Composer’s Long-Missing Work to Get S.D. Debut

Along-lost Benjamin Britten piece will finally get a San Diego airing.

The recently uncovered choral work, “The Company of Heaven,” will be performed by the Consortium Angeli choir at 6 p.m. Sunday at St. James Episcopal Church, La Jolla. The obscure 40-minute radio cantata, which was commissioned by the BBC in 1937, disappeared from the Britten canon after a single broadcast performance.

Not even the New Grove Dictionary, the most authoritative music encyclopedia, mentions the choral work in its catalogue of Britten’s compositions. The work was finally published last year in Great Britain, and Consortium Angeli music director Eli Saenz gave the initial U. S. performance last week in Los Angeles.

“It’s really important because it is the first piece Britten wrote specifically for tenor Peter Pears,” explained Saenz, reached at his home in La Jolla. From the title character in Britten’s first opera “Peter Grimes” to the aging Von Aschenbach in his valedictory “Death in Venice,” the noted British composer wrote his major tenor roles for Pears, his lifelong companion.

Though it is primarily a choral work, “The Company of Heaven” has extended solos for both soprano and tenor. But just why this radio cantata disappeared is a bit of a mystery.

“The BBC owned it, so when they were through with it, they simply put it away. And the Britten family never revived it,” Saenz said. “From a letter Britten wrote to a friend at the time, we know that he was pleased with the musical part of this radio piece, although he thought the poetry readings in between the choral sections were too long.”

The work’s literary theme is the role of angels and their function to humans. According to Saenz, one of the more intriguing sections is called “The War in Heaven,” which recounts the expulsion of Lucifer and his legions from heaven.

“The choir becomes a speech choir, reciting its words over an explosive organ accompaniment--I’m sure Britten calculated it would make quite an effect heard over the radio. It’s my choir’s favorite part of the piece.”

Saenz’s professional choral group has sung together for two years under the name “Consortium Angeli,” but some of the singers have been with him since he founded the Hispanic Choir of Los Angeles in 1963. That choral group performed at the opening of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and gave the U.S. premiere of several works by Argentine composer Ariel Ramierez.

Saenz recently moved to La Jolla, but he maintains a core of singers in both cities. When he does a large work, such as the Britten cantata, he combines both choirs into a 50-voice ensemble. Saenz rehearses the local contingent at St. James Episcopal Church.

Along with “The Company of Heaven” the evening will include Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” with tenor Matthew Alexander and soprano Mary-Esther Nicola.

Harp invasion. About 400 North American harpists will congregate at the University of San Diego next week for the American Harp Society’s annual conference. Concerts, recitals and workshops will tell the thoroughly modern classical harpist everything he needs to know about state-of-the-art harping.

Among the notable offerings is an entire concert of harp concertos conducted by Long Beach Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Shiley Hall, a program of music for harp and chorus at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Immaculata church, and an evening devoted to music for the Paraguayan harp with members of the Ballet Folclorico at 8 p.m. Friday in the Shiley Theatre.

Contacted at her home in Long Beach, Falletta confessed that she has never had the opportunity to conduct an entire program of harp concertos.

“That was part of the reason I was interested in doing this program for the harp society,” she said. “When I am devising programs for my own orchestra, I don’t think of the harp as a solo instrument very often, although when I have conducted a harp concerto, people have been quite fascinated with the instrument.”

All four harp concertos are rarities, according to the popular maestra from Long Beach, although Darius Milhaud’s harp concerto, commissioned by noted harpist Nicanor Zabaleta in 1953, is better known than the concertos by Albert Zabel, Joseph Jongen and Henriette Renie.

Falletta observed that as a type, harpists are more supportive of one another than are other professional musicians such as flutists, who tend to be more competitive when they gather for annual conferences.

“I think it has to do with harpists’ unique problems,” Falletta observed, “the difficulty of carting their instrument around and its lack of cachet compared to, say, the violin or piano.”

According to local harp society member Gail Dieterichs, more than 3,000 harpists belong to the society nationally, with 100 members belonging to the San Diego chapter, which planned the conference. The last time the harpists convened here was 20 years ago at San Diego State University.

On Thursday’s choral concert, David Ward-Steinman’s “Seasons Fantastic,” a recently commissioned work for chorus and harp by the San Diego State University composer-in-residence, will be premiered. Ward-Steinman’s work is based on four seasonal poems by Robert Lee.

In the conference display area, harps will be on view from five different harp-makers, including Escondido’s Hidden Valley Harps. Dieterichs noted that there are only nine bona fide makers of orchestral harps worldwide.

Among local harpists who will perform at the conference are San Diego Symphony harpist Sheila Sterling, Marian Rian Hays, Donna Vaughan and Dieterichs. (This harp conference should not be confused with a conference of folk harpists winding up today and Sunday on the USD campus. The penalty for such confusion, of course, would be severe. Fatal, perhaps.)

CRITIC’S CHOICE: SOLOIST TO PERFORM WITH JCC STRINGS

Local violist Karen Elaine will solo with the JCC Strings under resident director Michael Gaisler at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Gaisler, who took his musical training in his native Russia, taught at the Israel Conservatory in Tel Aviv before coming to San Diego. His string orchestra will play works by Dvorak, Mendelssohn and Dello Joio, as well as a new work for solo viola by Nader Tabor.