Gerodias, Calalang: Rare distinctions

A press release titled “A Night of Angelic Voices” and sent to various dailies, announced a concert featuring leading soprano Rachelle Gerodias and leading UST Singers choir conducted by Fidel G. Calalang, Jr.

The title was fully deserved; indeed, the audience heard “angelic voices”; however, it likewise heard uniquely terrestial but similarly striking and impressive voices.

The immensely gifted Gerodias keeps expanding her repertoire, and to her latest program, she added songs not rendered before her European debut as Liu in Puccini’s Turandot at Vienna’s Volksoper last April, and before the 2009 New Year Concert she opened as Sarajevo Philharmonic soloist at Sarajevo’s National Theater.

The diverse songs at the recent concert amply demonstrated how her supreme artistry, sensitivity and discipline arrested attention.

Interpreting Handel’s Piangero from his opera Giulio Cesare, three Italian songs by Stefano Donaudy, lied by Schumann, arias from Puccini’s La Boheme and Donezetti’s Don Pasquale, as well as native songs, Gerodias exhibited a magnificently rich voice of wide range and striking color, and as usual, a superb control of dynamics.

“Hello, Hello” from Menotti’s one-act comic opera The Telephone caused hearty laughter and considerable amusement. The opera tells of a young swain who tries to propose to his sweetheart, only to be repeatedly frustrated by the ringing of the telephone. Desperate, he rushes to the corner drugstore to propose to his girl — by telephone!

Music and text, song and drama are tightly interwoven, and Gerodias’ startling histrionics combined with her vocal skill proved her an enormously talented actress.

The opening aria from Handel’s opera obviously added expressiveness to the conventional Italian form. The audience revelled in Schumann’s lied, including the familiar Widmung (Dedication), the composer nearly matching Schubert’s lyricism.

Filipino composers have a musical idiom all their own, and Gerodias communicated, through exquisitely melodious passages rendered with rare eloquence the sentiment, tenderness, passion and ecstasy in Pena’s Iyo Kailan Pa Man and Abelardo’s Kundiman ng Luha, as well as the rustic joy of Velez’s Sa Kabukiran embellished with pyrotechnical flourishes.

Pianist Najib Ismail was the remarkable assisting artist.

The UST Singers under the incomparable, versatile Calalang — choral conductor, pianist, composer, arranger and pedagogue — fascinated and startled listeners by turning every song — yes, every single one — into a feat. A tour de force. The performance was characterized by the tightest cohesiveness, total clarity of diction, beautiful phrasing, disciplined, controlled dynamics and precision — even in the clapping of hands and stamping of feet.

These qualities were reflected throughout. For instance, take clarity of diction which enhanced and augmented listening pleasure. In Eres Tu, arranged by Ed Nepomuceno, one could decipher every word; e.g., Eres tu el agua de mi fuente. (You are the water of my fountain.)

“Numeration” by Jonas Tamulionis (b. 1949) sounded like a continuous recitative of weird, strange words in varying registers and volumes, the choir’s vivid, vigorous, exuberant delivery producing a riveting, magnetic incantation. How the spiritual “Down by the Riverside” radiated a profound, reverential air!

Magtanim Ay Di Biro and Ikaw Kasi — the choir dancing in pairs in the latter — and Talusaling Polka were clever, imaginative arrangements by Calalang. Even when he accompanied the singers on the piano, their cohesiveness and precision were not impaired.

The UST Singers, once described in South Wales as “Choir of the World” certainly lived up to the glowing praise.

The concert, which pointed up the rare distinctions of Gerodias and Calalang’s UST Singers, was held at the LRT Design Plaza, a most elegant venue.