Let the record show that Vance George made a wrong entrance.

The chorus director of the San Francisco Symphony, presiding over a
"Festival of Choirs" Sunday afternoon in Davies Hall, did everything right
- just as he has through a 19-year-long string of successes, from brilliant
Ives performances to Mahler to Elgar to Verdi - but here he was, entering
the stage and finding the audience and all the singers on stage sitting and
waiting for Mark Bruce at the organ to begin a performance of the Toccata
from Widor's Symphony No. 5.

George stopped at the organ, located right at the entrance, and exchanged
a few words, sotto voce, with Bruce.  The organist reached for his program
and showed George that it was, indeed, his turn.  George motioned to Bruce,
somewhat embarrassed but very graciously, and withdrew to await his turn.

The episode was funny, but also somewhat poignant because chorus directors
habitually labor in the shadow of music directors, and however good the
relationship may be between George and Michael Tilson Thomas, it is unusual
for the former to run a whole concert.

In fact, it happens only a couple of times a year that George and the
30-year-old SFS Chorus have Davies Hall to themselves for all-choral
concerts.  On this Sunday, the resident chorus shared the stage with young
singers from around the Bay, turning the event into something unusual, big
and important.

One may wonder if the "Festival of Choirs" label is not too grandiose for
a single concert, but the music produced by some 300 (mostly young) voices
qualified the event to be called "festive," at the very least.  Impressive,
delightful and splendid are some of the other adjectives that spring to
mind.

Select high school choruses from Napa, Hayward, Piedmont and San Ramon
joined the SFS Chorus in joint performances as well as strutting their own
stuff.

With a hall full of proud parents and relatives, popping flashbulbs
before (but not during) the concert, George began the program with a
Mormon-Tabernacle-sized performance of Vaughan Williams's "O Clap Your
Hands," the sound filling and stretching Davies' oversized hull of nearly
1 million cubic feet, but still containing the music - the result was
"big," but not noisy.

Volume and mood shifted immediately with Byrd's "Ave verum corpus,"
the massed choirs singing quietly and majestically.  The performance of
Gabrieli' s "In ecclesiis" featured soloists placed around the hall: mezzo
Virginia Gnesa Chen, tenor J.  Wingate Greathouse, baritones Steven Rogino
and Chad Runyon.

After the rafter-shaking Widor, and George's personable and effective
"rehearsal" of the audience for the program-closing Vaughan Williams "The
Old Hundredth Psalm Tune," came the largest, most ambitious work on the
program: the Bruckner Mass in E minor.

Thirty select singers from each school joined the 100-voice SFS Chorus in
a performance that began and ended spectacularly well, but bogged down in
the middle.  There, almost as a resting point, the music sounded curiously
mannered, un-impassioned.  Picking up with the Sanctus and then peaking
with the very brief Benedictus, Osanna and Agnus Dei sections, George
brought the work to an impressive conclusion.  A chamber orchestra,
consisting of SFS woodwinds and brass, gave all the works in the first
half solid support.

The generous and varied program continued in the second half with combined
choruses performing traditional Czech songs (with Mina Kanaridis and Steven
Rogino, soloists; Marc Shapiro, piano), works by Charles Villers Stanford,
Bach and Moses Hogan, but this was also the opportunity for individual
turns.

Conducted by Ken Rawdon, the Mt.  Eden High School Chamber Chorale of
Hayward sang Eric Whitacre's "With a Lily in Your Hand"; the Napa High
School Chamber Choir offered Morton Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium,"
under the direction of TravisRogers.  Joseph Piazza's Piedmont High
School A Cappella Choir sang a work in Polish by Polish composer Tadeusz
Szeligowski; and the San Ramon Valley High School Concert Choir, under Ken
Abrams' direction, performed Mendelssohn's "Richte mich, Gott," in Kienneth
Jennings' arrangement.

Janos Gereben/SF
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