Concert Review: The Truth About Wolfgang

Manfred Hönick conducts Mozart's Requiem at the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Manfred Honeck signals victory (or something) at the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2019 The New York Philharmonic.

There is no unfinished work in the canon of Western art music that has more myth, legend and sheer bunkum associated with it than Mozart's Requiem. From the work's (true) mysterious origins to the (false) dramatic stories written around its composition, this work has acquired a life of its own in Western culture. This week at the New York Philharmonic, conductor Manfred Honeck led an all-Mozart program geared toward the music of 1791, the last, turbulent year of Mozart's life.

Concert Review: A Militant Faith

The Orchestra of St. Luke's and La Chapelle de Québec get mass-ive.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

New Orchestra of St. Luke's principal conductor Bernard Labadie (center)
lead vocal soloists  (soprano Lauren Snouffer, mezzo Susan Graham, tenor Lothar Odinius and bass-baritone Philippe Sly)
 and La Chapelle de Québec (rear)in a concert at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night. Photo by Adam Stoltman © 2018 Orchestra of St. Luke's

In its 44-year history, the musical direction of the Orchestra of St. Luke's has been steered by the musician appointed to the post of Principal Conductor. The latest to take the job is Bernard Labadie, the Quebécois conductor and early music specialist. So it is unsurprising that Mr. Labadie's first concert at Carnegie Hall leading his new orchestra was sacred music: Haydn's "Nelson" Mass and the Mozart Requiem.

The Verdi Project: Messa di Requiem

Verdi takes on the cosmos and the Church.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

It could be argued that the Verdi Requiem is his most...monumental achievement.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Following the triumphant reception of Aida,, Giuseppe Verdi had no more worlds to conquer. Aida marked the culmination of a long ambition to create a successful fusion between his own style and the grand spectacles that dominated the stage at theaters like the Paris Opera. Aida, with its blend of private anguish and public spectacle, fulfilled all of those requirements.

Concert Review: The Power and the Glory

The New York Philharmonic presents Verdi's Requiem.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert. Photo by Chris Lee © 2015 The New York Philharmonic.

Ever since its premiere in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi's setting of the Latin Mass for the Dead has been the subject of controversy and debate. Premiered in a church but planned for the concert hall, this work fuses Catholic liturgy with the awesome power of Verdi's dramatic music, creating a jet-fueled version of this very solemn text. On Friday night, New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert led a starry cast of soloists in his first New York performances of this enormoys work, the second of three scheduled this week.

Concert Review: The Unquiet Dead

Christopher Rouse's Requiem opens Spring for Music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert and Christopher Rouse (with hands raised) surrounded by the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2013 The New York Philharmonic.

Ever since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went to his grave without finishing his setting of the Mass for the Dead, the composition of a Requiem has been considered the crowning achievement of a career in composition. For Christopher Rouse, the first New York performance of his Requiem (at Monday's opening night concert of this year's Spring For Music festival at Carnegie Hall) is such an achievement: a culminating feat for one of America's most important modern composers.

As a model for his setting of the Requiem text, Mr. Rouse chose the Grande Messe des Morts by his hero Hector Berlioz as his model. There are some parallels between the two works. Mr. Rouse chose Berlioz' edition of the text, eliminating sections like the Libera Me and opting for heavy orchestration with an awful lot of percussion. However, he also drew inspiration from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, interleaving poetry in three different languages (mostly sung by a solo baritone) against the inexorable ritual of the Latin text. Here, the multi-lingual approach underlines the finality and universality of death, a grim message for this dark new century.

Concert Review: Judgment on Newark

The NJSO takes on the Verdi Requiem.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hanging in the balance: conductor Jacques Lacombe.
Photo by Philippe Champoux for Colbert Artists.

Great things can happen in Newark.

On Thursday afternoon, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Montclair State University Chorale tested that maxim with an ambitious program: playing the Verdi Requiem at a matinee audience mainly comprised of senior citizens bussed to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center from various retirement communities around the state. The concert, conducted by NJSO Music Director Jacques Lacombe was the first of three performances of this mighty choral work, a composition that saw the famed Italian opera composer branching out into sacred choral music.

Swinging Door Nixes Tanglewood Trip

Conductor Andris Nelsons cancels BSO commitment due to severe concussion.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Newly minted BSO music director Andris Nelsons was whacked in the head by a door
and will not conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Saturday at Tanglewood.

Strange news coming out of the Boston Symphony Orchestra press office today. According to a pair of statements issued this afternoon, the orchestra's new music director Andris Nelsons will not be leading the Verdi Requiem at Tanglewood on Saturday night, due to a swnging door.

