AVA's resident artists present 'Jubilate!'

This year’s edition of Jubilate! included all the rousing music the title promises. The first half opened with a stream of Bachian exuberance and closed with one of the most rousing pieces in the literature, Handel’s coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, written for the coronation of George II in 1727. It’s been played at every British coronation since, and everyone who has ever heard it knows why. If you’ve never heard it, the text will give you a few clues to its popularity:

Zadok the Priest, and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King.

And all the people rejoiced, and said:

God save the King! Long live the King!

May the King live for ever,

Amen, Alleluia.

I think most BSR readers can imagine what the creator of the Alleluia Chorus could do with that, given a good chorus and an orchestra equipped with drums and trumpets.

A chorus of soloists

At the AVA event, David Anthony Lofton conducted 28 of the best voices that will ever sing Zadok. AVA is a tuition-free school, like its Rittenhouse Square neighbor, the Curtis Institute of Music, and its resident artists are advanced students training to be soloists, not choristers. Thus Lofton was essentially conducting a choir of soloists selected from all the first-class voices attracted to a school that lets them study their craft without running up a big tuition bill. In the last 83 years, the little school tucked into three brownstones on Spruce Street has become a force in the history of American opera.

The resident artists are, of course, students who are still developing. Some of them have big voices but haven’t learned the arts of shading and nuance. Others are still nurturing their physical endowments. But overall, they always put on one of the best shows on the Philadelphia music calendar.

A surprising Stabat Mater

The program also had its share of quieter and less upbeat pieces. One of the biggest surprises for me was Virgil Thomson’s Stabat Mater, the presentation of a modern poem about Mary’s feelings as she sees her son dying on the cross. The Thomson pieces I’ve heard in the past have usually seemed restrained and a little dull. This one is a moving contribution to the Stabat Mater tradition, which has attracted contributions from some of the biggest names on the composer roster.

Lofton once again proved he could draw an appropriate sound from the orchestra as he moved through styles that ranged from the Baroque to the light grace of late 19th-century composers like Fauré. My only complaint about the whole event is the choral work, It Is Finished, that closes Jubilate! most years. Lofton uses it as a grand finale, I presume, because it’s an upbeat piece that lets all the artists sing full blast with trumpets and timpani multiplying the effect. To me, it’s bombastic and musically unimaginative. The rest of Jubilate! is the musical equivalent of a gallery crowded with religious paintings by masters like Michelangelo and Rouault. It Is Finished is bland, hollow, Sunday school art. There must be something else Lofton could use for a big finish.

Author’s note: If you want to sample Zadok the Priest, I recommend this version on YouTube, even though the opening trumpets and the shouts in the middle aren’t part of Handel’s score. But I should advise you even the best recording is only a shadow of the kind of live performance the audience heard at Holy Trinity.