Going Gentle Into That Good Night

While Dylan Thomas, in one of his most famous poems, urges the reader to "Do not go gentle into that good night, / Rage, rage, against the dying of the light," not everyone agrees.  But at the focus of last night's Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert lay a remarkable choral/orchestral work which blesses the coming of death to such an extent that it was described by its creator as a "lullaby of death."  

Now, if that's a difficult concept, then consider that we also heard a very late work from a composer who had decided to retire, and then changed his mind and shared with us his final thoughts -- a man whose final words to the world stressed the importance of love.  And we heard it combined with the thoughts of a composer of our time who successfully got inside the idiom of his much older colleague.  And the first work of the program was a very subtle, even gentle, tone poem for orchestra and organ -- and how many people would have dared predict "subtle" as an appropriate descriptor for those forces?

Now, let's take those three performances in the opposite order -- the order in which they were actually performed.

The concert opened with Canadian composer Samy Moussa's remarkable work, A Globe Itself Infolding.  I was struck by the remarkable way in which the sounds (mostly quiet) of organ and orchestra are blended together with such finesse that the listener can have trouble telling where one leaves off and the other begins.  The title makes it plain that this is the composer's intention.  I was only able to be sure part of the time, and only because I'm familiar with the sound of the Roy Thomson Hall organ.  

The music itself is very slow-moving and hypnotic in quality -- and the comparison with Olivier Messiaen springs readily to mind.  But Moussa's tonal palette is more apt to light on unambiguous common chords rather than Messiaen's strange modal tonalities -- and none the worse for that.  The real beauty of this work is the way that it invites you to submerge yourself as listener in the uniquely lovely sound world that orchestra and organist create between them.  Organist Jean-Willy Kunz mastered the sometimes-cranky swell-box of the instrument and created the most magical effects.  

The second work I have no trouble acclaiming as a masterpiece in its own right.  That's a risky call because Detlev Glanert's work consists of a prelude, three interludes, and a short postlude shaped around his own orchestration of the Vier Ernste Gesange ("Four Serious Songs") by Brahms.  These were Brahms' penultimate compositions, and were written for low voice and piano.  He never orchestrated them.

Glanert has taken up the challenge and provided the songs with orchestration that aptly recalls the style of the master in many particulars.  The songs flow smoothly into and out of Glanert's own compositions of prelude and interludes.  The result is a single overarching tone poem for orchestra and voice.  I was especially struck in the prelude and the first interlude by a clear sense that if Brahms had lived a decade and a half longer, he might well have responded to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with just such a song-symphony as this.  Because, in effect, a song-symphony is exactly what Detlev Glanert has given us.

As the work went on, I was hoping he would not try to follow the quiet end of the final song in any way.  But he did, and the ending was as near perfect as one could hope.  The strings quietly sustained the final chord of the song ad infinitum while the winds gently uttered fragments of melody recalling the singer's lines, until the music at last died away.

The orchestra's playing throughout this work was poetic, beautifully shaped, and marked out by many lovely touches of phrasing and shaping.  As for soloist Russell Braun, I need only say that this great Canadian baritone is absolutely at the peak of his powers -- and proved it beyond any question in every phrase of the four songs.

The second half of the concert was given over to Gabriel Faure's Requiem, his "lullaby of death".  In approaching this score, you have to toss aside all thoughts of the dramatics employed by Mozart, Berlioz, and Verdi,  Faure's gorgeous music uses a rich Romantic tonal vocabulary in a predominantly quiet, gentle setting of the text of the Mass for the Dead.  

The programme informed us that we were hearing the composer's original 1893 version for chamber orchestra and chorus.  In fact, no score of that version has survived.  It has been painstakingly reconstructed from various source documents.  The key differences are the use of a much smaller string section headed by the violas, the absence of wind instruments, and the use of a single solo violin in the Sanctus instead of the massed violins of the 1901 full orchestra version.  

At first blush, the 100 voices of the Amadeus Choir and Elmer Iseler Singers (both directed by Dr. Lydia Adams) might be thought too large for such a performance.  In practice, the sound was -- if anything -- too weak at times.  I have never heard any choir do so much singing at such a low level of volume in my life.  The gentle, soothing, reflective quality of the sound -- in effect, the "lullaby of death" -- was noteworthy.  Sadly, there were a few passages when the french horns cranked up their dynamic level and the choir didn't quite pull along to match -- thereby momentarily vanishing.  But in the main this was a marvellous performance that truly captured the spirit of Faure's inspiration.

Russell Braun again provided the baritone solos, and did so in a more restrained style perfectly in keeping with the work of the choir.  That left the world-famous Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin in the ethereal Pie Jesu.  With a heftier choral complement her contribution would have been just right, but in this company her voice was altogether too strong, too earthy, for the ethereal choral sound which dominated the work as a whole.  Even so, the steadiness of her voice was impressive in this high and difficult solo.  

(By the way, I was spoiled for life on this movement by my childhood acquaintance with a 1968 King's College recording featuring boy treble Robert Chilcott -- an artist whose performance is praised right down to this day for its quiet precision and purity of tone.)

Also notable was the gentle sound of Associate Concertmaster Mark Skazinetsky, floating his violin solo gently down from the organ loft in the Sanctus.  Organist Jean-Willy Kunz returned, and filled his major role in the score with understanding and sympathy for the composer's aims.

With that, I want to close with the highest commendation for guest conductor Stephane Deneve, who planned this unique and fascinating programme and led the orchestra, organist, and singers throughout with panache, with clarity, and most of all with empathy for all of the music.  More than anything, this is the reason this concert will stick in my memory for a long time to come.