Who: Ottawa Bach Choir, Lisette Canton, conductor, Mélisande Sinsoulier, Frédéric Lacroix, piano
Soloists: Ellen McAteer, soprano; Geoffrey Sirett, baritone
Where: International des musiques sacrées de Québec, Église Saint-Dominique, Quebec City
Reviewed on: Sunday, September 7 – 4:00 PM

On the road again …

A typical Ottawa music season finds the Ottawa Bach Choir and its founder/conductor Lisette Canton giving three major concerts and occasionally participating in sundry events. Some summers they perform in Chamberfest and/or Music and Beyond. But these facts don’t tell the whole story. In June of this year they did a five-city European tour during which they were received with enthusiasm everywhere they went: Venice, Leipzig, Lubeck, Groningen and Amsterdam.

I was privileged to go along with them in Europe and last weekend I confirmed my status as a faithful groupie by accompanying them to Québec where they participated in the International des musiques sacrées de Québec. Their contribution was a fine, engrossing account of the Brahms German Requiem. It was given in the beautiful Église Saint-Dominique, situated on the Grand Allée near the Musée des beaux-arts.

(This might be the best place to disclose that I am friends with Lisette Canton and a few members of the choir. I don’t believe this compromises my objectivity, but what do I know?)

The original setting of this Requiem requires a large orchestra, but Brahms also arranged the accompaniment for two pianos to make performance accessible to groups of more modest resources. Similar in spirit, the piano-four-hands arrangement that the Bach Choir performed works well when it’s played well. In the hands of pianists Mélisande Sinsoulier and Frédéric Lacroix it worked very well.

The Bach Choir was at the top of its form, singing with understanding and conviction, not to mention great beauty. I attended parts of two rehearsals and, as in Europe, it was clear where the singers’ edge of greatness comes from. Conductor Canton leads rehearsals of intense efficiency, constantly demanding the very best. Of special note were the two fugues and the second movement that begins with a funeral march and ends in triumph.

Baritone Geoffrey Sirett’s dark, powerful voice was perfect for the two movements in which he had solos. Soprano Ellen McAteer had a little trouble initially focussing her sound in the central fourth movement, and perhaps could have sounded a little more ethereal as befits the text, but all in all it was a satisfying renditon.

Standing ovations don’t mean so very much these days, but the one the OBC received seemed particularly warm and spontaneous.

Who: Ottawa Bach Choir, Lisette Canton, conductor, Jennifer Loveless, organ
Where: St. Matthew’s Church
Reviewed on: Saturday, May 10, 2014 – 8 PM

OTTAWA — Lisette Canton and her Ottawa Bach Choir concluded their 12th season Saturday evening with an eclectic program that will form the backbone of their five-city European tour in June. There was only one work by Bach, but a feast of music from every century from the 16th through the 20th was presented. And a couple of modern folk song arrangements were thrown in as a kind of dessert.

The program’s centrepiece was the Bach Motet, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225 a work that the choir will sing in Leipzich’s Thomaskirche, the very church where the great composer spent more than half of his career. Although the performance was good, conductor Lisette Canton will probably want to polish up the melisma, and even the intonation in one or two spots in the first movement. The melisma in the Alleluja was excellent

Also on the program were works by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrielli, the latter composer’s Missa Brevis in F being especially beautiful and, like virtually every item on the program, sung to best effect. Palestrina’s Ave Maria for Five Voices was another fine listening experience.

Heinrich Hassler’s Tibi laus, Tibi gloria ushered in a series of German works, two of them by Buxtehude. (The choir will also be performing in Lübeck, where Buxtehude spent most of his working life.) The first of them was a two-movement Missa Brevis, which has a sunny sound for Lutheran church music of the time.

The next was the Toccata in D minor, an organ piece played nicely by Jennifer Loveless who will be accompanying the choir on the tour – accompanying in both senses of the word.

The pearl of the first half of the program was the Deutsches Magnificat by Heinrich Schutz. Schutz was one of the greatest composers of the first decades of the 17th century, and certainly the greatest of the Germans. The Magnificat is a work of the greatest depth and beauty, and Canton and her choir rendered it just so.

Organist Loveless introduced the 19th-century segment with a sonata movement by Mendelssohn, then Canton led the choir in Calmes des nuits by Saint-Saëns.

A selection of works by living composers Rupert Lang, Eric Whitacre and Nicholas Piper followed and were followed in their turn by folk song arrangements by Diane Loomer and Moses Hogan, all of them lovely and even haunting.

By the way, the soloists were all drawn from the choir and were all terrific.

Who: Ottawa Bach Choir, Lisette Canton, conductor
Where: Knox Presbyterian Church
Reviewed on: Saturday, March 8, 2014 – 8 PM

OTTAWA — The music of the cultural movement of the English Renaissance, more or less contemporary with the Tudor era, reached some of the greatest heights of its time. At its best, it bears comparison with the work of De Lassus, Victoria and the other major continental polyphonists. English music would not be so distinguished again until the 20th century.

The Ottawa Bach Choir offered a program of music from the 16th and early 17th centuries Saturday evening at Knox Presbyterian Church. There was considerable variety in it, consisting largely of sacred music of various stripes, but with a few secular works. The composers represented included familiar names like William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and Orlando Gibbons, along with lesser-known musicians.