Concert Review: Apocalypse At Last

The Philadelphia Orchestra plays Verdi's Requiem
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin begins his term
as the eighth music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Photo © 2011 The Rotterdam Philharmonic

Friday night on Broad Street found the Philadelphia Orchestra playing with renewed energy and purpose in Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem. This was also the first subscription concert at the Kimmel Center in the term of new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The eighth conductor to hold this post, Mr. Nézet-Séguin has waited in the wings for two years, receiving a buildup in the press and orchestral marketing that would be hard for any conductor to live up to.

Happily, Giuseppe Verdi's 1874 Requiem allowed Mr. Nézet-Séguin the opportunity to combine his strengths in symphonic and operatic repertory. This 90-minute work, a setting of the Mass of the Dead by the most important opera composer of the 19th century brings the power and narrative drive of Verdi's operas to liturgical material, making the sacred text an energizing, earthy experience.

Working without benefit of a score, Mr. Nézet-Séguin proved to be an adept navigator of this weighty work. He provided clarity and a beauty of texture to the opening statement of Requiem aeternam and the powerful, aria-like Kyrie that followed, with strong contributions from his four soloists: soprano Marina Poplavskaya, mezzo Christine Rice, tenor Rolando Villazón and bass Mikhail Petrenko.

We Ain't Goin' Out Like That

A Playlist for the Apocalypse

At Bayreuth, meeting the end of the world requires ridonkulous pants.
Deborah Polaski as Brünnhilde, Wolfgang Schmidt as Siegfried in Götterdämmerung.
Photo © 1998 Bayreuth Festival/Deutsche Grammophon.

In case you've been keeping up with the media (aside from Superconductor) the world is supposed to end tomorrow evening in a giant earthquake--or something. According to Bible number-cruncher Harold Camping, a bunch of people are going to be taken from Earth in the Rapture. The rest of us will enjoy listening to really good music without hearing those people's cell phones ring during piano recitals. Anyway, here's ten works to check out as we all prepare to check out.

10) Wagner: Götterdämmerung (the whole frickin' thing.)
We might as well start off this soundtrack to the apocalpyse with the final opera from Wagner's Ring cycle, which ends with a Germanic vision of the end of the world. Something about a cursed ring thrown into a river, a collapsing castle and 24 giant moving planks on a computer-controlled system just spells doomsday. The Solti recording from 1962 (made in Vienna with Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen) has been the benchmark for half a century.

9) Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (Apocalyptic)
Anton Bruckner's final completed symphony consists of huge slab-like chords of brass and strings, piled in an ever-reaching stairway to heaven as the composer grapples with the infinite. He spent so much time grappling with the Eighth that he never finished the even more ambitious Ninth--a lesson for us all.

8) Berlioz: Requiem
Tremendous orchestral and choral forces are required for Hector Berlioz' setting of the Latin Mass of the Dead. The Tuba Mirum (Last Trumpet) is announced by four offstage brass bands and twelve thundering kettledrums-definitely the soundtrack to some kind of 19th century apocalypse. The message: "God is coming! Look busy!" Colin Davis made two recordings: the first one is the one on my shelf.

7) Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"
The best funeral march ever written stands at the center of Beethoven's first long-form symphony. There are two dozen recordings in the standard catalogue, and another twenty or so that have been deleted by record companies preparing for the end of the world, or their industry as they know it. I like Claudio Abbado's second live recording with the Berlin forces.

6) Verdi: Falstaff
I thought about the Requiem here but a) I already picked the Berlioz piece and b) we all need to lighten up already. Verdi's Shakespearean comedy (and last opera) ends with a gorgeous fugue on the words "All the world's a joke." Not a bad way to go out.


5) Mozart: Idomeneo
If you're looking for an apocalyptic scenario, the prospect of being destroyed by a gigantic sea monster must appeal. Japan's genre of kaiju movies might have been inspired by this Mozart opera seria, where a Greek king runs afoul of the god Neptune and nearly gets stomped on by a giant, unspecified aquatic beast. Music's good too. I like James Levine's recording with the Metropolitan Opera forces and Placido Domingo as the king in deep water.

4) Mahler: Symphony No. 2 Resurrection
Gustav Mahler added a soloist and a chorus to this five-movement opus, which starts with a funeral march and ends with the dead busting out of their graves. Not quite a zombie apocalypse. The second Bernstein recording featuring the New York Philharmonic is a classic.

3) Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14
Part symphony and part song cycle, Shostakovich's penultimate symphony is a setting of 11 poems about death, written for two singers, a chamber orchestra and an unusual percussion section. Try Bernard Haitink's recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.


2) Messiaen: L'ascension
Just as the Rapture might send people running through the streets, Messiaen's music with its bird-songs and apocalyptic chords can send listeners running from the concert hall. "The Ascension", a 27-minute piece in four movements meditating on the resurrection of Jesus, is one of his more accomodating compositions. Also worthy: the Quartet For the End of Time, written in the chaos of World War II when the composer was held in the German Stalag-VIII-A prison camp.

