Britten, Haydn and the Boston Cecilia
Presiding over the entire occasion was the generous spirit, intelligence and musicianship of Donald Teeters, one of Boston’s musical treasures. Because of him the music carried the evening, as indeed it always should. In this age of shallow glamor and glitzy personalities, it is a life-changing privilege to experience an evening so focused and full of integrity.
- Brian Jones’ review in The Boston Musical Intelligencer
It was, indeed, a privilege to participate in this concert. A result of months of rehearsals to achieve proper emphasis of the very different melodic lines of Haydn’s Missa brevis Sancti Joannes de Deo, Salve Regina and Britten’s Cantata Misericordium, this night truly was about the music. Haydn’s delicately simple harmonies and straightforward verse preluded to Britten’s haunting melodies and drama. The inclusion of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings gave us the link between the two, as it melded classical poetry with a haunting horn, set slightly out-of-tune as to mimic tenor Aaron Sheehan’s voice. Following intermission, Sheehan and our own Ron Williams returned to tell the tale of the Good Samaritan with the choir as the narrative chorus in the Cantata: written around the same time as one of my favorite Britten operas, Peter Grimes, I could feel the same anger, surprise, joy and remorse in this Biblical chorus as I could picture in the townspeople of that English fishing village.
In my two years singing in the Cecilia, I’d have to say this was by far my favorite concert. It was well curated, prepared, attended and sung! And it was such a pleasure to see the expressions of “wow, we did it!” in each other’s eyes as we left the stage that night.
