Westminster Orchestra Offers Diverse Program

Westminster Chamber Orchestra Saturday, Oct. 14, Westminster Congregational Church

The Westminster Chamber Orchestra followed its February debut with an ambitious pair of performances Friday and Saturday nights.

Orchestra members from the Spokane Symphony, supplemented by harpist Leslie Stratton Norris, the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus and singers Susan Windham, Cheryl SheehanMcDaniel and Robin Campbell, performed mostly shorter works by composers ranging from Johann Michael Haydn to Sir Edward Elgar to James Q. Mulholland.

Despite the diversity, the program was unified by the implicit theme of individual religious expression.

In addition to Haydn’s Magnificat from the Vespers for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, three of the modern pieces on the program originally sprang from the personal spiritual experiences of their composers.

On the eve of World War I, Edward Elgar composed a musical meditation on hope, titled “Sospiri.” It is a beautifully evocative work.

Elgar’s characteristic melody writing - dominated by wide leaps and descending motion - works in this piece like the feeling of a sigh. Its light texture and gorgeous string-instrument sound are what the Westminster players and their performance space are best suited to.

The orchestra’s performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus” also had beautiful moments, though it was not as successful overall. The variations featuring the full orchestra in unison tended to be muddy-sounding, a recurring problem for the group.

But there were also elegant moments in the variations featuring soloists: concertmaster Tracy Dunlop, harpist Stratton Norris and cellist John Marshall.

The highlights of this concert were the two works featuring the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus. This justly famous group is based at Westminster Congregational Church.

The kids are irresistible, even before they voice a note. And under the expert direction of Tamara Schupman, their singing is as precise, disciplined and enrapturing as the best professional choruses.

With sopranos Windham and Sheehan-McDaniel and mezzosoprano Campbell as soloists, the chorus and orchestra performed Haydn’s Magnificat in F Major. This section from Johann Michael Haydn’s composition of the complete text of the Vespers left me wishing for much more.

I felt the same way after the last piece on the program, a prayerful contemporary song by James Mulholland titled “God Bless You.” Though not a terrifically interesting piece in itself it was, simply, beautifully sung.

By contrast, the concert’s first two pieces, a pair of symphonies for string orchestra composed by a teenage Felix Mendelssohn, were disappointing.

The orchestra’s playing of the B minor Sinfonia, No. 10, particularly highlighted the difficulties this relatively new musical ensemble still has to overcome. The work has numerous unison passages and a fairly narrow tonal range.

Unless it is played with absolute precision and ferocious attention to the balance among the different string sections, it will come out like mud. And on Saturday, it was mud.

I felt at times as if I were listening to a string orchestra playing underwater, three blocks away.

The Westminster Chamber orchestra, composed of some of the finest musicians in our area and joined by standout performers like the Children’s Chorus, should be a great addition to Spokane’s musical life. But without careful rehearsing and programming attentive to the acoustic qualities of the Westminster sanctuary, it will remain less than the sum of its parts.