The Chorale of
The Friday Morning Music Club

Webster Alexander Rogers, Jr., Music Director

Steven Alan Honley, Assistant Conductor and Accompanist

Susan DeCamp, Accompanist Emerita (on sabbatical)

The following review of the Chorale's Twelfth Night performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Paulus (St. Paul) appeared in the Washington Post:

Mendelssohn Oratorio Gets Stirring Revival

By Joseph McLellan

Special to The Washington Post

Thursday, January 18, 2001; Page T13

Probably the most lavish free concert of Washington's 2000-01 season was the performance of Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio "Paulus" on Sunday at First Baptist Church, at 16th and O streets NW.  It was sung by the excellent chorale and seven vocal soloists of the Friday Morning Music Club, with aptly styled conducting by Webster Alexander Rogers Jr., and it gave Washington music lovers a rare opportunity to enjoy a neglected masterpiece.

The neglect of "Paulus" (known in English as "St. Paul") is not hard to understand. A century after the end of the Victorian era, we are still largely a society in revolt against Victorian styles and ideals. And Mendelssohn's oratorios embody Victorian ideals more clearly than any other classical music except the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. These have remained popular for more than a century because, while they exemplify Victorian attitudes, they also ridicule them.

Mendelssohn, who was Victoria's favorite composer and spent a lot of time in England, took very seriously both the oratorio as a musical form and the morality implicit in its creation. He saw himself as the heir to the great baroque religious composers, Bach and Handel, and besides taking them as models he worked hard and effectively to revive their music. His performance of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" in 1829 was a key event in the establishment of Bach's modern reputation.

We do not hear as much oratorio as our ancestors did. Oratorio was originally conceived for performance during Lent, when opera performances were not allowed, and in our more permissive society that raison d'etre has disappeared.

The form itself has fallen out of fashion, with the spectacular exception of Handel's "Messiah," which is almost inescapable in our musical life but is not a typical oratorio. "Messiah" is, essentially, a series of sermons and meditations on the subject of sin and salvation. It is rooted in the New Testament and rather theological in flavor.

The typical oratorio, in contrast, tells a story with religious overtones but operatic energy -- David and Goliath; Pharaoh's army drowning in the Red Sea; the battles of Judas Maccabaeus. The Old Testament is the primary source of oratorios, because the Old Testament is full of that kind of action.

"Paulus" is one of the relatively rare oratorios based on the New Testament. Using material primarily from the "Acts of the Apostles," it achieves operatic levels of drama in one episode after another: the martyrdom of St. Stephen, Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, his loss of sight and miraculous cure, and the strange episode in which the pagans to whom he was preaching Christianity mistook him for the God Jupiter and began to worship him.

From the opening prelude (based on the Lutheran chorale melody "Wachet Auf") to the resounding, triumphant final chorus, the music presents a fine balance of operatic polish and religious fervor which was well conveyed in this performance.

The next performance by the Friday Morning Music Club Chorale will be June 10 [2001] at First Baptist Church. The club's busy schedule of free concerts gets a detailed listing in its Web site, www.fmmc.org.

©Copyright 2001, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

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Other Reviews:

In Celebration Of Epiphany

By Jeanne Spaeth

The Washington Post

Tuesday, January 7, 1992; Style, Page B03

In a nicely planned program coinciding with the eve of Epiphany - the celebration of the Magi's visit to the Christ Child - the Friday Morning Music Club's chorale performed Sunday at the Eldbrooke United Methodist Church. The chorale 's obvious preparation and the distinctive directing of Webster Alexander Rogers Jr. were unfortunately hampered at times by problems of balance. When the full 35-member orchestra played, it often drowned out the 45-member chorale and caused acoustic reverberations in the moderate-size church.

