Sacred Works:
maestro John Nelson and the greatest choral show on earth
Story by Joshua Wickerham

Imagine this. The Shanghai premiere of Felix Mendelssohn's last major work, Elijah, the dramatic sacred oratorio celebrating the prophet, is an overwhelming success. More than 1,000 amateur and professional singers entrance a massive audience at a sold out show in Luwan Stadium. Baroque recordings, heretofore unavailable in China, fly off the shelves at local CD shops. The culture of spiritual music comes alive in China and nothing is as it was.

A far-fetched scenario? Perhaps not.

"It is important to recognize that Elijah is a very old story," says Irving Berlin Prize-winning conductor John Nelson, founder of Soli Deo Gloria, a non-profit organization which encourages composers and conductors to promote great sacred works, and the current director of L'Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. "Elijah is about a man very devoted to his ideals, a man of the desert, of great courage. Elijah is a story about father figures. The further you look back, the more you realize every culture has these archetypes."

"Though I could count the performers at the Shanghai Opera House who believe in God on one hand," Nelson continues, "the important thing to remember is that composers gave their greatest effort to choral music. Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel believed that everyone is endowed with a desire for spiritual understanding. When they dealt with a story above ordinary world situations, they lifted themselves and their audiences to another level."

However, lifting a Chinese audience to similar heights means fulfilling some very specific needs. When you talk about the development of choral music in China, you have to put it in the context of its overall decline in the world. In China, there is no tradition of the music that most Westerners have experienced through the church.

Zhang Guoyang, President of the Shanghai Opera House, one of the event's organizers, echoes that assessment. "Most Chinese like Western classical -- and especially romantic music -- but they don't know anything about Baroque and spiritual music." Because of its religious themes, Zhang thinks Elijah might be a little difficult for Chinese audiences to understand.

Perhaps, but Shanghai-born New Yorker Shirley Young, who is the main organizer of the event, says the need to introduce this kind of music to China is simple. "In China, there's a local tradition of choral music, but sacred music is non-existent and experience has been fairly limited."

Indeed, "China’s history with traditional European music only really started in the 1950s," says Yu Zhen, head of the Shanghai Musicians' Association. Of course, it faced a few disruptions in the interim. But even during the turbulent years of the late 60s and early 70s, the Shanghai Music Conservatory maintained a professional choir, though it finally disbanded in the 90s.

Says tenor and Elijah soloist Warren Mok: "The premiere of Elijah on the [Chinese] mainland is artistically and culturally and religiously a breakthrough. It's really very meaningful. Twenty years ago, this couldn't have happened."

Indeed, China is changing and the event's organizers are optimistic that the time is ripe for a spiritual music awakening. Says Young: "Our hope is that this goes beyond a single performance event. We want to create a lasting impact."

For which Elijah is perfectly suited. And not only because it's one of the great choral pieces. It's also a thrilling dramatic statement, and very challenging for the performers. Tian Hao Jiang, the Beijing-born bass playing Elijah's title role, says he finds inspiration in the human voice. "In Beijing, there are over one thousand choral groups. I was invited to hear an amateur group and a third of them were blind. Now I'm someone who always looks into a singer's eyes. The eyes can become so passionate, so human, warm, so bright. Even with their sunglasses, even though they were blind, I felt I could see their eyes. The level of professionalism and dedication in Chinese amateur choral groups is amazing."

Equally amazing is the community choral event at Luwan Stadium, where Elijah's soloists will join New York Choral Society singers, amateur local and expat groups, and professionals from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Musician's Association, and the Shanghai Opera House.

Mok is especially excited to be performing with the Shanghai Opera House again. "In terms of pure sound, the Shanghai Opera House is the best in the whole Chinese territory. People need to hear it live because the human voice, when well sung, is the best instrument."

Four of Elijah's principal parts will be performed by American-trained professionals of Asian descent. Soprano Huang Ying and mezzo-soprano Liang Ning, despite being newcomers to the choral scene, are well-known names in the opera world. Moreover, both Huang and Liang made their film debuts in director Frederic Mitterrand’s version of the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly.

Huang has performed widely in the US; she made her Shanghai debut at the Grand Theatre in 2004 and is currently with the New York City Opera.

Liang got her Masters from Julliard, and later became a member of the American Opera Center. She's enjoyed a successful European career, singing at the Hamburg State Opera and Vienna State Opera.

Bass Tian Haojiang, who graduated from the Chinese Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, went on to get his master's degree at the University of Denver. Tian is excited about his title role in Elijah. "It's not an easy part and I like working on it," he told us from his home in New York.

Tian has sung around the world with greats like Placido Domingo and Pavarotti. He has performed with the Metropolitan Opera every season since he joined in 1991. He says he's happy to sing again in Shanghai because "Shanghainese audiences are well educated in classical music."

Tenor Warren Mok is also a veteran of the Shanghai stage; he co-produced his first opera a decade ago. Hong Kong-born, Mok attended school in New York and Hawaii, and has since appeared on stages around the world. He currently serves as artistic director of the Macau International Music Festival.

With a world class roster of talents, many of them Asian, spiritual music may very well come alive in China, by inspiring a new generation of adherents. "The larger cause is creating a relationship," says Young. "We're trying to do something beyond just performance, especially through young people."

"I could give you hundreds of examples from the letters people write me of this kind of music transporting them to other levels," says Nelson. "It always manages to inspire and trigger something. China is becoming such an open society. It is thrilling to be able to communicate with an audience that receives this work freshly. Every time I perform, it's something new. But in China, the audience is experiencing it for the first time, so it's really very special. Our hope is that we can inspire a generation, maybe even -- if I may be so bold -- an entire country."

copyright 2005 that's Shanghai.

View my flickr photoset here.
To hear a rehearsal, click here.