Disappointing Results from ABS Academy Students

Last night the American Bach Soloists Festival & Academy returned to the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to present the first of two performances of the final program in this summer’s season. (The final event will be the second presentation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 Mass setting, best known as the “Mass in B Minor,” this Sunday afternoon.) The instrumental ensemble consisted primarily of Academy students with a few of the faculty members providing section leadership, and the vocal resources were also provided by Academy students.

The program was framed by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. The opening selection was the BWV 198 secular cantata known as the “Trauerode” (funeral ode), setting a poem written by Johann Christoph Gottsched to mourn the death of Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. On a sunnier side the program concluded with Handel’s HWV 8c opéra-ballet (combining dance with solo and choral singing) “Terpsicore,” originally written as a prologue for his HWV 8 opera Il pastor fido (the faithful shepherd). Between these two selections, the intermission was preceded by Antonio Lotti’s Mass setting, which involves more than twenty independent vocal and instrumental parts, known (inaccurately) as the “Mass for three choirs.”

While the program itself promised an engaging journey of discovery, the execution left much to be desired. In the more modest instrumental ensembles performing in the first half of the program, there were any number of audible difficulties with intonation and a distinct lack of precision in the rhythms. The larger ensemble that performed the Handel selection fared somewhat better. Rhetorically, however, the unfolding of the “Terpsicore” libretto amounted to little more than a slog, punctuated with the instrumental selections composed for dancing.

Vocal solo work also tended to be uneven, suggesting that most of the vocalists had not yet advanced to the point of internalizing their respective parts. Most promising were the two soloists in HWV 8c, taking the roles of Apollo (mezzo Allison Gish) and the muse Erato (soprano Hayley Abramowitz). They were the two vocalists that sounded the least like nineteenth-century opera singers. In addition, both were comfortable with the dramatic side of the performance, even if those aspects were disclosed through minimal exploitation of gesture, posture, and facial expression. The two of them also blended admirably for any duet work.

From a pedagogical point of view, last night came off as a too-much-too-soon affair, suggesting that a generous amount of additional preparation time would have been a great benefit.