November 9, 2007

Pacific Symphony presents Mozart at the end
Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony revive the Requiem in dramatic style and look into Golijov for the first time.

By TIMOTHY MANGAN

It's quite probable, "Amadeus" to the contrary, that Mozart knew for whom he was composing his Requiem. Posterity, at any rate, knows that it was a certain Count Walsegg, who intended to pass it off as his own (thus the secrecy of the commission), as a memorial to his wife. Mozart, of course, died before completing it, but it's still unlikely that he thought he was writing the Requiem as his own swan song. In his high-spirited letters, he indicates that he was looking forward to the challenge of creating it, was feeling fine just a few weeks before he died, and even when finally sick didn't seem to think that it was fatal.

The Requiem can survive on its musical merits alone, of course. It doesn't need a good story to make it fly. It is trotted out so often, though, and still surrounded by this apocryphal gibberish (some of which is once again implied in the Pacific Symphony's program notes this week), that I wonder if we really hear it on its own terms.

Carl St.Clair led the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale in a performance of it, Thursday night in Segerstrom Concert Hall, that certainly had a patina of Romanticized awe in it. It was slow and lugubrious when it suited for dramatic impact, it dug in ominously and vehemently in the usual places, it even re-limned the traditional Süssmayr-completed edition (if the program notes are correct), rather than more recent scholarly completions.

At any rate, the reading had much to recommend it. The Pacific Chorale, around 100-strong here, may know this work in its sleep by now, but remained wonderfully awake, providing beautifully blended forte outbursts, nimble fugue singing, and sensitively gauged dynamic contrasts. The orchestra, reduced in number, supplied plenty of plush impact on its own, but also an instrumental transparency that allowed a listener to hear the inner workings, the grains and colors of the woodwinds and brass, rather than a wall of sound. The solo quartet – Dominique Labelle, Jennifer Holloway, Benjamin Butterfield and Robert Gleadow – teamed well and sang with a ready expressiveness. Tenor Butterfield introduced an especially nice note of simplicity to his singing.

The text mattered. That is, the pacing and shaping of the performance brought out Mozart's word painting and characterization vividly, to a degree not often heard. It was worth it to follow along with the printed translation, hearing how the music closely mirrored the mood and meaning of the Requiem Mass text. To these ears, it was even a little unsettling. The dark power with which Mozart characterized God's wrath, the fear in the music when it quietly pleads, and even the final almost-protesting-too-much statement of "for You are merciful," suggested a deity that doles out punishment as readily as love.

The entire program had a Judeo-Christian theme. It opened with the "Benediction" from Bernstein's late Concerto for Orchestra – an austere brass declamation, followed by a singing oboe and dappled strings leading to a brief traditional incantation (here, by Cantor Chayim Frenkel) from the Book of Numbers (6: 24-26).

The orchestral version of Osvaldo Golijov's "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind" arrived in the concerto spot. Golijov, one of the most popular and celebrated of our current composers (he was born in 1960), is a listener-friendly modernist who writes in a direct, heart-on-the-sleeve style, using heavy doses of popular and ethnic music as part of the recipe.

In "Dreams," the solo clarinet traces Aramaic, Yiddish (klezmer) and Hebraic melodic lines, the strings supporting with motoric ostinatos and mysterious soundscapes, lightly dissonant at times, richly consonant at others. The music is by turns ghostly and sultry, wailing and partying, and seems to turn on a dime. Clarinetist David Krakauer, a specialist in klezmer, put his all into it, shaking, trilling, smearing and high-stepping with gritty, gooey abandon, an entertaining turn.