MUSIC / CHRIS PASLES : Camerata Returns ‘Better Than Ever’

After more than a year and a half of silence, the Irvine Camerata is back, and founder Robert Hickok says the chorus is “in great shape, better than ever.” The group sings its first concert since February, 1991 tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Not surprisingly, the main problem facing the chorus was money--or rather, a lack of it. “Everybody is in fiscal trouble,” Hickok said in a recent phone interview. “Every arts institution is in a touch-and-go situation.

“We’re operating on a total budget of (UC Irvine) funds of $52,000, which is not enough to run the Camerata,” Hickok said. “We’re depending more than ever on box-office income. At the same time, because of the (university) budget crunch, we’re limited in our ability to get the word out. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”

Founded in 1989, the Camerata was part of a deal that lured Hickok from his position as dean at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, to the same post at UCI.

UCI originally offered to help underwrite the chorus, a professional group of about 25 singers, to the tune of $20,000. The group gave three concerts its first season and announced three for its second but had to cancel the last of these, originally scheduled for May, 1991.

In addition to fiscal problems, Hickok said, there were also “some scheduling conflicts with the Pacific Chorale. We share a certain number of singers. It was something we couldn’t work out. They had had their schedule set before mine. I said, ‘OK, we’re going to take a year off, save the money’. . . . That has helped.

“We’re obviously better off than we were last year, but we’re going to need more support as we go along.” Plans for a development campaign to benefit the chorus are underway, he said.

But the money problems have not dampened Hickok’s enthusiasm, even though the layoff meant that about a quarter of the group is new. “The concert is a lively concert, one that I’m extremely proud of,” he said. “We’re doing several pieces that virtually nobody has heard, as usual. They are brilliant pieces.”

The program includes three works by 17th-Century English composer and organist John Blow, Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Audi Filia” and Bach’s Magnificat. Hickok called the Blow pieces “the real jewels of his immense output.” The works are “Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord,” “Awake, Awake! My Lyre” and “Triumphant Fame, St. Cecilia’s Song.” Hickok described them as “highly contrasting works. You would hardly know they came from the same composer.”

The first one, “Blessed is the man . . . ,” features a countertenor (Drew Minter) and is “very tightly organized, in that some of the orchestra interludes take up some of the vocal material,” Hickok said. The text is Psalm No. 1, verses 1-4, with a “brilliant” Hallelujah conclusion.

“Awake My Lyre,” scored for tenor, strings and chorus, is “extremely lovely, almost Romantic in character,” Hickok said. “That is in part due to the poetry (by Abraham Cowley). It’s very unusual in terms of long soaring lines and highly flexible rhythmic structure. It’s the only piece of its kind that Blow wrote and the only piece of its kind in that whole generation that has that Romantic character.”

For “Triumphant Fame,” Hickok had to go to manuscript sources because the work “is not published commercially. This is a special edition for this concert.” The work requires two sopranos, countertenor, one tenor and a bass, in addition to “a full rich assortment” of orchestral instruments.”

Scarlatti’s “Audi Filia” is characterized by “a very unusual interplay between solo instruments and voice” (two sopranos and countertenor).

Bach’s Magnificat is “one of our unusual forays into the standard repertoire,” Hickok said. “It is an extremely compact piece, and also it has a very unusual unifying element in that material from the first movement is also used in the last, which is one of the rare occasions that Bach did that.”

* Robert Hickok will conduct the Irvine Camerata in works by Blow, Scarlatti and Bach tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $12 ($10 for senior citizens; $6 for students). (714) 854-4646.