Prom 26: Mozart’s Requiem - 7.08.19

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:00 Wednesday 7 August 2019
Royal Albert Hall

Johannes Brahms: Tragic Overture
Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde – Prelude and Liebestod
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem in D minor (compl. Süssmayr)

Fatma Said soprano
Kathryn Rudge mezzo-soprano
Sunnyboy Dladla tenor
David Shipley bass
BBC National Chorus of Wales
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Nathalie Stutzmann conductor

Love and loss, life and death collide in an emotionally charged concert given by Nathalie Stutzmann and the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales.
Turbulent shifts of mood characterise Brahms’s Tragic Overture, and their ripples continue through the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s powerful operatic exploration of forbidden love, Tristan and Isolde.
At the heart of the programme is Mozart’s Requiem – the composer’s final work, left unfinished at his early death, and his own musical epitaph. Soloists include former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Fatma Said and Kathryn Rudge.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Süssmayer again? Can I put in a good word for Duncan Druce?

[Bryn]

Süssmayer again? Can I put in a good word for Duncan Druce?

Fair point but HCRL or Levin would also suit better than Süssmayer.

[Barbirollians]

Fair point but HCRL or Levin would also suit better than Süssmayer.

Sussmayr was a contemporary of Mozart and had access to his sketches give me that over a modern day academic any day.

[Bryn]

Sussmayr was a contemporary of Mozart and had access to his sketches give me that over a modern day academic any day.

Sussmayr was only the backup choice. His 'completion' was built on the work of those HCRL used as original sources. Levin has a better grasp of Mozart's compositional style than his (Mozart's) lesser student. [See, for instance, http://www.classicalnotes.net/classi...rtrequiem.html .]

[Barbirollians]

Thanks for the interesting article but as HCRL made the same point I think it holds against the Druce version.

[bluestateprommer]

Good, solid start to this BBC NOW Prom, with Nathalie Stutzmann pacing Brahms' Tragic Overture pretty well, with a bit of a slight Luftpause at the end. Someone obviously had a sense of humor to put Brahms and Wagner back-to-back on the same program, and in the same half.

[ANON]

Good, solid start to this BBC NOW Prom,

oh well I started a new thread about our friends from Cardiff.

[bluestateprommer]

In keeping with the Brahms, solid reading from NS of the Wagner, a few modest smudged chords aside. Nice that the audience held the silence for a good spell at the end, although at least one audience member started to clap just a tad early, amid the silence.

[ANON]

Very poor intonation. in some passages unbearable.
As they sing towards FF the choir sing sharp in places (particularly sopranos), with reverting to flat as soon as it comes back to p>pp.

There were violent clashes to the pitch between the orchestra and the choir in umpteen passages.
It only started to come a little cleaner somewhere around the benedictus, not even to talk about the completely constricted tenor, and completely unrelaxed bass.

I have sung and played this piece, so I might know a little of the technical difficulties btw.

The whole performance was so totally uneven and in places dreadfully mediocre, it was NOT UP TO the high standard you would expect to hear in London.
The only saving point was the (eventual) beautiful soprano who flooded the area with beautiful sounds but which then unbalanced the ensemble because the others weren't up to the task.

What to do?
Do it all again PROPERLY next time.

Shame!

[edashtav]

A solid performance of the 'trad' version of Mozart's Requiem, a piece so sublime that its magic is well nigh inextinguishable. This evening will not stay long in my memory as an entity but it will reinforce cherished memories. I thought the conductor asked her Chorus to make a few dramatic changes of dynamic levels. I could not see the merit in these except to give the routine some personality. Not up to the best Prom standards.

I missed the first half, partly through my antipathy towards Wagner's music. I may try to catch up with Brahms' wonderful Tragic Overture.

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 26 MOZART K626.
(Chorusmaster Adrian Partington/Sols/BBCNOW/Stutzmann. RADIO 3 AAC 320 Live. Excellent soloists/choral/orch. balance of notable clarity, good depth and wide dynamic range. Very quiet pps. Big sound with Soft Power!.)

A truly exceptional Mozart Requiem.

Even on a purely technical level, the choral/orchestral balance was clean and clear throughout, with sharply defined rhythms and keenly articulated sung text. No fuzziness or cloudiness here!
I could hear almost every word, sung as if it really were the day of reckoning.
Rhythms were kept strikingly buoyant, lifted, light or punchy as apt, microdynamic subtlety of both orchestra and chorus always drawing your ear into the music. Which tonight reminded you vividly of why this work has taken on such a mortal, immortal, mythical quality in the wider culture.

Soloists sang well alone or as a quartet, the tenor showed some strain and intonation problems, but he isn’t often exposed so this didn’t trouble me too much.

Among so many highlights - the fast fiery Dies Irae; lugubrious, ruminative bass/trombone duet in the tuba mirum (Stravinsky’s Pulcinella came to mind in this often neo-classically shaped reading); the superbly angry rex tremendae, then the (very!) hushed, much slower contrast of the brief, precious imploring of the salva me…(similarly in the superbly-paced confutatis/voca me).
The delicate traceries of the violins in the ricordare, so light and classically idiomatic, again with fine quartet singing here.

The subtle, sensitive choral work was compelling, perhaps the defining feature tonight with some marvellously clear articulation, whether soft and low or high dynamic impact).
So great credit to the chorus master Adrian Partington, who along with all the other performers, and the fluidly expressive but finely-controlled direction from Nathalie Stutzmann gave me a Prom Performance to remember.

[DracoM]

Well, jayne, IMO we must have been listening to different performances.
Tuning was at times bizarre, as were tempi.

Oh dear.

[richardfinegold]

I didn’t realize that NS had become a Conductor. One wonders if she has some individual ideas about how the choral work should go that most Conductors wouldn’t have, and if she was perhaps less than 100% successful in communication about those ideas to the chorus, and if any issues arose as a result...
There can be legitimate differences of opinion about the merits of a performance, or about which types of audio components we prefer to listen to. If someone has a difference in opinion, that does not make them the epitome of evil who requires demonization. I would hate to see the level of discourse here sink to the cesspool of rancor that characterizes most Internet Political discussions. This site has generally been an exception to the hissing that Internet anonymimity seems to encourage.

[oddoneout]

This performance of the Requiem fell into the 'interesting' category for me rather than memorable/must listen again. Some of the tempi ended up the wrong side of sprightly for my liking, there were some exaggerated mannerisms/dynamics that I didn't feel were necessary or successful, the balance of the women's voices was odd in places - the altos sitting in front of me with the sops away up somewhere else. The soloists I felt didn't gel that well as a group and individually there were issues, especially with the tenor, and I'm not convinced they were happy with the tempi of some of the arias - there was a sense of tension on occasion.
However I did like in general the nimbleness and clarity of the choir and, when all's said and done the music transcends the performance as far as I'm concerned. Having the good fortune to have both played and sung this in a variety of settings the music is now heard through multiple filters. In pedestrian or less engaging broadcasts I simply sing along with the choir, when the finer points of balance etc will disappear!