Crisp black tuxedos, flowing red dresses and gallant blue robes filled the stage of the Dvorak Concert Hall Sunday as different choirs came together to perform love songs. 

“Songs of Love” concert featured the University Mixed Chorus, the Concert Choir and singers from the Honor Choir Festival. 

The Honor Choir Festival was composed of students from high schools all over the area, including Charleston High School, Marshall High School, East Richland High School, Casey-Westfield High School and Maroa-Forsyth High School. 

Richard Rossi, a music professor, conducted both the Concert Choir and the Honor Choir in their songs. 

Each of the songs performed dealt with the beauty of love and the effects love can have, such as “Winter” from The Life of Love, performed by the Concert Choir. 

Like a soft snowfall, the piece began slowly and then gradually built itself into a fast-moving, ferocious ballad, with each note hitting like the fury of a blizzard.

The choir also performed “in time of daffodils,” based around an e.e. cummings poem.

“There’s always an ‘a-ha’ moment after every phrase,” Rossi said. 

He also said he had wanted to perform this song for years, but always had too many pieces that took up space.  

“I would always put this song in their books for about the last three or four years,” Rossi said. “And we never got around to doing it; so finally this year they were like, ‘Are we going to do this?’”

Accompanying each of the choirs on piano were Patrick Ward, a junior music education major, and Austin Stout, a junior music education major.

Sehong Oh, a graduate conductor, stepped in for Rossi during the Concert Choir’s piece “The Road Home.” 

Dressed in blue robes, high school students stepped up to the stage to perform a few of their own love ballads following the Concert Choir.

Among the songs they performed were “If Music be the Food of Love” and the uplifting “O Mistress Mine.”

As a grand finale, each of the choirs came together to sing the tragically melancholy song “Not a Day Goes By…,” written by Stephen Sondheim and arranged by Robert Pagetv.

The song quickly turned from a sad melody to an encouraging ballad, with the combined voices of the choirs booming at the end. 

As a collective force, the choirs’ resounding sound belted across the concert hall, and the song had a molding of both men and women’s voices.

The only fault was in the opening song by the University Mixed Chorus, titled “The Water is Wide.”

Unable to rise higher than the powerful sound of the piano, collectively the voices faded past the first few rows.

However, with the next song “Come To Me, O My Love,” a hopeful-sounding melody, the chorus members found their voice and were able to raise the sound level to produce a coherent, mesmerizing sound. 

As a precursor to Valentine’s Day, each of the songs arranged were able to capture the ideals of love and the magnificence it represents.

Bob Galuski can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].