Symphony’s ‘Stabat Mater’ almost a religious experience
Never underestimate the value of a good cry.
“Stabat Mater,” the 13century liturgical poem in which the Virgin Mary agonizes before her crucified son, has long been irresistible to composers. .Tragically, Antonín Dvorák had a more direct connection to the theme of losing a child than most. He began his own “Stabat Mater” after the death of his young daughter, Josefa; by the time it was completed in late 1877, two more of his children had passed.
Love and grief, sorrow and hope, Dvorák’s cantata punched his ticket from provincial Prague to the symphonic capitals of London and New York. Thursday’s Houston Symphony performance demonstrated that little to none of its stirring potency has been diluted by the passage of time. However cheesy this may sound, it was almost a religious experience.
Joined by four soloists and the Houston Symphony Chorus, the orchestra took up the 85-minute work for the first time in 18 years, and only the second time ever. Performances continue Sunday.
Between its religious theme, epic orchestration and choral might, “Stabat Mater” locates moments of triumph and transcendence in the then-35-yearold composer’s unimaginable loss. More than twice the length of any of the other nine, the opening movement (“Stabat mater dolorosa”) creates a mood of pervasive grief, interrupted by fleeting moments of anger and defiance signaled by thunderclaps of tympani. Dvorák meant the slowly descending notes of the principal melodies — one dolorous, the other more lyrical — to signify tears streaming down Mary’s face.
For the second time in a month (after Mahler’s “Resurrection”), the symphony’s chorus was magnificent. Besides echoing and amplifying the first movement’s mournful themes, it dominated the third (“Eja, mater, fons amoris”) and seventh (“Virgo virginum praeclara”) movements, cycling between subdued reverence and unrestrained joy.
The soloists — soprano Lucy Crowe; mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; tenor Toby Spence; and baritone Dashon Burton — each alternated between melting into the chorus and soaring above it. Crowe’s anguished cries were a highlight of the opening movement; later she and Spence engaged in an exciting see-saw in the eighth (“Fac, ut portem Christi mortem”). On his own, the tenor’s rich and unyielding solo passage in the sixth (“Fac me vere tecum flere”), began to illuminate a path to escape the piece’s suffering — directly invoking it.
Elsewhere, the underlying resilience of Burton’s vocals in the fourth (“Fac, ut ardeat cor meum”) mark off a subtle but crucial difference between sorrow and despair. And Cooke’s deeply resonant turn in the ninth (“Inflammatus et accensus”) matches well with the passage about warding off the flames of Judgment Day.
“Stabat Mater” covers a lot of emotional and spiritual ground, and takes its time. But as the theme shifts from Jesus’s suffering to pleading for the world to share Mary’s tribulations, the emotional balance likewise begins to swing toward hope and salvation.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Dvorák’s switch to a major key in the fifth movement (“Tui nati vulnerati”), marked by a triplet-based orchestral melody that taps into one of the composer’s deep fondness and understanding of his Czech homeland’s beautiful folk music.
Each of the succeeding movements continues this cathartic trajectory until the only thing left for Dvorak to say is “Amen.” That comes, decisively, in the tenth and final movement (“Quando corpus morietur”) and a climactic fugue that set off several minutes of glorious choral and orchestral fireworks.