The first offering was If You Love Me, an anthem by Thomas Tallis, who is probably the best-known of the lot. Conductor Lisette Canton led a reading typical of much of what was to follow; there were a few minor flaws of intonation in an otherwise impressive performance.

Robert Parsons’ Ave Maria was beautiful without qualification as were the subtly nuanced Laudibus in Sanctis by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons’ Lullaby My Sweet Little Baby. The last of these had quite a sensuous feeling about it, a little curious perhaps but beautiful just the same.

There were three secular songs too, which provided a bit of contrast to the high seriousness of most of the repertoire. Gibbons’ The Silver Swan was perhaps the most satisfying of them.

The major work on the program was Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, a masterwork of the first order. Not only was it the most substantial item on the program, it received the most accomplished and satisfying performance. It was solid throughout, but with no shortage of great moments, especially in the Credo. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei were uncommonly beautiful as well.

Altogether it was an entirely lovely evening of a cappella singing

Who: Ottawa Bach Choir, Lisette Canton, conductor, with Ensemble Caprice
Where: St. Matthew’s Church
Reviewed on: Saturday, November 30, 2013 – 8 PM

OTTAWA — For its season opener, the Ottawa Bach Choir presented an evening of music by four major Baroque composers and one minor one. The minor one, though, bore the name of Bach. That’s no small distinction and there’s no denying that he had a share if the family talent.

The first offering was by Georg Philipp Telemann, who was one of the composers to whom the authorities in Leipzig would offer the job that J. S. Bach eventually got. In fact, Bach was their reluctant third choice.

Telemann’s Motet Saget der ruft Tochter Zion is a nicely centred work with a mature and confident musical language, and conductor Lisette Canton led a vigorous and persuasive account of it.

Johann Friedrich Christophe Bach was Johann Sebastian’s ninth son. His Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme quotes briefly from his father’s cantata of the same name and indeed one can hear the older man’s musical idiom, slightly modern and slightly less genius-laden. It’s still a solid piece. Canton led the choir and members of Ensemble Caprice gave a rendition that brought out the very best in the score, even if the melisma in the first movement was a little unfocused, not sparkling quite as it should have.

Listeners who sometimes find the church music of J.S. Bach a bit dour and difficult generally like that of Dietrich Buxtehude. He was almost 60 years Bach’s senior and wrote in a less-evolved Baroque style which, for some listeners, is more approachable. Canto and company delivered a joyful account of his Alles, was ihr tut. This was the first opportunity the Ensemble Caprice members had to be heard apart from the choir. The second half of the program opened with a Magnificat by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, another pre-Bach composer. Being music written for Catholic France it is different in sound from the German Lutheran repertoire that made up the rest of the evening. As usual the performance was marvellous.

The concert concluded with a cantata by the man himself, J. S. Bach. Generally good solo work and a firm sense of direction made this a fine conclusion to a fine evening.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa Bach Choir & Baroque Orchestra / Lisette Canton
Canto 2011—55 minutes

This program is in honor of the Ottawa Bach Choir’s 10th anniversary. It’s a well constructed program that begins and ends with JS Bach, with the pieces arranged chronologically in between and encompassing modern times, the most recent composer being Eric Whitacre, who was born in 1970.

The first Bach piece is a wedding cantata from the young Bach, BWV 196. Two Monteverdi words are included: the title piece, ‘Cantate Domino’, and a longer ‘Beatus vir’. Following is ‘Hear my Prayer, O Lord’, by Henry Purcell, and a short piece each from Buxtehude and Saint-Saens. Four modern composers are represented: Olivier Messiaen, with his ‘O Sacrum Convivium!’; Rupert Lang, with an Agnus Dei in French; Eric Whitacre, ‘Lux Aurumque’; and, finally, from Knut Nystedt a work called ‘Immortal Bach’. The final Bach piece is a motet and chorale, ‘The Spirit Doth our Weakness Help’. All song lyrics are printed in the notes.

These works are all beautifully sung; I have enjoyed listening to this several times. The sound is excellent.

CRAWFORD

© American Music Guide 2012

Caroline Léonardelli, harp: Ottawa Bach Choir,
Lisette Canton, conductor (Centaur Classics)

This is one of the most refreshing and delightful Christmas CDs to come along in years. Ottawa harpist Caroline Léonardelli joins forces with the female voices of Lisette Canton’s Ottawa Bach Choir and vocal soloists Kathleen Radke, Julie Nesrallah and Dayna Lamothe, as well as percussionist J.S. Lacombe, in a program drawn from traditional and modern sources.

The centrepiece is Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, op. 28. Originally intended for boys’ voices and harp, it works even better when the singers are women and sing with the purity and lightness that the women of the OBC bring to this enterprise.

Caroline Léonardelli’s harp is an almost constant presence, and her solos, like Marcel Tournier’s Trois Noëls pour harpe, op. 32 are among the most exquisite offerings. Even better is her version of the Appalachian carol I wonder as I wander.

This CD is as good a stocking-stuffer as you’ll find.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2005