1) Strauss: Tod und Verklärung
When Richard Strauss finally died, he commented that the experience was exactly as he had written it in this 22-minute tone poem, composed in his early period. (The title means Death and Transfiguration.) Herbert von Karajan's excellent recording with the Berlin Philharmonic is recommended as your guide to the world beyond.

Concert Review: Berlioz Requiem Tears the Roof Off

Robert Spano. Photo by Andrew Eccles.

Of all the major settings of the Latin Mass for the Dead, the one by Berlioz presents the thorniest problems for the conductor. On Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, Robert Spano and the Orchestra of St. Luke's met those challenges with a roof-raising performance of the Berlioz Requiem, to celebrate this year's Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop.

Written in 1837, the Berlioz Requiem requires immense forces to depict the Day of Judgement. In addition to a large orchestra and massive, multi-sectional chorus, Berlioz requires sixteen kettledrums and four brass bands, stationed in different parts of the hall. In this case, they were stationed in the first and second tiers of Carnegie Hall, two on each side. In other words, in addition to all his other musical innovations, Berlioz was one of the first composers to write spatial music--a technique developed in the 20th century by such diverse artists as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pink Floyd.


The climax of this work comes early with the Tuba Mirum, a depiction of the sounding of the Last Trumpet from the Book of Revelation. As the brass blare out the wrath of God, the sound carries across the void and is tossed from group to group, whirling around the audience's head in counterpart with the pounding of the bass drum and the hammering timpani. The audience is literally in the middle of the events from the last book of the Bible: a profound, if deafening experience.

Mr. Spano focused his energies on the orchestra and choristers before him: four groups assembled: the Carnegie Hall Festival Chorus, the Capital Pride of Leesville Road High School, the Concorde Vocal Ensemble, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus. The energetic conductor, who is celebrating his tenth year as head of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, seemed to have eyes in the back of his head--he didn't turn around once in the 90-minute performance.

Throughout the performance, the choristers popped up and down from their tiered seating as needed. Their singing had the mark of good sacred choral music--it made you believe in something higher thant the notes of the paper. Particularly moving were the hushed asides, in which the decidedly secular Berlioz uses every trick in his toolbox to contemplate the mysteries of the beyond. Tenor Thomas Cooley sang with warmth and power during the Sanctus. Perched above the brass bands in the Dress Circle, he was a literal voice from on high.

The St. Luke's forces provided expert accompaniment. The strings and woodwinds balanced well with the legion of kettledrums and brass, the shouts of glorious orchestral noise providing contrast with the work's most lyrical, reflective passages Even if the spatial and practical issues of the performance caused some of the brass antiphonal passages to go slightly awry, the work lost none of its impact.

Concert Review: Ozawa Returns, War Requiem Transcends

The conductor returns to Carnegie Hall.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

He's back: Seiji Ozawa.

Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra concluded their week-long residency at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night with a glowing performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The concert concluded the first part of the JapanNYC Festival, a Carnegie Hall celebration with Mr. Ozawa at its center.

CD Review: Riccardo Muti's Chicago Requiem

Riccardo Muti

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra celebrated the arrival of Riccardo Muti as its Music Director with this live recording of Verdi's Requiem. Recorded at Orchestra Hall in January of 2009, this is Mr. Muti's third recorded version of the work.

Written in 1874 to commemorate the death of the writer Allesandro Manzoni, the Verdi Requiem has more in common with opera than liturgy. It was the only composition published during the composer's self-imposed ten-year retirement between the premiere of Aida and the revision of Simon Boccanegra and the start of the composer's collaboration with Arrigo Boito.

There are passages that recall and even exceed the great beauties of Verdi's mature operas, and moments when the composer allowed his gifts to run wild in the realms of choral writing and counterpoint.

Mr. Muti excels as an opera conductor, especially in the works of Verdi. That experience serves him well in the Requiem. He starts slowly with the opening Requiem aeternum. In the Dies Irae, he whips his forces into a frenzy and drives the orchestra forward into a devastating recreation of the last trumpets and the Day of Judgment. The orchestra responds superbly, working hand-in-hand with the chorus to turn this Requiem into a thrilling ride.


He armed with a solid quartet of vocal soloists. Olga Borodina is in fine voice here, her mezzo showing bloom and warmth. Her husband, Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov is solid, with a black timbre to his voice that sounds like the wrath of God. Soprano Barbara Frittoli leads off the Lux Aeterna with a soaring vocal line that sounds just as it should: otherworldly. The only caveat is the performance of tenor Mario Zeffiri. He has a pleasant, smallish voice and does not project enough force.

This recording was scheduled for release to commemorate Mr. Muti's first term as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Although the conductor was forced to withdraw from the Fall season in Chicago for health reasons (he was suffering from a stomach ailment brought on by exhaustion), this is an indication that the future partnership between maestro and orchestra will be a fruitful one. Hopefully it will also lead to more recordings like this one.