‘We need to be reminded of kindness and goodness and beauty.’ Chorale presents requiem

The Kansas City Chorale, conducted by Charles Bruffy, has an international reputation as one of the finest choirs performing Russian music. That’s an astounding feat for a choir from the heart of America.

Our hometown chorale is adding to its reputation with a new release on the Naxos label: Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers. Kastalsky’s Requiem is a powerful addition to the ensemble’s Russian discography, which includes the Grammy-winning All Night Vigil by Rachmaninoff and Grechaninov’s Passion Week.

In addition to the Kansas City Chorale, the recording features the Cathedral Choral Society, the Clarion Choir, the Saint Tikhon Choir and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Leonard Slatkin. It was recordedd in 2018 in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., its first performance of the work since its 1917 premiere in St. Petersburg.

Kastalsky’s Requiem is a massive work that is unique among Russian Orthodox choral for many reasons, not least in its use of non-Orthodox texts and music, like the Gregorian chant. Kastalsky envisioned the Requiem as a sacred mystery play and a civic ceremony to honor the victims of World War I. He had in mind a staging that included depictions of nurses, a Greek clergyman, Russian peasants, Serbs, Americans, Hindu priests and a Japanese religious procession, among other representatives of the war’s victims.

“The other Russian pieces we have done have all been for unaccompanied voices,” Bruffy said. “But in this piece, we used an over-the-orchestra kind of singing versus the more contained if not delicate singing that we strived for in our previous Russian recordings.”

The performance was also a homecoming of sorts for Bruffy, who first made his mark singing with the Robert Shaw Chorale, which was always accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

“It was such an old home thrill for me because that’s the orchestra we always used to sing with. Robert Shaw in Carnegie Hall,” Bruffy said. “They still have the same concert mistress and several of the same instrumentalists. It was really fun to connect with them and let them know I was still doing it.”

The recording is also a satisfying fix for the Kansas City Chorale’s many fans who may not hear the choir in live performance for quite some time. And for Bruffy, attempts at Zoom performances with “the Brady Bunch kind of screen montage” are sorely lacking.

“What our singers are not able to do in a virtual setting is sense each other,” he said.

“We sense when our neighbors are going to breathe, we sense when the company is going to breathe, how we are going to urge a line or relax a line, how we’re going to morph through vowels. All of those things have to do with a corporate brain that is just not available when we’re sitting with headphones in our living room just contributing our own part.”

In the meantime, Bruffy says, the Kansas City Chorale is looking at Plan B, figuring out innovative ways to use technology to achieve the live sound for which the chorale is acclaimed.

“We’re still working on how to accomplish it,” Bruffy said. “In the old days, our only job was to figure out how to get an acoustic to work for us. Now we have to figure out how to get the acoustic, or lack thereof, and all of the technological challenges to come together and produce something that our audiences are accustomed to.”

For the time being, however, Bruffy is profoundly grateful that he and the Kansas City Chorale were able to record the Kastalsky before the pandemic struck. While the Requiem speaks to the pain of World War I, it has meaning for those struggling in the current situation.

“Vladimir Morsosan, who has helped coach us on all of our Russian recordings, says something about how ‘you can hear the tears of many nations in this piece,’” Bruffy said.

“I hope people will find the recording a very high-level aesthetic experience. I hope they will find beauty in it, but more importantly, I hope they just feel something. I think that especially now we need to be reminded of kindness and goodness and beauty.”

For more information and to purchase the album, www.kcchorale.org.

You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.