The Island Community Chorus’s annual spring concerts are when Vineyard audiences can count on hearing a major choral work, from start to finish and accompanied by professional instrumentalists from both sides of the Sound.
Director William Peek, who took over the chorus last year after the retirement of founding director Peter Boak, chose a widely beloved composition as the centerpiece of this year’s spring sing: Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, Opus 48.
“It is our great privilege to offer this profound work,” Mr. Peek said, from the podium inside the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown Sunday afternoon.
Composed in 1888, Fauré’s Requiem weaves together praise, lament and supplication in both Latin and Greek, which the chorus sang fluently as audience members followed the translations in their programs.
Bass-baritone David Behnke and soprano Shea Fee both appeared as soloists, Mr. Behnke petitioning God in the Offertoire movement and calling for deliverance in the Libera Me and Ms. Fee singing an angelic Pie Jesu.
Keyboardist Molly Sturges, the chorus’s regular accompanist, played an organ effect that lent grandeur and emphasis to the work, which also featured two horn players, two cellists, two violinists, a violist, a bassist and a harper.
Suffused with reverence, hope and belief, the Requiem left audience members briefly stunned before they burst into resounding applause, surging to their feet in an ovation.
The spring concerts opened with Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Six Choral Songs, 1940 settings of texts by Percy Bysshe Shelley that the composer found inspiring and consoling as he faced the second world war of his lifetime.
Tenor Dorian Lopes sang César Franck’s Panis Angelicus, accompanied by cello and harp in what Mr. Peek said was the infrequently heard original scoring of the 1872 aria to a medieval Latin text by St. Thomas Aquinas.
Sopranos Molly Conole, Jenny Friedman and Jessica Sanseverino sang an unaccompanied trio arrangement of a traditional Ukrainian lullaby, Oi Khodyt’ Son Kolo Vikon (The Dream Passes By the Windows), in the original language.
“This is our tribute to the people of Ukraine,” Mr. Peek said.
Following the spring concerts, the 70 or so chorus members get a week off before they start weekly rehearsals for the summer concert on July 1. Rehearsals take place Monday evenings and auditions are not required to join the chorus.
To learn more, visit islandcommunitychorus.com.
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