MUSIC

-- Tom Huizenga

Cantate Chamber Singers

One of the astonishing things about the concert presented Saturday at St. John's Episcopal Church by the Cantate Chamber Singers was how powerfully the spare forces and controlled idiom of Heinrich Schuetz's telling of the Resurrection story held their ground against the vivid color and passion of James MacMillan's "Seven Last Words From the Cross."

MacMillan's cantata, scored for chorus and strings, is fluidly tonal (sometimes polytonal), intensely dramatic and poetic in the best possible sense. There is never a hint that he is milking these final words for anything but their message. The singers and the instruments are frequently set at odds with each other, seeming to play the roles of Christ on the cross and of the forces that made all this happen. But the roles are sometimes reversed. At the end is just the spirit in the quieter and quieter high string seconds.

Schuetz, on the other hand, true to German baroque forthrightness, set the story (taken from pieces of the various Gospels) as a narration. Titled "Account of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ," it features the Evangelist telling the story in recitative and the various players in the events -- Jesus, Mary Magdalene, angels and priests (these set as duos or trios) -- acting out the drama in melodic bits of harmony. The power, here, is in the very simplicity of its telling.

Conductor Gisele Becker and her chorus handled the two very different idioms well. The chorus, which sounded secure and well-balanced in the MacMillan, never oversang or let pitches sag. Tenor Philip Cave sang the role of the Evangelist with splendid attention to the inflections of the text, if not always to its consonants. Countertenor John Boll and Tenor Stephen White were an effectively matched duo as Jesus, and the orchestra and the continuo were terrific.

-- Joan Reinthaler

Matthias Soucek

The elegant Viennese pianist Matthias Soucek returned to the Austrian Embassy Saturday night for his first Washington recital in two seasons. He played sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert, two Schubert impromptus, and three medleys: Liszt's ninth Hungarian Rhapsody, "Carnival at Pest"; a piece by the late pianist Friedrich Gulda called "Homage to Vienna"; and the program opener, Soucek's own "Homage to Mozart."

The latter began and ended with quotations from Mozart's variations on the theme known in English as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and moved through a succession of excerpts from several piano sonatas, seamlessly connected with characteristically Mozartean passage work. Soucek's obvious affinity for this music, not to mention his masterful grasp of late-18th-century keyboard style, raises the question: Why program a potpourri pieced together from favorite "Mozart moments" in lieu of a straight-forward presentation of one of the sonatas or great variation sets?

Soucek's viscerally exciting performance of Beethoven's "Waldstein" emphasized the score's vivid contrasts and rhythmic urgency. The Liszt rhapsody, perhaps garnished with more Viennese whipped cream than sharp Hungarian paprika, nevertheless showcased Soucek's ability to draw a spectrum of colors from the piano. In Schubert's Sonata in A, D. 664, the highlight of the evening, Soucek's beautiful singing style and unmannered delivery were captivating.

-- Patrick Rucker