Music series wraps up with an interfaith celebration of song

By Cindy Mindell

WEST HARTFORD – Half the fun of organizing a classical music program is choosing pieces that somehow relate to one another. The seasoned listener can join in the game, connecting the dots between composers or motifs or instruments to discover the director’s underlying rationale. The novice can learn how music ties together disparate periods, composers, and trends.

In “Symphony of Psalms” choral and orchestral ecumenical concert, the last program in this year’s Beth El Music and Arts (BEMA) season at the West Hartford synagogue, Cantor Joseph Ness interweaves several selections by drawing on the historical and stylistic connections.

The program first coalesced around “The Symphony of Psalms,” a three-movement choral symphony by Igor Stravinsky, commissioned in 1931 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

“We’d done this great 20th-century choral work of Stravinsky 10 or 12 years ago and I wanted the chance to do it again,” says Ness, who is artistic director at Beth El. “It’s a very moving piece – not heartfelt, but soul-felt.”

Mark Singleton

The piece requires professional singers to help pull it off. Ness and Beth El choir member Elisa Wagner approached the Hartford-based Voce, led by co-founder and artistic director Mark Singleton.

“I was thrilled because I’m in love with ‘Symphony of Psalms,’” says Singleton, who decided to include the Chancel Choir of Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford, which he also directs.

The Symphony of Psalms is in the canon of all orchestral repertoires, Singleton explains, on the pure merit of its art. “The music is so compelling and beautifully written, some critics have even called it genius,” he says. “Audiences hearing and experiencing it for the first time in 1930 found it so forward-thinking. Today, it still feels like a modern piece written in the last decade.”

In fact, Singleton says, the composition may be as important to 20th-century music as Stravinsky’s other landmark piece, “The Rite of Spring,” whose avant-garde nature caused near-riots when it debuted in 1913.

Cantor Joseph Ness

Stravinsky wrote the piece during his neo-classical period, looking back on composers such as Mozart and Mendelssohn. So Ness includes them in the program as well: Piano Concerto No. 10 by the former, Psalm 42 by the latter. While Ness opens the concert with Stravinsky and fellow Russian composer Tchaikovsky, it is only a coincidence that the Mozart concerto features two Russian pianists; more salient is the presence of two pianos in the Stravinsky piece. The program concludes with Psalm 150 by Louis Lewandowsky, the first Jew admitted to the music conservatory in Berlin, helped in the process by Mendelssohn himself.

The choirs and Beth El orchestra will perform two additional pieces – Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland and Psalm 121, an original composition by Ness. The Copland connection has a lot to do with the orchestration of Fanfare and Symphony of Psalms.

Ness and Singleton agree that the psalms are a perfect ecumenical text for choirs from different religious backgrounds. “What makes this concert special is that both Beth El and Immanuel share in the psalms; we all believe what we’re singing,” Singleton says.

For Ness, Symphony of Psalms has a personal pull, especially the third movement, an arrangement of Psalm 150. “There are many settings of this psalm, which talks about praising God with cymbals and drums and harp,” Ness says. “But Stravinsky does something different: he starts with a soft chord and the chorus sings unbearably beautiful harmonies. It affirms my Jewishness. It’s an absolute statement of religion to me.”

“Symphony of Psalms Choral and Orchestral Ecumenical Concert” will be performed on Sunday, June 1, 7 p.m., (pre-concert dinner at 5:30 p.m.)  at Beth El Temple, 2626 Albany Ave., West Hartford. For ticket and other information call (860) 676-9878  or email Dr.EyesJoe@gmail.com.

Comments? email cindym@jewishledger.com.