by Winslow Rogers

The 60-voice Prague Philharmonic Choir gave an outstanding program at the Harris Center for the Performing Arts (Three Stages) in Folsom on Monday evening. Attendance was light on a weekday evening, which means that many choral music buffs missed a memorable musical experience. I went away glowing with pleasure after their rousing program.

The Sacramento Choral Calendar normally doesn't review touring groups, and I was prepared to spend a pleasant evening with my wife simply reliving our recent trip to Prague. However, the concert became a Sacramento Valley Choral Coalition event, and an account of the evening is in order. There's information about the Coalition's part in the event at the end of the review.

The Prague Philharmonic Choir was founded in 1935. It was affiliated with the Czech Philharmonic between 1951 and 1990, but it is now an independent group. They have an impressive worldwide resume of concerts and recordings. Lukáš Vasilek, who conducted at the Harris Center, has been their principal conductor since 2007. Their current 3-week tour of Mexico and the United States has overlapped that of the Czech Philharmonic. They performed Dvořák's choral masterpiece Stabat Mater together in Berkeley on November 9, and each group has been giving its own concerts, as well.  Monday night’s concert was the Choir’s final concert before flying home to Prague.

The first half of this concert consisted of a generous selection of Dvořák's lighter, folk-influenced choral music. (Click here to open a link to the concert program.)  I hadn't heard these charming songs before, and don't expect to again. I wish that some of them were in the repertoire of American choruses. On the other hand, an American chorus couldn't provide the idiomatic Czech sound and spirit of the Prague Philharmonic Choir.

From its first notes the choir displayed a full, rich sound, kept under control by the conductor but filling the theater when called for. The songs increased in complexity as the program progressed, with longer and more elaborate arrangements. The full chorus a cappella sound was thrilling after the smaller-scale works for the women alone and the men alone. The basses showed a powerful lower range. Among lovely details, there was a hilarious repeated effect in "The Rye Field," one of the Nature's Realm songs, in which a phrase sung by one part (tenors or basses, for example) ends with a dying-echo effect that is interrupted by the full choir beginning the next phrase. My wife said she was about to nudge me for chuckling out loud.

Conductor Lukáš Vasilek, young, jaunty, and flamboyant, had infectious energy. A slight man standing alone on the stage, with no podium, music score, or baton, he was a visual contrast with the large chorus in front of him. Like a dancer in his quick and expressive movements, he was eye-catching, but never distracted me from the singing. Indeed, he greatly enhanced my enjoyment of this delicious music.

The audience, like all serious concert audiences these days, was extremely well mannered, so much so that you could hear a pin drop between the Dvořák songs. This seemed unfortunate to me. In Dvořák's day the audience would have been actively participating, whistling and stomping between numbers, singing along, and demanding encores of the pieces they liked most, like the song with the dying-echo effect that cracked me up. In this concert, unfortunately, these charming songs sometimes seemed like museum miniatures in cases.

The second half of the program was devoted to a familiar work, Brahms's Liebeslieder Waltzes (Love Song Waltzes), Op. 52. It is a sequence of eighteen short choral songs about love, two of them for men only, two for women only, solo numbers for an alto and a tenor, and a piano four-hand accompaniment. This work has been performed by groups of all sizes, from a vocal quartet on up. The large Prague Philharmonic Choir didn't have the delicacy of a small ensemble, but they could achieve unexpected and powerful effects – more varied than I would have expected. Both of the soloists sang well, and I found the alto solo especially moving. She sings of a boy who no longer loves her: "No matter how close I stand before his eyes, neither his eyes nor his heart notices."

If not done well, the Liebeslieder Waltzes can overwhelm you like a whole plate of Viennese delicacies. The choir made these waltzes refreshing, not cloying.

The group performed two memorable encores. First, a dozen singers moved to one side of the stage for a contemporary double-choir arrangement of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen ("Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming") by Jan Sandstrȍm. The larger choir laid down a pillow of ethereal, dissonant, wordless chords, and the small group floated the familiar melody above them. It was stunning, and received the most enthusiastic ovation of the evening. The choir then regrouped into two choirs of equal size to perform a more traditional arrangement of In Dulci Jubilo. Their Christmas concert must be a killer.

One thing that interfered with my enjoyment of the concert was that in the two-piano works the piano accompaniment sometimes interfered with the choral sound. The four-hand accompaniments, especially in the Brahms, are thick, and need to be carefully balanced with the singers. The imbalance may have been a peculiarity of the sound setup of the theater, or a miscalculation by the director.  

I always comment in my reviews about the quality of the printed program, in my never-ending quest for clear, readable programs that treat audience members with respect. As you can see from the attached link, this one was wonderful, an informative double-sided sheet inserted into the full Harris Center fall program book. 

The Sacramento Valley Choral Coalition took the appearance of the Prague Philharmonic Choir as an opportunity to gather singers from Sacramento choruses to a post-concert reception, to which the theater audience was also invited. There was a full snack table on the Harris Center's upper-level meeting space. Everybody had a chance to meet the singers and make them feel welcome, and to socialize with one another. The Coalition plans another post-concert reception at the Harris Center for the St. Joseph Gospel Choir from Senegal, who are performing on Monday, November 17.

There is a growing collaboration between the Coalition and the Harris Center. In his pre-concert announcement Dave Pier, Executive Director of the Harris Center, highlighted the many choral groups that appear at the Center, both local and on-tour groups. The Center will again host the annual SacSings! festival next June.

At the reception I asked Dr. Robert M. Johnson for his reaction to the concert. Bob directs the Capella Antiqua ensemble, and led them in an all-Brahms concert last spring, including the Liebeslieder Waltzes. They performed excerpts from this concert at SacSings! this past June. With respect to the Prague Philharmonic Choir, he said that "in the various aspects of choral singing – articulation, balance, intonation, dynamics, and so forth – they Czeched all the boxes!" 

Winslow Rogers is a retired English professor, university administrator, and guest artist series producer. Now a singer and board member of the Grass Valley Male Voice Choir, Win welcomes the opportunity to connect with the Sacramento choral scene through reviews in the Sacramento Choral Calendar and participation in the SacSings! festival.