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Death, Gloom and Mozart at the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Friday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
Friday in Symphony Hall, Donald Runnicles presented a concert loaded with so many potent messages that it was unclear which, if any, were well served.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor isn’t shy about linking music to political ideals. In remarks to the audience, he alluded to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and described the evening’s opening work, Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s 1934 “Miserae,” as “an artist’s response” to early reports of German concentration camps.
“Miserae” is a symphonic poem at turns mournful, martial and sarcastic. The ASO played it cleanly but without much invested emotion.
Follow Hartmann with Richard Strauss’ “Death and Transfiguration” and Mozart’s Requiem, however, and another historical theme is suggested. The hyper German nationalism of the 1930s led to widespread misery and genocide — and also severed the Austro-German musical tradition that stretched back several hundred years, to Mozart and before.
Hartmann and Strauss were the last in that elite lineage, killed off, culturally speaking, by their own leaders. A fraught program, to say the least. Yet Runnicles left unsaid its implications for a contemporary audience.
For the evening’s third and final work concerning death, Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, Runnicles elected to perform Robert D. Levin’s 1993 completion. This edition follows current notions of “early music” style — stripped of romantic varnish — and is rapidly becoming the standard edition of our time. There have already been several recordings of the Mozart/Levin Requiem; the ASO is recording it this weekend for Telarc.
Since there is no universally acceptable version of Mozart’s Requiem, it is fair that each generation takes a fresh look at what the master left us in order to create a new edition. It’s a fun process, filling in the gaps of a torso masterpiece. Alas, Levin’s handiwork is scrupulously Mozartean in style, so scrupulous as to be bland.
That Levin himself composed a brief “Amen” (placed after the “Lacrimosa” and based on a Mozart sketch) raises all sorts of authorship and identity issues. Art restoration is a messy, inexact process. But what’s the harm? Unlike a “scholarly” touch-up of a Leonardo painting or Michelangelo sculpture — where introduced chemicals might do more harm than good — a musical reworking does not mar the original fragments, at least not past a given performance.
In performance, Runnicles assembled a balanced, rich-voiced vocal quartet: soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo Ruxandra Donose, tenor John Tessier and bass Eric Owens.
He also drew exquisite sounds from the chamber-sized orchestra and chorus, although much of the music making was curiously bloodless, performed more with respect and correctness than heart and soul.
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