Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony thrilled the 2,560 concert-goers in downtown Springfied.
REVIEW
SPRINGFIELD – With 2,569 seats sold for Saturday's season finale concert by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Symphony Hall was packed for a roof-raising performances of Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
A perfectly blended quartet of soloists, consisting of soprano Monica Yunus, mezzo-soprano Stacey Rishoi, tenor Eric Ashcraft, and bass Gustav Andreassen, served to remind listeners that even at the extreme end of his life, with the unfinished Requiem commission hanging over his head, and his health at its worst, Wolfgang Mozart was first and foremost an ingenious opera composer.
The “Recordare” and “Benedictus” movements of the Requiem were elegantly shaped by Maestro Kevin Rhodes and the orchestra, in support of this exquisite quartet, shedding for a moment the veil of darkness that enshrouds much of Mozart’s setting of the Mass for the dead, and revealing the compositional mastery and sheer joy of sound-weaving that inhabits the most memorable ensembles from Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, The Magic Flute, and the rest.
Andreassen made his mark on the majestic “Tuba mirum,” filling Symphony Hall with assertive bass presence as comfortable in Mozart as it would have been in the scores of Verdi and Wagner. Rishoi demonstrated a similar command of the low and middle voice, delivering her lines with clearly defined beauty. Ashcraft soared through the “Mors stupebit” portion of the Sequence, and Yunus threaded her silvery soprano sound above the texture like a ray of sun gilding a cloud bank.
The Symphony Chorus, prepared by their director Nikki Stoia, acquitted themselves most famously in arresting movements like the “Rex tremendae,” which they launched with a rolled R that was audible at the back of the hall, the “Sanctus,” the “Confutatis,” and the heart-rending “Lacrymosa.”
Certain choral passages in the fugal movements lost a bit of focus, particularly the “Osanna” following the “Hostias,” but attention to Rhodes’ baton and the fierce commitment of all the singers carried the day.
If the Mozart Requiem had been a regal Clydesdale horse in a rodeo, pacing the arena in perfect peace, Beethoven’s Fifth would have been the Brahma bull, bursting out of his chute, pawing and snorting, with nostrils flaring and hooves flying, his aim to throw his rider and destroy everything in sight.
Rhodes and his colleagues turned in a tremendous performance of this stormy, ground-breaking work. Despite its familiarity, the Fifth Symphony never fails to shatter nerves even 200 years after its premiere.
The maestro was as animated as ever, urging his musicians to ever greater intensity, speed, and volume where appropriate, and quelling their utterances to a pale whisper in the skeletal coda of the Scherzo that gives glorious birth to the blazing final movement.
In watching Rhodes at work, the description of Beethoven’s own conducting recorded by Louis Spohr, a violinist who played in Beethoven’s orchestra, came to mind.
Spohr wrote of Beethoven, “His manner of conducting an orchestra was something extraordinary. He accustomed himself to give the signs of expression to the band by all manner of eccentric motions of his body. So often as the sforzando occurred, he tore his arms, which he had previously crossed upon his breast, with great vehemence asunder. At a piano passage he bent himself down, and the lower the softer he wished to have it. Then, when crescendo came, he raised himself again by degrees; and upon the commencement of the forte sprang bolt upright! To increase the forte yet more, he would sometimes also join in with a shout to the orchestra, without being aware of it."
It worked for Beethoven two centuries ago, and it worked for Rhodes on Saturday night. The near-capacity audience responded to the thundering C Major close of the symphony with a boisterous standing ovation. An elated Rhodes embraced his principal players and bestowed a beaming, satisfied smile on all present, closing the SSO’s 69th season in the grandest style.