It had been seven years since the Chatham Chorale Chamber Ensemble had performed The Outermost House, the musical arrangement featuring the music of composer Ronald Perera and the text of Henry Beston.
There were some noteworthy changes in the lineup, most notably Robert Finch as the narrator and Kendra Colton singing soprano. Even with changes, the Chatham Chorale delivered a top-notch performance once again, this time at the Dennis Union Church in Dennis in the first of two performances on Saturday.
The performance was part of the Fall for the Arts series of events, which are occuring in Falmouth, Hyannis and Dennis over the weekend. The performance was made possible by the Jeremiah Kaplan Foundation, Dennis Union Church and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
Finch, stepping into the lofty position once held by Robert J. Lurtsema and, later, Paul Nossiter, delivered Beston’s prose with authority. The Wellfleet author of such noteworthy Cape Cod nature books such as Death of a Hornet and Common Ground (among many others), Finch was also the author of the introduction to the latest editions of Beston’s Outermost House. It’s hard to imagine anyone else being more qualified for the role.
Pianist Donald Enos, rolling with the opening notes of East of America, was in perfect synch with Finch. Colton, who replaced Nancy Armstrong, made her presence known early, right from the opening lines of My Western Windows, and was soon joined by the entire Chorale. It was the beginning of another hour of brilliance.
Finch continued to impress from the narrator’s podium in A New Sound on the Beach, A Year Indoors, and The Wreck of the Montclair. I particularly liked his commanding presence in Now Come the Sea Fowl, with the powerful line “Now come the sea fowl and the wild fowl to the beach from the lonely and darkening north …” building up to a crescendo at “from the nest-strewn crevices and ledges of Atlantic rocks no man has ever named or scaled.” The sense of calm quickly returned with the next line about the flight of swans, with their course being “as direct as an arrow from a bow.”
The Multiplicity of Insect Tracks, where Beston observes how life is still going on under the sand, even in the dead of winter, is one of the most impressive in the piece. The staccato from the flutes and percussion, along with Colton’s punctual delivery, truly brings the summer creatures to life.
The program concluded with Finch and Enos on My Year Upon the Beach, followed by the climatic Hold Out Your Hands Over the Earth, feautring the closing words of Beston’s literary classic. Those words are powerful enough in print, but the Chorale takes it to another level at this point. You can almost feel the joy Beston must have been experiencing during this closing piece.
If there was one down side to the program, it was the fact the audience was rather small in numbers, probably the curse of an indoor event being held on a beautiful autumn day.
The performance is available on CD from Albany Records. Should the Chorale perform The Outermost House again, go see it and experience a literary classic in a whole new way. Beston himself would have loved it.
