Mexico City Trip - 2009

We performed Mendelssohn's Elijah and a Haydn Te Deum in Mexico City with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria. We were joined for Elijah by the Niños y Jóvenes Cantores de la Escuela Nacional de Música (Children and Young Singers of the National School of Music) -- more about them presently. This is the latest of our semi-regular gigs in Mexico City, at which, over the years, we have performed such works as the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, the Berlioz Requiem, Verdi Requiem, and so on. They go for the big works, and apparently we're something of an attraction there. At least we have a long history there and they always seem very appreciative.

Elijah is, of course, one of the big standard works -- but we haven't done it in Houston since 1992, which seems a surprisingly long time. Even more surprising, to the point of being almost amazing, is that as far as anyone can tell this may be the first time that Elijah has been performed in Mexico. Holey Moley.

This was a very long concert with a heck of a lot of singing. The Te Deum is a short, quite technical work, running ten or fifteen minutes -- but Elijah is a long work no matter how it's performed, and in this case it was done with no cuts whatsoever. This is, in my experience, a bit unusual; I've done Elijah several times, but I've certainly never done the chorus "But the Lord from the North" -- and I had this funny feeling when we were doing it that nobody had ever done it before. Not true, I'm sure -- but I've asked three pastors now what the point of the text of this chorus is and not one has been able to come up with a real good answer. I mean, this chorus is very "cut-able".

Of course, the more familiar parts of Elijah are very dramatic and effective. You've got us crying out to Baal, you've got earthquakes and whirlwinds, you've got fiery chariots and the sea being upheaved -- and you've also got some extremely effective introspective moments. For example, Elijah singing "It is enough, O Lord now take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers". For us there's the very familiar "He Watching over Israel" -- but my personal favorite is "He that shall endure to the end". That one is absolutely gorgeous, with tremendously effective dynamic contrasts and very, very light accompaniment from the orchestra.

We were joined for Elijah by a truly excellent children's chorus. They were a little older than the boys choruses we've sung with before, and the extra maturity of their voices gave them a more focused, penetrating sound without losing the freshness and innocence. That is, they could sing "with us" without being totally overwhelmed, but they still sounded -- and looked -- like angels. They joined us for one of the Baal choruses and the last chorus, but their big numbers were more exposed. They took the top four parts of "Holy, holy, holy", joined by eight of our women -- and the bottom four parts were sung by the full chorus. The effect was glorious. And in an earlier chorus, "For He shall give His angels", they took the top four parts of the octet and 12 men the bottom four parts. I think that was pretty cool, but I was one of the 12 men so I was kind of in the middle of it, enjoying singing it a lot, rather than listening. They also had soloists, three of whom did the trio "Lift thine eyes", and their high soprano did a wonderful job on the the solo recitatives with Elijah -- all the stuff about "Look toward the sea ... I see nothing .. Go up again and still look toward the sea .. A little cloud ariseth now from the waters; it is like a man's hand! The heavens are black with clouds and wind; The storm rusheth louder and louder" ... and then we sing "Thanks be to God ...". Very dramatic and effective with that lovely, pure voice coming from the balcony above us. We loved our angels, and they seemed to like us a lot. I certainly hope that we get to sing with them again someday.

How did the audience like it?  Well, the first concert on Thursday night was very lightly attended -- and we made some mistakes, mostly rhythmic.  The audience response was tepid at best.  I missed Saturday because I was sick but I was told it went well.  Sunday was well attended and the response was enthusiastic.  Not quite as much as for some of our previous concerts -- no one was throwing flowers at us like they did after the Missa Solemnis -- but certainly they were demonstrative and appreciative.  I have a feeling that they might have preferred a more familiar work, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Well, enough about Elijah. What about the Te Deum? This is a very genial, happy work. We did it at a rip-snorting fast tempo, and at the velocity we were going the big fugue is something of a challenge. It's on the text "In te domine speravi, Non confundar in aeternum", which I believe is from Psalm 71, "In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion" (King James translation). The subject is a rapid melisma and the counter-subject is syncopated. At the speed we were going it sounded to me like laughing.  Haydn's choral music can be a lot of fun. It's been too long since we've done "The Seasons". But I digress.

This trip differed from any of our previous Mexico City gigs in its length. Previously we have usually sung two concerts on Saturday and Sunday, and the trip has been crammed into a long, hectic weekend. This time we had concerts Thursday and Saturday evenings and a matinée on Sunday. This left lots of free time on Friday and Saturday, and many people went on excursions to the pyramids, Taxco and other interesting places. And, of course, there were lots of parties at the fine Mexico City restaurants. This does bring us, however, to an unfortunate fact: A lot of us got sick and we are pretty sure that the problems were coming from at least some of the restaurants. This has never happened to us before in Mexico City, where in the past perhaps one or two people have had a problem and all the restaurants seemed to be perfectly safe. This time, however, I can think off-hand of at least a dozen people who got sick, and I'm pretty sure that there were quite a few more. In other words, a very substantial fraction of the chorus was affected. The only thing I can think of is that the restaurants got careless because there were relatively few tourists around due to the recent H1N1 flu scare in Mexico. Whatever the reason, I certainly hope that it is not repeated the next time we have a Mexico City engagement.