Music Review
Boston Philharmonic with Chorus pro Musica
At Symphony Hall, April 24
Back in the (medieval European) day, the one thing more frightening than death was sudden death without warning, coming without the chance to prepare and repent. By contrast, Sunday’s Symphony Hall performance of Verdi’s Requiem by the Boston Philharmonic and Chorus pro Musica was well-prepared, to the tune of seven full rehearsals. Benjamin Zander had last conducted the piece, with the same two groups, in 1981 — leaving three decades for additional consideration. But the concert instead transmitted that medieval unease, emphasizing the music’s capacity for sheer suddenness.
Verdi approached the Requiem — already a dramatically rich liturgy — on unabashedly operatic terms, stylistically and structurally: numbers and set-pieces, solos and choruses following on each other, establishing atmosphere, advancing plot, elucidating character. On Sunday, the scenes shifted with maximum, disorienting abruptness, lyric supplications swamped by walls of sound, and vice versa. Much of that was Zander’s conducting, crisp and sharp, often even in gentler passages, his baton flicking every beat upward, everything on a short leash. The result was rhythmically stark: fast or slow, meter or void, no purgatory.
A late winnowing of soloists — only soprano Angela Meade remained from the originally-announced lineup — added extramusical last-judgment overtones; the survivors made persuasive arguments for being among the elect. Tenor Issachah Savage surmounted the soaring “Ingemisco,’’ not just deploying operatic sobs, but seeming to expand one until it enveloped the hall. Bass-baritone Alfred Walker streamed pointed warmth, shifting from apocalyptic to avuncular just by shading his consonants. Mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti ran the Verdian gamut, anchoring the grim syllabus of the “Liber scriptus,’’ spinning a silvery thread in the “Lux aeterna.’’ Meade turned her “Libera me’’ into an anthology of soprano stage sorrow, launching high-note salvos from a platform of controlled restraint.
Chorus pro Musica, under the direction of Jamie Kirsch, extended that operatic spirit, 120-plus voices coming together as one for both full-out terror and some exceptionally vivid stage whispers. The orchestra, too, was theatrically keen: the cellos, led by Rafael Popper-Keizer, traversing the tightrope of the “Offertorium’’ to salvation; the brass (principals Kevin Owen, Eric Berlin, Don Davis, and Donald Rankin) bringing the day of wrath with diabolical relish; everyone amplifying color and attack. It elaborated a performance of shifting spotlights: more close-up than compass, more power than sweep, more visceral than metaphysical. Verdi’s ultimate drama became a stretch of disciplined time channeling the trepidation of not knowing the hour or the day.
Boston Philharmonic with Chorus pro Musica
At Symphony Hall, April 24
Matthew Guerrieri can be reached at matthewguerrieri@gmail.com.
