Excerpt from

Child's 'Estrella' has a somber strength

To hear Peter Child's "Estrella," a piece the Cantata Singers commissioned in the 1980s and revived for last weekend's concerts, is to be struck by an intensity of political and ethical engagement that's not much with us these days. "Estrella" is a dramatic cantata lasting about half an hour, and it takes as its subject the Sandinista movement, US foreign policy, and the decades-long conflict that exacted so terrible a price from the people of Nicaragua. Child was taking several risks. One, of course, was that, if it were too topical, too specific, too "effective," it might date soon and badly. A perfectly reasonable question is: How does it play now?

The composer seems, in the event to have chosen very shrewdly what not to do. Anger certainly figures in the piece, but that's not the prevailing tone. The texts, in English and Spanish, allow events and consequences largely to speak for themselves and there's no attempt, musically, at evoking local color. If anything, the atmosphere hearkens to the darker cantatas and the Passions of Bach. As sound, it tends to cluster around the lower pitch ranges, yielding a variety of glowering tone colors that shows the hand of a master. The soloists, mezzo Gloria Raymond and baritone David Kravitz, not only managed the firm, confident deflamatory style that was required, but a sure purchase on the notes, which were often laid out in jagged, tough, thorny lines. Neither was the writing for chorus and orchestra bland. David Hoose conducted a keen, committed performance.