Yannick and the Orchestra: Mozart's "Requiem' (1st review)

Before this month, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra's music director-designate, had yet to present choral music in Philadelphia— a bit surprising, because Nézet-Séguin started his musical career as a chorister and became a choir director in Montreal at age 18.

But this weekend, under his baton, the Orchestra, the Philadelphia Singers Chorale and solo singers dazzled Verizon Hall audiences with the Debussy Nocturnes, the Mozart Requiem and an encore of Mozart's Ave verum corpus. Rest assured, this won't be the last we'll hear from Nézet-Séguin in this genre.

Yannick (as he likes being called) achieved great success conducting operas at Salzburg and the Metropolitan Opera, and he's in such demand in that area that he could stay busy all year doing nothing but. In his earlier visits to Philadelphia, he clearly was bending over backwards to avoid being typecast as an opera maestro. But now Yannick has passed his audition, so to speak, and is relatively free to schedule what he wishes. It would be natural to expect a lot of vocal music, and he told me this week that we're going to get it.

But does he have permission, and the budget, to do so? Midway through Wolfgang Sawallisch's tenure (1993-2003), the Orchestra's management discontinued the expensive concert presentations of opera, even though Sawallisch enjoyed an international reputation in that area. Sawallisch went along with the decision like a good sport, saying there were so many problems with coordination of large forces that he'd be more relaxed without that responsibility.

(There were some rare exceptions after that. One of Christoph Eschenbach's best programs was his conducting of an act from Parsifal.)

Memories of Stokowski

Apparently Nézet-Séguin has been given the green light. He'll be conducting opera not just because he likes it; the players love the idea too, he says. Though few of them are experienced in that field, the Orchestra's older players fondly recall the excitement when Sawallisch led operatic works by Wagner and Richard Strauss, and when Muti led concert versions of Pagliacci, Rigoletto and Tosca. (Yannick, by the way, avoids using the term "older players." He chooses to call them "wiser.")

Yannick is similarly cognizant that the Philadelphians made a big splash when Stokowski conducted Mahler's choral Symphony of a Thousand, the American premiere of Berg's Wozzeck and an uncut Parsifal. (I know the Wozzeck wasn't officially produced by the Philadelphia Orchestra, but Stoky used its musicians.)

Yannick is even considering staged opera at the Academy of Music. His only hesitation is to be careful not to tread on the toes of other local producing organizations. One hundred miles to the north, Yannick will continue his association with the Metropolitan Opera, where he led new productions of Carmen in 2009 and Don Carlo this season.

The voice as an instrument

All music, Nézet-Séguin maintains, is singing. He wants the Orchestra to play vocal pieces, among other reasons, so the instrumentalists can learn to maintain a singing tone whenever they play. Yannick himself conducts with his mouth open, in order to breathe like a singer.

As he demonstrated during the run of Don Carlo at the Met, he listens to the cast members and breathes with them. Distinct differences were apparent in the four performances I heard (with some cast changes.) He interacted with the singers the way chamber musicians collaborate with each other. This makes me eager to hear him play with small groups from the Orchestra. He says he plans to do so, but he cautions that his piano playing is not of the high caliber of Eschenbach or Sawallisch.

This week's Nocturnes was notable for its blending of orchestral choirs, even before the vocal chorus of 30 women entered in the piece's final section. The balance among the instruments was precise, and the tone quality was gorgeous. Especially striking was a breathtaking pianissimo in the first movement, shimmering and colorful while oh-so-soft— even more so than when I heard Stokowski conduct this work when he was celebrated for producing gorgeous sounds.

Mozart's theatrical side

The Mozart Requiem was lyrical in its opening Introitus, then turned dramatic with the powerful opening words of Rex tremendae ("King of dreadful majesty"). Mozart, after all, was a composer of theatrical music, and the later pages of the Rex tremendae remind me a bit of his Don Giovanni.

During its playing, it was easy to forget that only half of the piece was orchestrated by Mozart. Aside from the instrumental writing, many of the vocal parts were completed by Mozart's pupil, Franz Süssmayr, after Mozart's death. The torso that Mozart constructed is so strong that the whole piece maintains his character. (Yannick used the modern edition by Franz Beyer that scales back some of Süssmayr's orchestral writing.)

The Ave verum corpus was quite appropriate as an encore because, like the Requiem, it was written for chorus, orchestra instrumentalists and organ, and it too was composed during the last months of Mozart's life.

A listener might wonder what connection there is between the two big works on this program, aside from the fact that both use a chorus. They were written a century apart; the Mozart is classical in style while the Debussy is impressionist. I do hear a common quality between the first ("Clouds") movement of the Debussy and the Mozart. Both are reverential. Though Debussy's composition doesn't deal with death, that part of it (like Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings) sounds like a eulogy.

Conversely, the Mozart Requiem, at least in Nézet-Séguin's interpretation, is lilting and full of life. It's an uplifting celebration, especially in its pulsating concluding fugue.♦


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