Choral Society, but also because of the great choral director at Greenwich High School, Ray Malone.”
But “I was such a band geek,” Mathes added, “a jazz ensemble guy I didn’t sing in the choirs a lot… I just wanted to play the guitar and the piano, and I was following Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis… I had my rock band, but I loved Ray Malone and the choirs.” Then came that episode at Berkeley College of Music. “They gave me the wrong tape in the reel library. I asked for John Coltrane, and they gave me Gustav Mahler, and my life was completely changed.
Rob Mathes’s compositions for Greenwich Choral Society
“Mahler’s music has a lot of choral work and Mahler used choirs in those symphonies beautifully. And my mom taught Bach when I was growing up.” He would also study with Greenwich classical composer Myron Fink, “And so my choral writing got better.”
Long story short, “Richard Vogt, a legendary presence in my family’s life… one of the greatest directors in the history of the Choral Society, commissioned me to write a piece for the Choral Society for the Christmas program in 1991. It was called ‘Bells, Bells, Bells,’ a big piece that I am still proud of… They ended up performing it again about 10 years after that.”
Then, “On the road with Vanessa Williams for a while,” Mathes would be commissioned again by Anne Marie Hynes “to write a piece in honor of her husband Jim Hynes for the GCA’s 30th anniversary called ‘Always and Forever More.’ So, I’ve had a history of writing for this hallowed institution that I grew up around. And when I got the call to do a piece for the hundredth anniversary of the Greenwich Choral Society, I jumped at the chance – I’m thrilled to do it.”
The title of Mathes’s piece is “Ah, Love, Let Us Sing” taken from the last stanza of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach.” “I love that poem so much,” he said, “I’ve memorized it. It’s a big 12-minute romp. It’s almost like a hymn. It begins and ends with that hymn and that sentiment, ‘Ah, love, let us sing to one another for the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams.’ So, in this terrible time of political infighting and strife and however you lean politically, I think anyone in the country would have to admit, except the most virulent Trump supporter, that this is certainly a time of dis-ease.”
Mathes would add a surprising caveat. In the midsection of his piece, “There is a 5/4 famous time signature by Dave Brubeck… So, in this concert, you’re going to have the hallowed legendary sound of the Greenwich Choral Society, two of my favorite pieces, Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms’ and Britten’s ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ with these young, beautiful kids from Vassar, and it’s just going to be a festival of love. I can’t wait.”
