Richard Eaton Singers triumph at 60th anniversary

A 60th anniversary comes along only once in a lifetime and the Richard Eaton Singers are making the most of it.

Under the direction of Dr. Leonard Ratzlaff, RES debuts its Perfect Pitch season this Friday at the Winspear Centre featuring Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 and Joseph Hayden’s Te Deum XXIII.

Accompanied by the 55-member Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, this concert also welcomes special guests soprano Laura Whalen, mezzo-soprano Anita Krause, tenor Michael Colvin and bass Nathan Berg.

The 130-member choir, with its unified wall of sound, is the largest and most proficient choir of classical music in Edmonton. For the last six decades, it has used the power of its voice to extol lofty goals.

For St. Albert baritone Jim McDonald, his passion for music and the camaraderie between the singers makes every rehearsal a fleeting moment to look forward to.

“When you put 135 people together with the ESO, it makes a sound that gets into the marrow of your bones and gets into your soul. Although the text may have ancient words, it’s still relevant today. Just the beauty of the words and music can leave the soul very satisfied.”

A retired lieutenant colonel and now a division supervisor with Edmonton Transit, McDonald was still stationed in the army when he discovered the choir.

“I was sitting in Wainwright during exercises and I had a minute. I decided to check it out on computer,” he says adding his previous experience had been limited to church choirs.

Since he joined in 2006, the choristers have been on a reciprocal tour with the Vancouver Bach Choir premiering John Estacio and John Murrell’s The Houses Stand Not Far Apart, a work dedicated to peace.

McDonald has also performed with Edmonton Opera, and in December 2010 was part of a flash mob that descended on City Centre Mall to sing Christmas carols.

Although Ratzlaff, now the musical director for 30 years, enjoys the spontaneity of flash mobs, his overall standards for the ensemble are more exacting and he has a strong sense of tradition.

Back in the ’70s, Larry Cook was the musical director. But in the spring of 1981, after an eight-year tenure, he resigned to accept a position in North Carolina.

When Ratzlaff arrived onboard, Te Deum was already programmed as part of the season’s repertoire. Looking back on the choral group’s accomplishments, Ratzlaff felt the eight-minute Te Deum, originally commissioned from Empress Marie Therese of Austria, was a perfect warm-up piece.

“It’s very energetic. It has lots of very fine writing for the voice and it is very upbeat.”

The 70-minute Missa Solemnis, however, is the concert centrepiece and is considered a major choral work in the classical repertoire. Beethoven composed this work for the installation of Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Moravia.

“Because it ranks at such a high level, it makes it one of the harder pieces to do. There are more demands on the singers. When he wrote it, Beethoven had been deaf for 10 to 15 years and he was coming to the end of his career. It has a big range and there are high parts for all the singers. It is one of the most demanding, yet offers one of the most exhilarating and powerful experiences.”

Additional St. Albert voices singing at the concert include Mike Otto, Stan Beck and Roswitha and Claus Knoefel.