Crooning Glory

Bach’s end all to mark Choralis season close

By Janet Rems

Courtesy of Choralis

Gretchen Kuhrmann thinks big, which means that Kuhrmann, artistic director of Choralis, doesn’t shy away from a challenge. For the past six months, she and the 100-member mixed-voice chorus she founded in 2000 have been meticulously tackling what is widely regarded as classical music’s supreme masterwork, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.”

Choralis is performing this “perfect” choral work, the synthesis of every musical idea Bach employed in his lifetime, with professional orchestra and five soloists June 26 at the Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria. Joining the adult chorus, members of which must audition every year, are high school students from Choralis’ weeklong annual SummerFest classes, hosted at its home base, the Falls Church Presbyterian Church.

In addition, Kuhrmann and her mentor, Bach expert and director of Washington, D.C.’s Bach Consort J. Reilly Lewis, will lead a free discussion of the work, complete with musical examples, June 18 at the church.

For Kuhrmann, 46, whose personality is as large as her musical scope, performing Bach’s “Mass” is nothing less than a “life-changing experience.”

Actively preparing for this concert for two years prior to beginning rehearsals, Kuhrmann, in a conversation in a church rehearsal room, says it is a work that must be approached with respect. For a musician, she describes it as “touching the hem of God.”

She insists, however, you do not have to be religious to enjoy it. “It is a wonderful spiritual journey, a transcendent experience, which is different.”

The Manassas resident was inspired to undertake the “Mass” literally seconds after conducting it five years ago. That first performance was, in her own assessment, simply not good enough.

Her job, she stresses, is not “traffic control” but to “bring out every nuance … two hours of wonderful moments.”

Kuhrmann, with her self-admitted flair for the dramatic, also promises her approach will “build to a goose-bump moment” but “never be drama for drama’s sake.”

A demanding conductor, teacher and the daughter of a diplomat who studied extensively in Germany, Kuhrmann concedes that participation in Choralis is not for everyone, such as people who simply want to sing. Her nurturing but exacting approach has attracted a devoted, intergenerational group of people who want a professional-level musical experience.

One of the fastest-growing choral groups in the region, Choralis is divided into three performing ensembles: the larger mixed-group chorus, a 25-voice select chamber group and a youth chorus, grouped by age.

For Choralis board chair Margaret O’Reilly, 60, a veteran choral singer and alto, the experience of preparing to perform “Mass” has been both exhilarating and terrifying. “Every rehearsal is a voice lesson, a history lesson,” she says. And because Choralis is relatively small when compared to some of the region’s 300-member groups, “you can’t hide. … In a chorus this size, you’ve got to learn it and get it right.”

For details about Choralis’ performance of “Mass in B Minor,” or the June 18 preshow discussion, visit www.choralis.org. 

(May 2009)

Tags: Bach, Choralis, chorus, Gretchen Kuhrmann, Music