Wednesday 27 July 2016

Festival of the Sound 2016 # 7: A Day with Mozart and Haydn

Each week the Festival shows one music-related film in the concert hall of the Stockey Centre.  Yesterday, the film was a famous classic: Amadeus.  In case any of my readers haven't seen it, it depicts the long-discredited theory that jealous fellow composer Antonio Salieri killed Mozart.  The film is based on Peter Schaffer's stage play, and Schaffer wrote the screenplay.

It's the first time I've watched Amadeus all the way through since I don't know how many years, but it still stands up remarkably well, not least because of the attention to detail in which pieces of Mozart's music, all beautifully performed, are used to underscore the various scenes.  That's in addition to the careful period detailing of costumes and sets, and of the old town in Prague which stood in for eighteenth-century Vienna. 

Particularly gripping is the entirely-fictitious final sequence of Mozart dictating the Confutatis of his Requiem to Salieri, a scene in which Salieri takes down, line by line, the various parts as Mozart describes them (and as we hear them), and then when Mozart looks at the paper the complete movement bursts forth on the soundtrack.  It's quickly surpassed by the use of the deeply-tragic Lacrymosa to underscore the scene of Mozart's funeral procession, in a cold driving rain.

All that served as an apt introduction to the evening's concert, a programme of Mozart and Haydn for choir and orchestra, presented by the Elora Festival Singers under their music director, Noel Edison.

Among Mozart's choral works, the Requiem and Great Mass in C Minor loom so large that it's easy to forget that these are not typical of his choral output.  In fact, many of his choral compositions date from early in his career and share the lightness of touch, the general air of optimism, common to his instrumental works of the same time.  The Vesperae solennes de Confessore is no exception.  This work presents the five psalms and Magnificat specified by the Roman Catholic church for the evening liturgy of Vespers.  Even with six lengthy texts to set, the entire work is still over in less than half an hour.  The word setting is compact, lines rarely being repeated.  In Laudate pueri Dominum the music is a severe fugue, but each entering voice sings a different line of text so Mozart gets through the psalm in a quarter of the time!  The one exception is the haunting, lyrical soprano solo and chorus on Laudate dominum, and this movement alone of the six has been widely played and recorded.

The Haydn Mass in D Minor, commonly known as the "Nelson Mass", is in a different league altogether.  Written by Haydn late in life, it's plainly the work of a composer at the very height of his powers.  Like all Haydn's masses, it has a Latin title: Missa in angustiis.  It's nearly impossible to translate, since the Latin angusta means narrow or limited, but perhaps the modern English idiom may serve and "Mass in a tight spot" will convey a bit of the meaning.  It was written at a time when war was in the air and the Austrian empire was under threat of invasion. 

The air of fear and uncertainty is amply conveyed by the use of trumpets and drums.  Right in the opening Kyrie the combination of minor key and martial fanfares sets the tone.  Even more astonishing is the interruption of the trumpets and drums, thoroughly ominous now, in the Benedictus.  In other movements, Haydn's native jollity reasserts itself, but never for too long.  This is among the most solemn of all his settings of the mass liturgy.  It's also among the most florid, with elaborate virtuoso writing especially for the soprano and bass soloists as well as the choir.

So, to the performances.  Although I've heard and sung the Nelson Mass a number of times, this was the first occasion I ever encountered it with the woodwind parts which were added to the orchestra by later editors.  On other occasions, it's always been the original version for trumpets, drums, strings and organ.  I was especially intrigued to hear the winds standing in for the prominent organ chords in the Kyrie and in a few other places.  Otherwise, they had independent parts.  The change makes sense since the Stockey Centre has no organ, and an electronic one... well....

Throughout both works, the choir sang incisively, with subtle phrasing and clear diction.  The soloists were drawn entirely from the choir, and a different solo group used in each work.  Each movement of the Vespers was shaped nicely.  The fugue was cleanly performed so that you could zero in on any one voice and hear the text clearly.  (I was reminded of the scene in the film where Mozart insisted that he could have 10 or more parts each with their own words in an opera -- well, here it was!)  Soprano Julia Morson sang with clear, rock-steady tone in the Laudate dominum.  The concluding Magnificat was especially energetic, appropriately so, and wound up to a rousing conclusion.  The small ensemble of six instruments was just what was needed for this music on a modest scale.

In the Mass, Edison deployed a larger orchestra of a dozen players, essential for the grander scale of the musical ideas.  Soprano Katy Clark sang with precision in the wildly florid Kyrie -- when we could hear her.  And there's the rub.  Her voice was softer-toned and softer-grained and simply couldn't cut through the power of the winds, trumpets and drums in full cry.  Ideally, I'd have switched her with Morson, whose clearer, sharper-edged tone could have competed more successfully in this work.  Clark would undoubtedly have given just as lovely an account of the Mozart solos.

Bass David Roth was most impressive in the Mass -- and the work does require a genuine bass, not just a baritone.  His descent into the depths in the Qui tollis was again completely rock-steady.  The choir sang with immense vigour, and with a genuine air of fear in the Kyrie and Benedictus when the music was invaded by those martial trumpets and drums, grimly foretelling war and terror.

Just as impressive was the grand, joyful sound of choir, orchestra and soloists in such movements as the Gloria, Cum sancto spiritu, Et vitam venture saeculi and Dona nobis pacem.

Throughout both works, Edison held to well-nigh ideal tempi and indulged in an absolute minimum of interpretive pushings and pullings.

The entire concert was a great event for lovers of the classical choral/orchestral repertoire.

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