Music for Piano, Orchestra,... and CHORUS???

Now, there's an odd combination for you.  There may be others floating around out there, but I only know of three works which feature this particular grouping of performers.

One is well known, by name at least.  Yet how many people have actually heard Beethoven's Choral Fantasy?  Give it a listen, and you can't miss the family resemblance between the choral finale and the famous finale of the 9th Choral Symphony.  Yet how do you describe it?  Musically, the choral movement of this work is like the child, and the Ode to Joy of the Ninth is the adult which that child eventually grew to become.  Thus, the Ninth is obviously more mature, more involving, and much more sophisticated.  None of that makes the Choral Fantasy any less endearing.

More mature by far is the lengthy solo piano cadenza which opens the piece, and the series of variations for piano and orchestra which parallel the structure of the choral variations in the Ninth.  My personal favourite recording is a Toronto Symphony outing under Andrew Davis with the formidable Anton Kuerti at the keyboard and the full, rich sound of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in the final minutes.

A much more recent work came from my old friend Vaughan Williams.  His Fantasia on the Old 104th Psalm Tune was composed for the famous Three Choirs Festival in England, and again includes a substantial piano part.  But the choir in this work sings right along with the pianist and orchestra throughout the piece.  The piano writing is dense and heavy -- I'm the first one to admit that Vaughan Williams didn't always do his best work for the keyboard, although he was the consummate composer of music for strings.  Despite that, or perhaps because of it, this is a majestic, powerful piece.  Where the Beethoven is like a joyful dance, the Vaughan Williams more befits a solemn occasion such as a coronation or perhaps the enthronement of a bishop, although it was not written for any such event.  The slower tempo of this music, with its frequent pauses, is perfectly suited for the cathedral acoustic in which it was first performed.

The third piece will form the substance of my next post.