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REVIEW: ASO sings Brahms ‘German Requiem’
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Along with great barbecue, abundant trees, a booming cultural scene, suburban sprawl and no water, we’re living in Brahms Requiem country.
Johannes Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem,” an 1869 concert-hall mass for the dead, places “German” as the adjective although the composer famously said he’d just soon have named it “A Human Requiem.” It’s a piece that many listeners find to be the most extreme — the most spiritual and humane, outwardly hardened yet soul-soothing, world-weary yet optimistic, contemplative and “deep” — in the entire classical repertoire.
And it was especially close to the late Robert Shaw, whose Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performances drew international acclaim. They last performed it together in 1997, celebrating the centennial of the composer’s death. You still hear Atlantans and New Yorkers talk about those Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall shows, which felt like profoundly spiritual events.
That legacy spurred the Telarc label — which recorded Shaw and the ASO’s interpretation in 1984 — to re-record it this weekend under current music director Robert Spano.
That Brahms created his Requiem more as a comfort to the living than as a mourning for the dead allows a conductor to tailor it to his own conceptions of death (and also life). Spano’s reading Thursday might be labeled “objective” — emotionally neutral, ferociously precise, never indulgent to the needs of the heart, the psyche or the soul.
Most of the gravitas that plunged this music down to near its charted depths came from the ASO Chorus — Shaw’s hand-burnished instrument, now directed by his acolyte, Norman Mackenzie — which seems to retain a sort of institutional artistry. An ASO Chorus performance of this Requiem will always be a big deal.
Still, Spano sparked moments of hair-raising intensity throughout, and these accumulated as the work progressed. The martial strokes of the second movement, so rhythmically taut, suggested an otherworldly hand was guiding the proceedings. By the penultimate movement (of seven) the collective power of orchestra and chorus made it feel like the greatest place on the planet to be at a concert.
The two vocal soloists added immeasurably. Mariusz Kwiecien (sounds like “creation”), from Poland, is a once-in-a-generation baritone. With a gorgeous voice, he sang in lyrical, liquid tones that caressed a phrase, and also with the stone-tablet authority of an Old Testament prophet.
Soprano Twyla Robinson, too, is a major catch. With perfect diction, crisply articulated consonants and a warm, wide vibrato, she purred and comforted — finding the child in the mother, and vice versa, for the line “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” Bliss. (Robinson is making Atlanta a regular destination: she’ll be back in the spring to sing the Countess in Atlanta Opera’s “Marriage of Figaro.”)
The evening opened with Mozart’s “Masonic Funeral Music,” five minutes of ceremonial sounds that are better than any mortal, even an elevated freemason, could deserve.
Spano also programmed Jennifer Higdon’s “river sings song to trees” — note the lower case — which was initially the middle movement of her triptych depicting Atlanta, “CityScape.” It was commissioned by the ASO, which premiered and recorded it in 2002.
It’s remarkable as a stand-alone work. There are episodes that conjure a birds-eye view of sprawling Atlanta (as seen from an airplane flying into Hartsfield-Jackson, perhaps), of a velvety, verdant landscape. These give way to a sort of Buckhead pastorale — where Higdon grew up — of backyard forests and twittering birds, interrupted by the bustle of the city (or at least of Lenox Square mall.)
The images aren’t quite that precise, to be honest, but Higdon manages to charmingly evoke her own semi-urban domain without sinking into hoary cliches of city and nature. The composer now lives in Philadelphia but she bounded on stage to take a bow, another unexpected moment in a concert of surprises.
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By Classical Futurist
November 2, 2007 8:24 AM | Link to this
The ‘84 Shaw recording of “Ein deutsches Requiem” is an absolute favorite!