No, unfortunately it does not, and it’s disappointing when that happens. One hopes for the quality level of the Chorus to remain the same as in their past performances, but it’s not always the case.

One might say, “They were stellar in the (name of work) yet in this piece they’re not as good. What happened? Why is that?” And some of the Choruses I have promoted have been stellar in one performance but not as good in a subsequent performance and I chose not to feature them in that performance. Yes, I had planned to promote them again, but that soprano section had problems in this work where I heard wobbling and fluttering soprano voices or a thin sound — I was thinking to myself: they sound like the soprano section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC) on their high notes and regular readers know how I feel about the TFC by now — so I didn’t promote that performance.

So why the change in the choral quality level? Well, there can be many factors/reasons for it, and not entirely because of the Chorus. I had my friend who has a trained choral ear listen to the performance I’m talking about but that I’m not promoting. He said the same thing I did about it. The piece I’m talking about is Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elias. I’ve yet to find an ideal performance of Mendelssohn’s Elias online in video format. It’s just not there. I don’t know what it is about that oratorio that makes it so difficult to get the choral parts just right or as close to choral excellence as possible. So far, the performance from Amsterdam that I featured awhile back is the closest to one I can recommend. My friend also prefers that performance. It’s better mic’d and the Chorus is excellent overall. That performance is below:

If a Chorus is going to have problems, it’s nearly always the soprano section — that’s predictable — that comes out of perfect intonation at times and sounds wobbly on their top notes or they sound shrill or cackling. (Think the soprano section of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, but it’s not limited to them). The thing is, I liked Tanglewood in their early days. They were one of my favourite Choruses. But there was this big gap in time where I didn’t hear them, and the next time I did hear them — at Senator Ted Kennedy’s funeral — I was stunned at what I heard. It was not good. I heard what sounded like feeble wobbling women’s voices like that of your average Church Choir and I remember asking: What has happened to the TFC? What had happened is that the late John Oliver, the Founder and Chorus Director, had kept choristers in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus — they became friends/buddies? – and so people stayed in the Chorus who should have been shown the door years ago. Their voice was no longer up to the quality level expected of the Chorus, and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra also noticed this. But trying to be polite, all they would say in a mealy-mouthed way was, “I hear some unevenness.” Unevenness? That doesn’t even begin to cover it! What about those god-awful cackling, fluttering and wobbling sopranos who sound like they’re screaming on their top notes in the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth or Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“The Resurrection”)? They sounded awful and not to the standards of choral excellence expected by the BSO as the Official Chorus of the BSO. For those who don’t know, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus was founded to be the Official Chorus of the Tanglewood Music Festival at the suggestion of Seiji Ozawa, and over time they also became the Official Chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops with performances in Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Other reasons for a lesser quality performance by a Chorus: It can be the performance hall acoustics or the mic’ing wasn’t right or as good, so the Chorus had a different sound. In this instance, Mendelssohn’s Elias was performed in a different Concert Hall than their superb Brahms’s EDR. Or it can be the placement of the choristers on the risers. Or, it can be that the Chorus had less time to prepare the piece so it wasn’t ready for performance. They got it as ready as they had time for but they could have used more time and hope no one will notice. And often no one will, but me and people like me who have a choral background and Orchestra Chorus experience. Nevertheless, the Chorus got the exposure.

Pet peeve: The Washington Post has one music reviewer who always uses the wrong “chorus” word even when it’s printed correctly on the programme. What is wrong with the woman?! On the programme, it said “University of Maryland Chorus.” What did she write? “University of Maryland chorus.” Lower case. That’s the “chorus” that is the refrain for a hymn or a song, not the Chorus (capital C) that is part of the name of an ensemble. Where did she train not to know that? Or maybe she didn’t train. Or was that just sloppy writing?

Commenters under YT videos will gush excessively over the vocal soloists/screamers and the conductor and they will say nothing about the Symphony Chorus who performed the majority of the work. Other commenters know nothing about symphonic choral works so they gush over anything thinking that it must be good — whether it is or not — just because these performers got to be on that famous Concert Hall stage. Sigh. That happened with a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elias. As I mentioned earlier, their performance of the Mendelssohn was not as good as their performances of the Brahms’s EDR. I wanted to write that somehow in a YT comment, of course politely, but I knew the comment would not be well received no matter how I wrote it, no matter how politely I were to write it, and I would likely be considered a “troll,” so I said nothing. All other commenters were absolutely gushing over the performance, but mainly about the vocal soloists and not the Chorus, even though, again, the Chorus performed the majority of the oratorio and not the soloists who sat most of the time during the performance.