After hearing the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and Artistic Director Noel Edison last Wednesday night, it was a mixed success. It was a nuanced approach, with a special focus upon subtlety and the withholding certain melodic passages that Edison felt needed to whisper rather than call out. At other times, Edison didn't hesitate to push the choir forth and allow it to chime like carillon bells over the streets of Bach's mid-eighteenth-century Leipzig.
From the stabbing consonants of its Kyrie, through the stirring syncopation of its Credo, Edison did a fine job of maintaining a singular thread uniting the work.
