Ostensibly this concert
seemed rather an odd coupling of Sibelius’
Fourth Symphony with Mozart’s Requiem;
however, both works were written when the
composers were suffering from illness, and
indeed the programme heading was entitled:
‘Odes to mortality’.
Sibelius’ Fourth
Symphony (1911) opened with brooding and
deep ‘cello and double bass playing which
immediately set the tone of this stark score.
The darkness of the exquisitely grainy strings
was brilliantly contrasted with the shafts
of light emanating from the brass and the
cutting-edge, punctuating timpani from Andrew
Smith.
Franz Welser-Möst
conducted with great sensitivity and economy,
adopting a measured pace with broad tempi
which perfectly brought out the sense of barrenness
and alienation. Throughout, the conductor
had a deep understanding of the score’s structure,
perfectly integrating all four movements as
an organically projected whole.
The Allegro had
an eerie sense of underlying menace with the
conductor invoking murky, almost subterranean
sounds and textures. The Largo was
the pivotal point of this performance, with
the LSO strings excelling themselves in richness
of tone and darkness of expression; notably
ghostly and melancholic was Tim Hugh’s perfectly
played solo ‘cello. In the final movement,
the versatile LSO strings produced a whole
gamut of spectacular sounds from icy shrillness
to shimmering, distant delicacy, with violent
outbursts from screeching woodwind.
There is no grandiose
closing finale and no real end - just dark
‘cellos abruptly cutting dead into nothingness:
a nothingness which echoes the sound of silence.
The audience’s applause was shamefully short
for such an expressively played and arrestingly
conducted performance.
Mozart’s Requiem
Mass in D minor K626 was given a wild,
energetic performance, with Welser-Möst
inspiring his forces to give their all – and
in the case of the LSO Chorus, this was a
problem. When the chorus were at full throttle
they drowned out the orchestra, resulting
in a loss of important writing for the woodwind
and brass. This was notable in the Dies
Irae where the trumpets were too recessed
and in Rex Tremendae the chorus sang
too loudly for this hall’s oppressive acoustic;
they simply sounded shrill and harsh to the
ears. The Chorus were at their best in the
Lacrimosa producing sublime and mesmeric
sounds. Perhaps Chorus Director Joseph Cullen
should have reined back his singers to integrate
them more closely with the LSO and overcome
the sound difficulties inherent in this space.
The quartet of solo
voices in the Benedictus blended perfectly
and were particularly well integrated with
the woodwind and trombones which were at last
clearly audible. Soprano Sally Mathews produced
a pristine, diamond-bright purity of tone
which contrasted superbly with the deep, sumptuous
bass of Alfred Reiter.
The closing Agnus
Dei had great intensity and sombre drama
with the timpani having a stern impact. For
some reason the forty-six bars of Mozart’s
Ave verum corpus (1791) were tacked
on to the end and, although radiantly sung
by the chorus, seemed rather out of place
and anticlimactic.
The Requiem is
one of Mozart’s greatest symphonic works with
dissonant writing for the trombones providing
an uncanny similarity to the writing for the
trombones in Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony.
This coupling emphasised the radical dissonances
in both their scores.
If you want to hear
a perfectly balanced performance of Mozart’s
Requiem I strongly recommend Benjamin
Britten’s ‘live’ 1971 Aldeburgh Festival account
(with Heather Harper, Alfreda Hodgson, Peter
Pears, John Shirley-Quirk, Aldeburgh Festival
Chorus, English Chamber Orchestra) on: BBC
Legends BBCL 4119-2
Alex Russell
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