July 01, 2002 BBC Singers/Singer BY GEOFF BROWN Concert Christ Church, Spitalfields HE HAS been called the “Jewish Pavarotti”, and when you hear Alberto Mizrahi open his throat wide and deliver you know why. On Wednesday night at Christ Church, Spitalfields, the celebrated American cantor joined forces with the BBC Singers in a programme prepared by the conductor Malcolm Singer, exploring the Jewish liturgical repertoire across the centuries. Mizrahi was charismatic and fearless, unabashedly emotional as the repertoire demands, the tone full and golden, though sometimes pinched at the top. In one respect he is Pavarotti plus. Big Lucy is not notable for leaping into falsetto at the drop of a hat and carrying on, expressive force undimmed. For Mizrahi this is no problem at all, as he proved in the opening traditional Sephardic prayer Respondemos. Stacked up against his communicative powers and the finesse of his rhapsodic melismas, the voice’s odd rough edges paled into insignificance. Whatever he did, he held you spellbound. The BBC Singers, never afraid to sing out, proved almost ideal colleagues. When the settings called for drones, there they were, men’s voices down in their boots but never giving a sense of the vocal barrel being scraped. When soloists stepped out from the mass in Schubert’s Tov L’hodos, written for a Viennese synagogue, and Schoenberg’s De Profundis, you feared falling masonry. The choir could blend, too, the women adept at cradling notes in a honeyed embrace. Iain Farrington, switching from piano to portable organ, offered nimble support. The Schoenberg, his last completed work, gave the ears a thrilling challenge. Jewish chant elements fused with the atonal scamperings of serial technique and the spoken song of sprechgesang, all working to express Psalm 130’s cry from the depths. But in this programme the cross-fertilisation of centuries and styles was everywhere. Kiddush, Kurt Weill’s prayer of sanctification, written in New York in 1946, threw in Broadway sweetness, the blues and a sprinkling of jazz. Salamone Rossi, Monteverdi’s contemporary, sang his God’s praises through antiphonal baroque polyphony — sounding glorious in Hawksmoor’s church. A 9th-century melody, notated in the 12th by Obadiah the Proselyte, came dressed in a discreet modern arrangement. As Mizrahi proceeded through song, chant and lively spoken comments, the world outside Christ Church sometimes crept in. Motorbikes encircled, of wavering pitch. An electronic tinkling could be heard. But these had no effect. We were locked, enthralled, into a timeless world of prayer and praise, expectation and joy, riding the notes with the Jewish Pavarotti.