Choir-chorus starts mushy, but finds voice
By George Hubbard
There were enough people on the Gaillard Auditorium stage Thursday night to have performed Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand." That worked pretty well for Francis Poulenc's "Gloria," but Mozart's "Requiem" was less well served.
The Westminster Choir and the Charleston Symphony Chorus did not provide enough "pointe" to energize Poulenc's score at the beginning, so things got off to a mushy start. After a quite magical "gratias agimus tibi" for unaccompanied voices, though, the situation improved, and the entrance of soprano Kiera Duffy seemed just the needed catalyst.
The work drove forward to an exciting conclusion in the vividly contrasted "quoniam" and "Amen" sections.
Gustav Mahler was notorious for adding instruments and even extra music to the scores of his predecessors. Had he gotten hold of Joseph Flummerfelt's copy of Mozart's "Requiem?" That huge chorus and stage-filling orchestra made one fear the worst. Certainly it was a force that Mozart, even in his final delirium, could never have imagined.
The excellent quartet of soloists - Anne-Carolyn Bird, soprano; Marjorie Elinor Dix, mezzo-soprano; Mark Thomsen, tenor; and Stephen Morscheck, bass-baritone; were well matched in clarity and elegance of tone. Their singing of the "Benedictus" was especially gratifying, with Dix and Morscheck doing outstanding work.
The chorus was thrilling in many places throughout the piece; particularly notable was the "Rex tremendae" section, though they sang with a force of sound that Berlioz might have relished. In the lengthy "Domine Jesu Christe" and "quam olim Abrahae" sections their tempo began to flag a bit - only Disney could keep large animals dancing up to the beat.
There were prolonged cheers and bravos at the end, but I have just a couple of quibbles. Maybe I just couldn't see or hear them through that forest of fiddles, but I'm pretty sure Mozart's basset horns were missing. Also, in a festival setting, one should be able to expect the chorus to pronounce Poulenc's Latin with a French accent, and Mozart's with a Viennese.
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psnead (anonymous) says...
It seemed to me that Flummerfelt had not pulled the full range of drama from the Mozart Requiem. The choruses were extremely well prepared, a fact that showed in their near-flawless execution of the "Christe eleison" fugal acrobatics.
But in the big moments there was a bit missing from the drama of the Requiem, perhaps as Mr. Hubbard suggests because it's hard to restrain the various Requiem "fortes" given such a large chorus. (Still, it certainly can be done. I expect the Gaillard stage provides less than ideal "feedback" to choristers and conductor.) Certainly the voices had been exercised in the Poulenc piece; Flummerfelt may simply have overworked them.
I'd disagree a bit about the soloists for the Mozart piece. The mezzo and bass seemed adequate, and the soprano a bit better than that. I found the tenor voice by contrast relatively shallow and unmoving. Of course I regard the solo and solo-ensemble sections of the Requiem as minutes to be lived through not relished, and of course the familiar Benedictus as always had its moments.
But the delight of the Requiem for me is always the remarkable ways in which Mozart used the chorus to create such a broad range of emotional content, and only the poorest of assays could prevent us from the wonderful range of right-brain thrills and suspense in this piece. And of course we're always left to wonder what we'd be listening to, had it been Mozart himself who completed the composition.
It was my first hearing of the Poulenc Gloria and I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the work with all its syncopations and dissonances. Delightful piece. The soprano soloist sounded wonderful to me, but my wife who has sung the piece in chorus thought she had not been quite strong enough.
We agreed, though, and speaking with no intention of irony, that the flowing drapery of Ms. Duffy's alabaster gown and her lilting physical presence on stage were wonderfully transporting. From our nosebleed seats, I had a wonderful impression of the soloist seeming to swoop and soar about the hall.
June 5, 2009 at 8:53 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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