It's odd, I could have sworn that I had made it to one Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert this year already (besides the Messiah), but I don't seem to have reviewed it. My bad.
Saturday night I was at Roy Thomson Hall to hear the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir join forces again in a gripping, dramatic performance of the endlessly fascinating Requiem, K.626 by Mozart (using Robert Levin's completion). Just as fascinating and dramatic were the selections performed alongside it -- for once, not a full evening of Mozart -- and the unique approach to staging this performance. In his chatty and humorous remarks, guest conductor Michael Francis said that this unique programme was an attempt to assemble other works which reflected the wide range, from serenity and lyrical beauty to dramatic intensity and musical complexity, of Mozart's final and incomplete masterpiece.
As soon as the orchestra and conductor were assembled on stage, the lights went down. The side stage door opened and a soprano voice was heard intoning a melody in the style of Gregorian chant. In a slow procession, four sopranos and four altos joined in the melody and walked, one by one, across the stage until they turned to face the audience, spread evenly across the width of the hall. Each singer carried a light to illuminate the music and their faces; all else was darkened.
This was, as far as I know, the first appearance on a Toronto Symphony Orchestra programme of the remarkable medieval composer, abbess, and mystic, Hildegarde von Bingen. As the eight voices soared in the elaborate rising and falling phrases of her unique style, there was utter silence in the hall -- everyone was captivated. As the music entered its final section, the singer who had led the procession turned and completed her walk off the other side of the stage, the others following her one by one until the final notes of Hildegarde's O virtus Sapientiae faded slowly into the offstage distance.
Michael Francis then lifted his hands and, as the lights slowly came back up, led the orchestra directly into the opening chords of Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music, a striking and evocative tribute to two members of Mozart's Masonic lodge in Vienna. The deep tones of trombones and bassoons give this music a distinctive colour all its own, and the orchestra members did it full justice.
After Francis gave his remarks, he next led the orchestra into a full-sized version of the extraordinary Grosse Fuge by Beethoven. Originally for string quartet, this is one of the most startling and challenging products of the final period of Beethoven's life. The TSO's remarkable string sections did splendid work in presenting all the complex and intertwining lines of this near-symphonic movement in which multiple fugal expositions seem to be taking place simultaneously.
The final work in the first half brought back the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, the small professional chamber choir embedded in the larger Mendelssohn Choir, to perform the impossibly beautiful Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. This complex psalm setting for two choirs and intoning tenor soloist has achieved worldwide fame in the form in which Mozart copied it down from memory after hearing it at the Vatican. As a side note, it's quite startling to hear the composer's very different original thoughts as recorded and released by the Sistine Chapel choir a few years ago. I don't know if Mozart elaborated the music instead of merely transcribing it, or if the editor of the familiar published text did so.
In any case, tenor Isaiah Bell gave the leading tone chants from the top right level of the hall, the main choral body stood in the choir loft, and the small quartet second choir -- including the all-important soprano who has to sing a high C in slow and serene form in each verse, were on the top left level. This spatial dimension caused the music to fold in around the audience, and brought the first half to a conclusion every bit as entrancing -- in a literal sense -- as the opening procession.
The programme notes made no comment about the irony of a concert orchestra featuring two works of unaccompanied choral music by composers who would have no idea of what such a body of players might be capable of doing, and wouldn't even know many of the instruments which the modern orchestra uses! That unique programme certainly set many people talking and reflecting in lobby during the intermission.
And so to Mozart's immortal Requiem, which comprised the second half of the programme. I've made extensive comments about the magnetic drawing power and editorial difficulties of this work in two reviews of previous performances -- one being the traditional Süssmayr completion...
..while the other was the Levin edition.
Michael Francis led the orchestra and the full Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in a performance which definitely stressed the drama and the intensity of Mozart's score, with such lyrical passages as the Recordare and the Benedictus coming as a relief from the power of so much else.
In line with contemporary practice, his tempi were brisk but not to the point of blurring except, perhaps, in the Offertory where the Quam olim Abrahae fugue was beset with muddy textures in the most complex bars of stretto.
Particularly welcome was the starkly powerful performance of Levin's biggest divergence from the well-known Süssmayr edition, the Amen fugue after the Lacrymosa, which can seem very much out of place from its surroundings if presented too lightly or speedily.
The other big fugal movements, the Kyrie eleison at the beginning and the Cum sanctis tuis to the same music at the close, bookended a performance of the Requiem as fine as any I've heard.
In part, this was due to the splendid contributions of the solo quartet. Soprano Jane Archibald, mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, tenor Isaiah Bell, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas each sang effectively in their respective solo moments, particularly in the Tuba mirum, in some ways the most operatic part of the score, where all four have to take a line in turn. However, it was as a quartet that they truly made their mark, the four voices balancing beautifully in the many passages where they sang together.
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir must have this music in their blood by now, having sung it so many times over the years. For all that, there was no hint of routine about any part of the performance. The choir articulated their notes splendidly where Francis called for that, without getting choppy, and sang with firm and beautifully phrased legato in other parts of the score. The large choral fugues were all sung with just the right mixture of clarity without edginess and power without shouting. A magnificent performance by any standard.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra plays this music with a great blend of strength and subtlety. The featured moments for trombones and winds, the textures of the strings in lighter passages, the nicely judged "enough but no more" of the timpani, all went together to provide a firm foundation and clearly Mozartean musical identity to the whole performance. Given the size of the orchestra and choir, I wondered at the use of chamber organ. It was largely inaudible except in a few quieter moments. The hall's main concert organ would, I think, have been entirely appropriate.
With a Requiem of such power and beauty, balanced by the unique presentation of four rare masterpieces in the first half, this ranks as one of the most memorable concert collaborations of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Symphony Orchestra in recent years. Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear these same artists join forces in Mozart's incredible Great Mass in C Minor, K.427? That's a concert which I would call long overdue!
