Stabat Mater gets majestic treatment
So far in 2015, the best assembly of voices in Montreal wasn’t at the opera. It was at the Maison symphonique on Sunday for the Orchestre Métropolitain’s performance of Dvorak’s magnificent Stabat Mater.
For the solos, they somehow managed to get soprano Layla Claire, mezzo Karen Cargill and bass John Relyea. Tenor Garrett Sorenson replaced Brandon Jovanovich, who was sick.
I’d been looking forward to Jovanovich, who was promising in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Met last year and terrific at Lanaudière in 2013, but Sorenson was excellent. Though Stabat Mater is usually described as a hymn of mourning, which Dvorak’s sad biography definitely supports, the original 13thcentury text has always seemed to me to somehow celebrate the tragedy. A mother crying at the feet of her crucified son is made ... glorious.
I heard this most clearly in the first movement ( Dvorak sets the hymn in 10 parts) when the solo tenor enters with a shocking fortepiano ( sudden loud- soft), which, though he sings poignantly, can only be properly described as majestic — especially compared with the choral hush. It temporarily puts the tenor in the same triumphant category of sound as the trumpets. It’s terrific, but pretty weird for mourning. Sorenson was ideal; he sang a little proudly and with an unsentimen- tal peal, as if telling a grand story.
The first section is the longest in this longest of the 600 or so Stabat Maters in the repertoire, and it could be a whole work by itself like a miniature symphony. Yannick NézetSéguin kept tempos lively and still encouraged an unusually careful performance from the orchestra. The OM sounded very good; they were a little messy in the winds, but played with intelligent restraint in the brass — mind you, my ears were still ringing from the OSM blasting Tchaikovsky ’s 5th Symphony the night before.
About 130 choristers filled their loft with the biggest choir I’ve heard in the hall, and the surplus made a difference. At times, we were in the presence of a human wind, something a little weird and terrifyingly large, and though enunciation naturally suffered some, the only serious problem was occasionally the sopranos: confer the next time and agree on one pitch, please.
The soloists had complementary textures that were best appreciated together, like the famous Qui est homo ( Is there one who would not weep?) Relyea has a rolling bass, a broom that sweeps instrumental sound away, and while Cargill’s wide tone ate a few too many Latin consonants, she layered beautifully with Claire’s rich soprano. I wish the opera could afford them.
The excellent concert will be broadcast on CBC’s ICI Musique on April 1, and the OM perform next on April 12 with NézetSéguin at the piano, atypically. Details at www.orchestremetropolitain.com.