Cantata's chorus best of concert

One of the intriguing things about going to hear the Cantata Singers is that you get to know a lot of out-of-the-way venues. Like lightning, Ottawa's favourite choral group rarely comes twice to the same spot.

St. Charles Church on Beechwood was the venue for the Cantata Singers' all-Bach concert Sunday evening. The program featured, along with the chorus and three soloists, a small body of instrumentalists calling themselves the Cantata Ensemble.

A string quartet drawn from that ensemble opened the program with a five-movement "overture" by Wilhelm Friedermann Bach, Johann Sebastian's oldest and favourite son.

The four musicians made a good case for this obscure but attractive score with its odd mix of north German baroque severity and gallant modernisms.

Although the Cantata Ensemble is a modern instrument group, it has something of a historically informed sound thanks to first violinist Kevin James's expert use of a baroque bow. Such bows with their low tension do not so much alter the timbre of the instrument as provide for a gentler attack and a different quality of phrasing.

The meat of the program consisted of two cantatas by J.S. Bach and one of his orchestral suites. Himmelskonig, sei wilkommen, BWV 182 (Welcome, King of Heaven) is one of those attractive cantatas popularity has eluded only because there are dozens of equally attractive cantatas in the Bach canon.

The instrumental ensemble sounded less than focused in the sinfonia that opens the work, but things came together quickly with the entry of the Cantata Singers in the second movement. The choir sang with its usual combination of vigour, balance and good tuning.

But the bulk of the cantata is given, not to the choir, but to three vocal soloists, none of whom was more than adequate in Sunday's performance. And conductor Laurence Ewashko's tempos were not always ideal in the solo numbers. The alto aria in particular was uncomfortably draggy.

Had it not been for the three choral numbers, the performance would have been a net failure. Ewashko opened the second half of the program conducting Bach's Suite for orchestra no. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067. It's the most famous of the four orchestral suites and includes a great deal of solo flute work, brilliantly rendered in this performance by Jeffrey Ray Miller. The playing was good all around and the interpretation sound and idiomatic.

Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4 is one of the greatest of Bach's cantatas and one of the most perplexing. Despite a text that is mostly involved with exulting in victory over death, and despite the fact that the work was intended to be sung on Easter morning, the music is dour and intense, reflecting its title (Christ lay in the bonds of death) rather than the textual message.

For all that, Ewashko and his forces managed to project an affirmative feeling through the severities of the score.

Richard Todd is a freelance writer.