ORLANDO — The concert at Steinmetz Hall on Jan. 15, a celebration of British composer John Rutter’s 80th birthday, was a joint effort between an international orchestra and a local choir, both in excellent shape, but with a program that offered mixed results.
Thanks to the Dr. Phillips Center’s brilliant Great Orchestra series, which is making superb use of this state-of-the-art acoustic hall by presenting world-renowned orchestras, Orlando had the privilege of being the only city in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s current U.S. tour to feature Rutter conducting his own music. (The rest of the tour, which concludes Jan. 30 in Carmel, Ind., is led by music director Vasily Petrenko, with Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 as the main course).
Rutter, one of the most-performed living composers, whose Christmas music and sweetly accessible choral works are performed worldwide by professional and amateur ensembles, celebrated his milestone birthday in the fall of 2025 by conducting his own choral music in London and with the release of Reflections, his first entirely orchestral album.
The soul of the concert in Orlando — call it a stateside birthday reprise — was the Bach Festival Choir, a 90-year-old volunteer ensemble at the heart of Central Florida’s arts and culture scene. Although Rutter’s music is largely lightweight — the program would have benefited from a contrasting piece stronger than the selections from Joseph Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne — the choir delivered a first-rate performance of Rutter’s ebullient Magnificat, which sets to music the Biblical canticle of the Virgin Mary with Latin American dance rhythms.
Five rows of singers, 175 strong, towered behind the stage in the grand-tier chorus section at Steinmetz, sitting quietly during the first half of the concert. Prepared by John V. Sinclair, the group’s longtime artistic director, the Bach Festival Choir sang majestically, with a warm blend of voices, particularly in the middle register. The subtle overlaps of the score and the clear call-and-response between the male and female subgroups were as clean as you could expect. “Of a Rose, a lovely Rose” — an older composition of Rutter’s, which he incorporated into the Magnificat — encapsulated the affinity between the orchestra and the choir, collaborating for the third time since the opening of Steinmetz Hall.
The soloist was Clara Rottsolk, from Seattle, whose liquid-gold soprano combined smoothly with the orchestra in the quieter movements, as in the “Et misericordia,” in which she blended effectively with penetrating flutes and horns. Elsewhere, she struggled to project up to the top tier of the hall, where I sat, with her voice sometimes dropping out at the end of her phrases.
She also sang five selections from Chants d’Auvergne, a collection of French folk songs from the Auvergne region that Canteloube arranged for soprano and orchestra in the 1920s. There were standout solos for oboe (Tom Blomfield) and clarinet (Sonia Sielaff), with carefully articulated orchestral piano accompaniment. Rottsolk’s interpretive style and personality came more strongly, and endearingly, in the humorous “Lou coucut.” Rutter’s strength as a conductor was in maintaining an even level of dynamics, taming a relatively large orchestra to shape the mellow pastoral ambience of these lighthearted songs.
The concert also featured the U.S. premieres of Rutter’s Celebration Overture and Cityscapes, for large orchestra, both featured on the Reflections album. The Overture opens with a descending melody decorated with chimes, giving way to a Christmassy tune for horns that is passed around the woodwinds and trumpets. It brought to mind film music. Cityscapes, in three movements, also consists of short fanfares and motifs that make the rounds in the different instrumental groups. Looking animated for a man of 80, Rutter coaxed a full-bodied sound, taking advantage of the bloated brass section the score calls for, including five horns and a tuba.
The first movement of Cityscapes, titled “Big Apple,” paints a nostalgic picture of 1930s New York City, with hints of Broadway and Gershwin. “Lost City,” the slow second movement, represents Atlantis, with a very obvious air of mystery and suspense, although it makes more potent use of the orchestra in the climactic points, thundering with percussion. The upbeat finale, “Flower of Cities All,” aims to paint a portrait of London, where the composer was born, but his musical depiction is rather saccharine.
Although Rutter has a way of shaping the orchestra to effectively paint the mood of his evocative, lively compositions, his skills as a deeply melodic tunesmith fall short of delivering satisfying orchestral concert music. Cityscapes ends up feeling longer than it is, with simple melodic shapes and the repetition of short, hummable motifs that affix easily to the ear but undergo little development. Rutter’s orchestral music can be very vivid, giving you a mental image of the places and moods it aims to depict, but it just doesn’t do it in a very original or compelling way.
And that’s the reason a stronger non-Rutter selection would’ve added more balance to the program, making it more substantial. At the birthday celebration concert in London mentioned above, for instance, Rutter programmed Ralph Vaughan Williams’ wartime Symphony No. 5 — also lyrical and very approachable but significantly more nourishing — to complement his own music. Maybe he’ll program it here next time.
The Dr. Phillips Center’s Great Orchestra series continues on Feb. 20 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, followed by the Vienna Philharmonic on March 11 and 12.
