If only more history lessons were as suffused with passion as “The Secret Letter,” the latest concert program from the low-voiced octet, Cantus.
Passion is a linchpin of the music and interstitial narrative, the concert serving up a tender, powerful and often exhilarating reminder that “queer love” has always been part of human history.
That was underlined early in the first performance of the program at Hamline University’s Sundin Music Hall on Friday night. For the first words came from the Greek poet Theocritus, born a few centuries B.C. Or when the first of the letters of longing that link the program together came from the pen of Marcus Aurelius, written in 139 A.D., and delivered with a splendid mix of bliss and ache by tenor Jacob Christopher.
Soon several of history’s great literary lights were lining up to share their innermost desires and conflicted hearts through readings and music: Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde. And Cantus was both delivering and bridging their ruminations with music that often proved to be inspired pairings. The harmonies were as strong as they’ve been in the group’s 30-year history, and each solo shone brightly across this brief but very rewarding concert.
Yes, brief, in that it’s an intermission-less program of about 65 minutes that would be even shorter if Cantus had instructed the audience to hold their applause between pieces. Or perhaps the group could divvy the concert’s 12 tunes into sets of three or four in order not to so often break the spells they were casting.
But they were indeed mesmerizing, particularly during a stretch of songs at the concert’s center. Coming out of Wilde’s heartbreaking letter from prison (where he was jailed for being gay), Francis Poulenc’s “Figure Humaine” sustained the mood perfectly, giving musical voice to the pain and sorrow expressed by Wilde. Almost equally moving was the combination of a Walt Whitman letter to a suicidal friend and a lush and sweeping setting of a Whitman poem by contemporary American composer Steven Sametz from his song cycle, “We Two.”
But the evening’s peak came with the premiere of a new work commissioned by Cantus from composer Saunder Choi. “Light Years to Lebanon” had its genesis in a kind of poetry-on-demand setting at a Los Angeles-era Pride festival. Brian Sonia-Wallace brilliantly captured the pain of separation and Choi set it to music full of both sadness and celebration. Then Cantus gave it a disarmingly vulnerable and simply beautiful interpretation.
Not that it was a perfectly assembled program. After the first two songs opened with outstanding solos by Paul John Rudoi and Rod Hines, few were the pieces that afforded members the opportunity to step out of the ensemble. And while the group’s execution was excellent all evening long, the concert did grow a bit ballad-heavy, leaving me to contemplate how they could have changed things up in both spirit and tempo.
