Thomas Wikman Reviews
'Vespers of the Blessed Virgin' (cont)
Chicago Tribune Wednesday, March 26, 1998
by Andrew Patner
Founder and music director
Thomas Wikman has assembled a
fine group of 11 local and imported
vocal soloists and supplemented his
own chorus with a men's choir from
Evanston's St. Luke's Episcopal
Church for the antiphonal chants
(sung on Monday from the church's j
rear balcony).
The Vespers are intricately structured,
moving from antiphonal
plainchant to multipart psalm settings
to hauntingly personal motets.
In the latter, Monteverdi was
essentially inserting the
secular music of his
day into a church
setting, though his
care with the biblical
Latin texts is in itself
sublime.
Among the soloists, soprano
Christine Brandes is a continuing
wonder, her
duet with mezzo
Emily Lodine was a
marvelous tapestry
for two. Similarly,
the male trio of William Watson,
Jan Jarvis and Brad
Diamond became an aural
representation of the Trinity.
By moving soloists around the
massive church, Wikman achieved
such stunning effects as the call and
response of Jarvis and Diamond in
the motet "Audi coelum," and in the
interplay of Diamond and local tenor
wonder Kurt Hansen in the "Gloria
Patri" in the concluding, buoyant
"Magnificat."
Kudos, too, to the elegant playing
of concertmaster Elliott Golub and
the period style of viola da gambist
Mary Springfels among the many
lovely instrumental solos.
