Blue Heron and Ensemble Plus Ultra—two out-of-the-box choirs from out of town—met in New York City last week to present a concert of 16th-century music so rousing that it was met by a standing ovation; the stunning stained glass at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church rattled to cheers associated more with Don Giovanni than sacred polyphony.
This “16th century meeting of England and Spain” came courtesy of Scott Metcalfe, director of the Massachusetts-based Blue Heron, and Michael Noone, director of the British Ensemble Plus Ultra. Both reject the notion of presenting the detached beauty that has characterized much Renaissance performance in the past, with its flat wall of sound and controlled delivery. Rather, Metcalfe and Noone strive to achieve maximum expressivity and immediacy, connecting the audience not only to the performers but also to the living, breathing folks who wrote and sang this music 500 years ago, a rare experience in this domain.
The program was designed to allow each group to present its own specialty: the Peterhouse partbooks in the case of Blue Heron (“Salve regina,” by Richard Pygott) and 16th-century Spanish music (“Ave regina caelorum,” by Tomás Luis de Victoria, among others) in the case of Ensemble Plus Ultra. But Metcalfe and Noone also chose to take advantage of the larger pool of singers to present repertoire that calls for an enhanced ensemble, such as John Browne’s 12-voice “O Maria salvatoris.”
Each director’s shared approaches to Renaissance polyphony kept the concert fresh by the differences in their delivery. Metcalfe strives for distinction between polyphonic lines so that you hear each one as a separate entity interacting with other separate entities. Noone however encourages his singers to be as expressive as soloists while staying sensitive to each other as a group, a process he compares to the workings of a good jazz band.
Listening to Blue Heron is like looking at a landscape after a rain: details are cleaner, spatial differences between objects—in this case, vocal lines—are clarified, creating an exploding 3-D effect. When Ensemble Plus Ultra modulates into harmonic resolution at the end of a melisma, the result is a chord that resonates with a depth that gets right into your body.
Happily, both choirs hope to expand their New York presence, and future concerts from these groups will be a welcome addition to the New York early music scene.
