Washington Classical Review

Christian Lane led the Emmanuel Episcopal Church Choir in music of Bach and Zelenka Sunday in Baltimore. Photo: C. Downey/WCR

Christian Lane, director of music at Baltimore’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church, leads an ambitious concert series. His Emmanuel Choir, beyond providing music for services, regularly performs challenging concert programs in the picturesque church with a resonant acoustic. The latest, heard Sunday afternoon, combined one of Bach’s most celebrated cantatas with a solemn mass setting by Bach’s lesser-known contemporary, Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka.

Bach performed an early version of his Cantata No. 4 for Easter in 1707, making it one of his earliest church cantatas. The work incorporates the Easter chorale “Christ lag in Todes Banden” in each movement. This venerable tune, by Martin Luther himself, is derived from the older German hymn “Christ ist erstanden,” itself based on the Latin sequence “Victimae paschali laudes,” a signature piece for Easter in Gregorian chant. (Lane chose not to include the brass quartet that Bach added for a later performance in Leipzig, to double the singers.)

A chamber ensemble on period instruments—violinists Edson Scheid and Marlisa Woods, violist Gracie Carney, cellist Wade Davis, and bassist Jessica Powell Eig—played the opening Sinfonia warmly and beautifully tuned. The overall best vocal sound came in the three choruses in Bach’s symmetrical structure. Lane, who led with a crisply defined beat, often chose expeditious tempi, challenging in terms of control and accuracy, as in the feverish “Hallelujah” section of the opening chorus.

The contributions of solo singers, which included every member of the 17-voice choir, varied widely. Among the best were soprano Bonnie Lander, who plied her gorgeous tone to the duet “Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt,” scaling back to match the smaller sound of countertenor Lucas Arzayus, one of the four choral scholars learning their craft with the choir. Bass-baritone T. J. Callahan brought a potent top range to the aria “Hie ist das rechte Osterlamm.”

The bulk of the program consisted of Zelenka’s complex, festal Missa Votiva, one of several settings of the Latin Mass Ordinary the composer created during his career in the Catholic court of Dresden. Primarily a choral work, the piece featured the best ensemble sound of the Emmanuel Choir throughout its demanding length. The slithering downward chromatic line of the Kyrie movement, which returned at the end of the Mass, proved one of the highlights of the choir’s impeccable ensemble unity.

Soloists continued to be a mixed bag, with a few outstanding moments. Soprano Eden Bartholomew added a charming cadenza to the end of her aria in the Christe movement. Baritone Robin McGinness did likewise in the “Quoniam tu solus sanctus” section of the Gloria, which opened and closed in bursts of chattering choral activity, with pedal points deployed to generate climactic bursts of energy.

Mezzo-soprano Taylor Boykins gave a rich, rounded sound to the expressive heart of the whole Mass, the “Et incarnatus est” section of the Credo. The maternal warmth of her voice suited the somber accompaniment of the string ensemble and the talented Patrick Merrill on chamber organ. Soprano Nicole Stover floated confident high notes in the other extended slow aria, the Benedictus, over a cushion of muted strings.

Zelenka employed a dizzying array of musical styles across this piece, which stretched over an hour in its entirety. Harmonic invention abounded in the “Gratias agimus” section of the Gloria, and he used what sounded like a cantus firmus, stretched out in long notes like a solemn psalm tone, in the “Qui sedes ad dexteram patris.” A similar musical idea passed through all four parts, from top to bottom, in the opening section of the Credo.

Lane favored excitement even when fitfully hasty tempos pushed his musicians to the brink, as with the oboes struggling to keep up in the “Quoniam tu solus sanctus.” His best moments came in more meditative sections, like the grand Sanctus with its compact Osanna.

One mysterious section in the Credo, corresponding to the words “et mortuos” in the middle of the Credo, stood out musically. Zelenka, slowing the tempo to Adagio, entwined the voices and instruments in an often dissonant web of minor-mode harmony. This serves as a haunting reminder about the Last Judgment, that not only the living will be judged: Lane and his forces reinforced this evocation of the dead rising from their graves to face Christ at the end of time.

The Mount Vernon Virtuosi and soprano Sunwei Li, conducted by Amit Peled, perform music by Walker, Shaw, and Barnes 7 p.m. May 24. emmanueldowntown.org