100-plus singers ‘storm’ score in dramatic Mozart Requiem
Hell and high water. Saturday night’s performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
Requiem at Little Rock’s Second Presbyterian Church featured elements of both.
The thunder rumbling and the lightning flashing seemed appropriate as the chorus intoned the “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”) and described the infernal flames awaiting the accursed.
Conductor Bevan Keating went for the jugular, and with more than 100 voices — the combined forces of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Community Chorus, the Choir of Second Presbyterian Church and the Praeclara Vocal Company — at his disposal, he was taking no prisoners.
That’s not counting the four superb soloists and a pickup orchestra that included members of the Arkansas Symphony with a strong supplemental organ.
Wherever possible, Keating played up the most intense elements in Mozart’s final work, with which it is certainly replete — the Catholic Mass for the dead being full of graphic descriptions of what awaits the sinful while the musical congregation pleads for mercy and salvation — and of which Mozart took full musical advantage.
Among the hallmarks of this performance was the choral diction; every Latin syllable was clear as crystal. The large chorus was at its finest when Keating and Mozart emphasized power and even majesty, but it wasn’t so good at pulling back in the quieter, more introspective sections like the opening portions of the “Agnus Dei”, or the pianissimo passages of the “Lacrymosa.”
Keating used an interesting device — a semi-chorus of only a few female voices in the “pleadings” — “Salva me” in “Rex Tremendae” and “Voca me” in the “Confutatis.”
And he took much of the work at brisk, sometimes startlingly quick, tempos; I don’t recall ever hearing the “Recordare” section move so fast. The four soloists — Melanie Hanna, soprano; Rachel Kamphausen, mezzo-soprano; Matt Newman, tenor; and John Clements, baritone — were certainly up to the challenge, but there were spots where the orchestra seemed to be struggling to keep up.
And here’s some more praise for the soloists, who were not only excellent individually but who blended and balanced most wonderfully. The trio of trombones sounded particularly good in their shining moment in the “Benedictus.”