NCCO: The Coming of the Winter Season

SFGC in 2023 (photograph by Carlin Ma)

This afternoon in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the New Century Chamber Orchestra presented its latest program, entitled In Winter’s Glow. Music Director Daniel Hope led as Concertmaster, sharing the program with the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) prepared by Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe. In fact, compositions by William Billings, Benjamin Britten, and Ola Gjeilo, along with arrangements of “Deck the Halls” and “Silent Night” in arrangements by John Rutter, were performed only by SFGC.

Hope led performances of two multi-movement compositions. The first of these was a concerto for four violins in B minor, the tenth selection in the twelve concertos that Antonio Vivaldi collected in his Opus 3, given the title L'estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration). The other instrumental selection was Edward Elgar’s three-movement “Serenade for Strings.” The program concluded with a joint presentation of Nico Muhly’s “Whispered and Revealed.” There were also two joint presentations dedicated explicitly to the Christmas holiday. The first of these was two of the movements from Gordon Getty’s Four Christmas Carols followed by “I Wonder as I Wander” and “Christmas Time of Year” from Jake Heggie’s On the Road to Christmas. The encore selection was “Balulalow,” a Scottish cradle song, often associated with the Nativity.

This was an undertaking as diverse as it was generous. Nevertheless, it all fit neatly into a 90-minute program; and, at least from my vantage point, the audience seemed fixated to the performance from start to finish. Ironically, the only problems with diction seemed to arise in Rutter’s arrangements; but all the other SFGC performances were as clear as crystal.

I suspect that one of the reasons why this program was, for the most part, consistently engaging is that Hope and Sainte-Agathe had no trouble in working with each other. Each selection was greeted with sincere applause, but it was the overall journey through an impressive variety of dispositions that sustained attention. Hope and Sainte-Agathe may have alternated in leadership, but it was clear that they shared the vision of that overall journey. Listening to the final round of applause, it was clear that the audience could not have been more satisfied with that vision.