Elmer Iseler Singers

Mon. Oct 27 - 6:57 AM

The Elmer Iseler Singers are something of a miracle. So in another way is
bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly.

Given a profound, substantial and imaginative new composition to perform
under the luminous direction of Lydia Adams in the haloed resonance of All
Saints Cathedral in Halifax, itself no stranger to miracles, and you would
be right to expect something extraordinary to happen.

Peter Togni's Lamentations of Jeremiah, a richly elaborated work in five
movements lasting about an hour, is a brooding vision of disaster, of the
destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 600 BC and ending with a final prayer
for the city's recovery.

The beauty of the work is not to be found in its dramatic design as there is
some finessing of the form. Settings of the prophet Jeremiah's laments are
sung in Catholic services on Holy Thursday as Tenebrae, a Latin word which
means shadows or darkness, symbolized by the extinguishing of candles.

But Togni's piece is a bass clarinet concerto as well as a choral setting of
a traditional text. These two purposes never quite fuse. Had we had side by
side English and Latin translations, rather than English words only while
the choir sang in Latin, we might have been better alerted to the ways in
which word setting and solo clarinet obbligato reinforce each other.

The Iseler Singers demonstrated at the top of the show just why they are one
of the world's great chamber choirs. They sing with a single intent. Their
tone is luminous, thrillingly tuned, blended into bloom like the colour of a
hybrid rose.

They first sang Eric Whitacre's extraordinary setting of King David's grief
on hearing the news that his son Absalom had been slain. Tenor soloist
Michael McBride, like all the other tonal devices Whitacre so skilfully
integrates into the service of the text, is not a featured solo but a solo
colour, and given McBride's honeyed effortlessness, so beautiful you held
your breath.

The choir's mastery of dynamics, attacks and the other paraphernalia of
musical expression gives them the broadest possible palette of hue and
colour from the palest tint to the most richly saturated hue.

This mastery extended further in Togni's use of choral ensemble, in his use
of tone-clusters and astonishingly long pedal points, such as the extended
hum at the end of the piece, which seemed to be coming not from the group of
20 or so singers, but seeping from the mortar between the cathedral's
stones.


Reilly's mastery of extended bass clarinet techniques is a wonder. There
cannot be many with his kind of total musical control over the legendary
clarinet legato. But he not only brings a sound in from complete silence and
just as seamlessly dissolves it like the creep of dawn or twilight's
edgeless ending, he can make it suddenly burst into an array of
multi-phonics like a fireworks fountain.

He can keep a sound going seemingly forever with his complete control over
the difficult technique known as circular breathing, where a wind player
collects air in his cheeks to keep the sound going while he takes a quick
snort of air.

His virtuosity on the reed is another of his extraordinary musical
abilities. He knows and explores the geography of this square inch or two of
cane like a map-maker filling in the detail of lakes and ponds and tiny
brooks and outcroppings of rock. And all of it with an array of sounds, many
of which you have only heard in fleeting miniatures, the rustling of the
wind in the leaves, the echo of a tune in the telephone wires, the soft
scrape of rubber tires on pavements, the rhythmic click of heels, the
silence of a hurricane's eye.

As you can see, Reilly's music is indescribable. Words do it no justice
whatsoever. And yet, like the subtleties of the choir, like the
extraordinary effects of Togni's choice of voicings, it is entirely clear
and unambiguous to the ear. Which is why we go to concerts.

Togni's Lamentations of Jeremiah, as performed by the Elmer Iseler Singers
under Lydia Adams and bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly, was performed at
Antigonish's St. Ninian's Cathedral last Thursday night and Lunenburg's St.
John's Anglican Church on Sunday afternoon. Today, it is being recorded in
Halifax for Manfred Eicher's prestigious ECM label.

( spedersen@herald.ca)
- Halifax Chronicle Herald

Album: Peter-Anthony Togni, Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae (ECM)
Reviewed by Andy Gill
UK London Independent
Friday, 5 March 2010
Under Jeff Reilly's virtuosic control, the bass clarinet possesses an aloof, almost mystical timbre comparable to the duduk flute used in Middle Eastern music, aptly representing the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah's lamentations in this piece by Peter-Anthony Togni.
It blends sacred choral music, classical concerto form and jazz improvisation, with the bass clarinet furnishing the emotional colour for the Elmer Iseler Singers' measured delivery of the scriptural texts, in which Jeremiah bemoans the downfall of Jerusalem. With echoes of both Messiaen's choral work and Russian religious music, it's a sombre work alleviated by the occasional interplay of choral and clarinet threads, as in "Quomodo Dominus filiam Sion obtexit".
Download this Quomodo Dominus filiam Sion obtexit; Silentio; Recordare, Domine


- UK London Independent

The Globe and Mail Monday, December 07, 2009
by Elissa Poole

The words of Jeremiah – the Bible's Cassandra, his prophecies of doom unheeded – have inspired composers for centuries, from Palestrina in the 16th century to Leonard Bernstein in the 20th. Peter Anthony Togni, whose Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae is the first Canadian work to be recorded for the eclectic ECM New Series label (and who is widely known as a CBC Radio 2 host), is perhaps the most recent of these. Togni's Lamentations share aesthetic and spiritual ground with such composers as Osvaldo Golijov, Arvo Part and John Taverner, but it is the solo bass clarinet's plangent, gritty and sometimes shrill personification of the prophet – which sounds “with the sadness of centuries” against the close, modal harmonies of the choir – that gives this setting its potency. - Globe and Mail

The Definitive CDs
Norman Lebrecht
March 29, 2010 Peter-Anthony Togni: Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae (ECM) *****
5 out of 5 stars!!!

The Canadian composer Peter-Anthony Togni has a fascination shared by Stravinsky with the tolling cadences of the Prophet Jeremiah, who warned that the city would be destroyed for its sins and then lamented its fate in testimony and consolation. Of all the recorded offerings for Holy Week (see below), this is by some measure the most original and affecting that has come my way. Beneath a mixed chorus, Togni bravely inscribes a bass clarinet as his only instrumentation. It is a brilliant decision. The lower registers conjure some of the tropes of Arabic music, while the higher wails hint at klezmer playfulness. The virtuoso clarinettist Jeff Reilly extends his cadenzas across the history of sound, from monotony to modernism, in a performance that is dominant and often hypnotic. Lydia Adams directs the Elmer Iseler Singers, with solo soprano Rebecca Whelan. Putting on this record without reading the booklet, I was smitten by Togni’s atmospheric force, imposing a contemplative mood with a gloss of consolation that is the quest of all faiths at this time of year. There is something epiphanic about this music; resist it, if you can.
- Norman Lebrecht