Vox Ama Deus performs Verdi's "Requiem'

New life in a requiem for the fallen

TOM PURDOM

In his advance publicity, Valentin Radu dedicated the Vox Ama Deus performance of Verdi’s Requiem to “the fallen heroes of Iraq and Afghanistan.” At the concert itself, an announcement over the Perelman Theater loudspeakers reminded us of the dedication and asked us to hold our applause until the end of the moment of silence that would follow Verdi’s final measures.

Vox Ama Deus always presents a religiously oriented concert on Good Friday. Radu’s choice for a number of years was my favorite Bach, the Mass in B Minor. Recently he’s expanded the repertoire and presented some of Bach’s passions. Whatever Radu conducted, the Good Friday concerts always conveyed a significance that transcended their musical values. Radu’s native country, Rumania, endured a communist dictatorship for most of his life. He never discussed the political overtones of his Good Friday events, but they seemed implicit (to me, at least) in the day and the music. The demeanor he displayed on the podium supported that conclusion.

Verdi’s Requiem was a good choice for a concert with the announced dedication, but it’s also a piece that moved Vox Ama Deus out of its normal range. Vox Ama Deus concentrates its efforts on the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods— a lengthy, musically crowded epoch that stretches from Monteverdi to Beethoven. Radu’s programming last season, for example, included a memorable rendering of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, and a period-instrument performance of Handel’s opera Acis and Galatea. Verdi’s late-19th-Century masterpiece is more operatic and florid than Baroque choral works like Messiah or the Mass in B Minor, and it requires bigger, more varied instrumental forces.

19th-Century grandstanding

Overall, the Vox Amadeus Requiem sounded best in the parts that resembled Baroque music, such as the sections in which the soloists were accompanied by small ensembles or sang a capella. In those parts, you could hear the same kind of results Radu produces when he conducts Baroque works. Fortunately, Verdi wrote plenty of that kind of thing into the score.

The performance was less satisfactory in the interludes that required some unrestrained late-19th-Century grandstanding. Radu’s chorus, for example, was about the size of the chorus he fields for Baroque works, and it frequently sounded undernourished, even in a small venue like the Perelman Theater. Radu’s conducting seemed less authoritative in some of the sections where he needed to control all of Verdi’s forces at once. In the somber opening section, the chorus could have used more muscle and the whole ensemble needed tighter supervision.

Of the soloists, I was particularly struck by the lyrical, musical quality of Ed Bara’s bass. Tatyana Rashskovsky’s mezzo was another pleasure. Soprano Tatyana Galitskaya tended to wander in parts of the first half, but her duet with the full chorus in the final Libera me (“Deliver me, O Lord”) was one of the evening’s high points.

A minute of silence

The ending was everything Radu must have hoped. Verdi’s finale is a long, measured fadeout that incorporates every voice and instrument on the stage. It must be executed with scientific precision, and Radu had it under complete control right down to the last note. Verdi’s final solemn phrases flowed, without a break, into a silence that Radu held for well over a minute as he stood over the podium with his head bowed.

As a former military brat, I’ve attended an unusual number of military memorial services in my lifetime, including the ceremony that ended when the leader of the burial party handed me the tightly folded flag that had draped my father’s casket. This was one of the best.