Selections in which the balance problem became apparent included "Welcome, All Wonders" by Richard Wayne Dirksen, an arrangement of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" and a newly composed cantata by Leonard Moses. The Moses work - "The Flight Into Egypt: An Epiphany Tale of the Infant King" - unfolded with energy and purpose; relied on orchestral, choral and recitative sections; and offered an interesting mix of melodic material with occasional dissonance and rhythmic tension. The chorale sounded beautiful and balanced in the a cappella "Three Kings" by Healey Willan and in the a cappella sections of "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Harold Darke. It also was very effective in Vivaldi's "Gloria," which was accompanied by only half of the orchestra. The voices of the soloists in the "Gloria" and other selections were sometimes wavering and often did not project well. A notable exception was the strong tenor of G. Stephen Stokes, who sang with impressive phrasing and clarity.

©Copyright 1992, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

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Performing Arts: Friday Morning Music Club

ByJoseph McLellan

The Washington Post

Tuesday, January 13, 1998; Style, Page C06

Bach never heard his own Mass in B Minor performed in its entirety. Yet this work, which incorporates music spanning at least a quarter-century of his career, has become synonymous with Bach 's greatness. Some of the reasons this is so were readily called to mind in Sunday's rendition of the Mass by members of the Friday Morning Music Club Chorale and Orchestra at First Baptist Church in Northwest Washington.

Music director Webster Alexander Rogers Jr. showed a keen grasp of the work's monumental scope, paying heed both to its gravitas, as in the stately, spacious tread chosen for the opening Kyrie, and to the dance-based rhythms that are joyfully sprung in movements such as the Osanna.

Despite balance problems in which the women overshadowed the men, the 58-member chorus sang with conviction and was especially compelling in the jubilant climaxes -- the finale of the Gloria, the "Et resurrexit" -- that are focal points in the work's architecture.

The soloists -- sopranos Randa Rouweyha and Deborah Thurlow, alto Andrea Schewe, tenor G. Stephen Stokes and bass-baritone Jerome Barry -- were mostly light-voiced but blended well with the score's richly detailed obbligato accompaniments, here given graceful expression by the flute, oboe d'amore and horn players. A standout was Schewe's dusky, imploring poignancy in the "Agnus Dei." Throughout, organist Susan DeCamp provided a solid continuo underpinning.

It's perhaps a measure of the work's power that, by the end, one feels both spent and renewed. Like a favorite landscape, repeated visits can never explain but only enhance the unfathomable beauty of Bach 's achievement.

-- Thomas May

©Copyright 1998, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

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A Pair of Less-Than-Heavenly Requiems

ByJoe Banno

The Washington Post

Tuesday, June 13, 2000; Style, Page C03

Programming the requiems of Brahms and Fauré on the same bill is an act of musical chutzpah few ensembles would attempt. That the Friday Morning Musical Club Chorale fell short of distinction in both works on Sunday at First Baptist Church was perhaps inevitable given the scope of their ambition.

Webster Alexander Rogers Jr. conducted well-conceived, sensibly paced readings. But these contemplative requiems are as demanding in their subtlety and quiet power as those by Mozart and Verdi are in their theatrical grandeur. The chorale seemed too overwhelmed and underrehearsed to deliver the necessary tonal finish. It made a solid, euphonious enough sound at full force, but exposed part writing revealed sectional weaknesses. The women generally fared better than the men (though the sopranos lacked security and heft at the top of their ranges), with tenors often flat and anemic and basses barely registering. Vague diction, edginess and attacks that lagged behind the beat were intermittent problems affecting all the choristers. (The third movement of the Brahms devolved into incoherence.) The orchestra, which I can only hope was a pickup ensemble, had an even less happy time of it. Brass and winds were full-toned and generally eloquent. The strings, though--particularly some dire-sounding violas--were plagued by queasy intonation. Things got so bad in the "Pie Jesu" movement of the Fauré, in fact, the score began to sound like something from the Beijing Opera. Three of the four vocal soloists were adequate. Baritone Arthur Neal was considerably more than that.

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©Copyright 2000, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved