Last year, the Juilliard-based choral conductor Judith Clurman inaugurated Prism Concerts, at the recently renovated Central Synagogue in Manhattan. The synagogue is an opulent space, more acoustically contained than the average religious venue, and I've enjoyed both concerts I've attended there. I'd planned to mention the first event, an all-Handel evening, in a recent column, but space did not allow. Participating were Clurman's Festival Singers, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and a vocal team made up of soprano Jennifer Aylmer, mezzo-soprano Gigi Mitchell-Velasco, countertenor Randall Scotting, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass Kevin Burdette, handsomely delivering arias from Solomon, Esther, Belshazzar, Samson, and Judas Maccabaeus (all of Act III). Organist Martin Ennis played the "Cuckoo and the Nightingale" Concerto, and in a departure from the theme, the American Brass Quintet gave the premiere of Paul Moravec’s ingratiating Cornopean Airs. The second Prism concert, drawing on the services of the superb Brentano Quartet, presented music from Vienna, specifically Schubert, Brahms, Zemlinsky, and Schoenberg. Prism's season ends on May 14 with a thoughtful program devoted to three composers of Jewish origin — Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. None other than Deborah Voigt will be the soprano soloist. Little-known fact about Zemlinsky: his mother was the child of a Sephardic Jew and a Bosnian Muslim, and his Catholic father converted to Judaism in order to marry her.
