VocalEssence – Philip Brunelle, artistic director

By William Randall Beard, Special to the Star Tribune

This year's installment of VocalEssence's annual "Welcome Christmas!" concerts is a bit of an oddity. The most extended music on the program had nothing much to do with Christmas. But there was enough interesting holiday fare, well presented, to satisfy the most ardent traditionalist.

The world premiere of Conrad Susa's "Love-Song Serenade" proved to be a major work by the San Francisco-based composer. Susa's music is well-known to VocalEssence audiences, and these settings of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were commissioned by the chorus.

Only the first poem, "Snow-Flakes," had even a tenuous connection to the season, and that was ultimately a poem about grief.

Accompanied by flute and harp, the settings have an antique feel, appropriate to the 19th-century texts. And yet they bear the hallmark of Susa's quirky sensibility. He admits to loving Longfellow for his simplicity and accessibility, traits that his cycle shares. The songs are by turns intense, heartfelt and rapturous.

New seasonal music was featured in the winners of the 10th-annual carol contest, both from California. This year's assignment was for carols for chorus and celesta. In "Sweet Was the Song," Matthew Brown created a haunting medievalesque carol dominated by the celesta. Stephen Main's "The Darkest Midnight in December" was an evocative setting of an 18th-century Irish poem that captured the mystery of the season.

In honor of the state's sesquicentennial in 2008, the program focused on carols from the nations of immigrants who originally settled in Minnesota. Included were familiar ones, like "Lo, How a Rose e're Blooming" (Germany), "Carol of the Bells" (Ukraine) and "I Saw Three Ships" (Britain).

But there were also national favorites from Poland, France, Norway and Sweden. Sung in uniquely individual arrangements, these were unfamiliar treasures.

A revival of Minneapolis composer Paul W. Lohman's setting of the text "What Child Is This?" proved worthy of comparison to the original tune, "Greensleeves." "In Silent Night" by Mitchell B. Southall, blended hymnody with a 40s pop sensibility.

Of special interest was "The Most Beautiful Rose," a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, hauntingly set by Norwegian Egil Hovland and movingly narrated by Katherine Ferrand, that showcased the women of the chorus.

Under director Philip Brunelle, the singers infused all the music with the joy and reverence of the season, whether singing a cappella or accompanied by full orchestra. The audience singing along with Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" brought the event to an appropriately festive close.

William Randall Beard is a Minneapolis writer.

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