Philharmonie
Stabat Mater, op.58
Simona Šaturová (soprano)
Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)
Steve Davislim (tenor)
Jan Martiník (bass)
Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Rustam Samedov)
Schola of the Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Benjamin Goodson)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)
For whatever reason – I could
speculate on a few, but shall not do so here – many, if not all, large-scale
choral works from the nineteenth century seem to have fallen out of fashion,
perhaps especially in Britain. Brahms’s German
Requiem will surely always have a following, and rightly so; but I have
managed to hear Elijah – formerly, at
least to the Victorians, ‘“the” Elijah’
– precisely once, and St Paul never. Nor
had I ever heard Dvořák’s Stabat Mater
before in concert. (As for the following Verdi’s Requiem has, it can only be
accounted for by the following mysteriously acquired by the rest of his
regrettable œuvre.) It was a delight, then, to hear such a fine performance
from the Berlin Radio Choir and its ‘Schola’, the Berlin Radio Symphony
Orchestra (RSB), and Jakub Hrůša. Even if I had my doubts about some of the
solo contributions, they were largely on matters of taste rather than anything
more fundamental.
To ascribe grief – and ultimately,
consolation – in such a musical setting straightforwardly to personal
circumstances will usually be to sentimentalise; artistic creation is never,
thank God, quite so straightforward as that. Nevertheless, it is difficult to
avoid the suspicion that the sequential loss of his three children may have had
some connection with what Dvořák wrote, even though it goes far beyond that, to
what we might at a pinch – before deconstruction sets in – still consider a (more)
universal message. His setting is certainly an unusually powerful, focused work
for a composer whose unevenness and, sometimes, formal inadequacy are often
skated over by apologists of nationalist and other hues. (That hapless Seventh
Symphony, for instance, whatever its incidental pleasures!) At his best, Dvořák
is excellent indeed; all too often, however, he is not at his best. He comes at
least close to that best here, I think, and often indeed reaches it.
Its opening sadness – first,
those extraordinary repeated F-sharps, the sharp sign a longstanding piece of
musical crucifixion iconography, then a crucial, as it were, descending figure –
registered not only powerfully, but, in a dynamic sense, dramatically. Icy or,
better, cold – since it is certainly human – that descending orchestral figure grew
ever more intense with every sequential or developmental reliving of its pain.
Here, as often in this work, Dvořák proves more ‘symphonic’ than in any of his
symphonies, or at least more consistently so – with, as ever, the great
exception of the deservedly popular Ninth. Or maybe, I began to wonder, given
the distinction of the performance, it was just that I had not heard Hrůša
conduct them. The music seeped into, formed the foundation, motivic and
dramatic, for the first movement (choral and soloists): soft at first, building
to beautifully shaped climaxes, without merely determining it. Indeed such was
the distinction of the choral singing, words and notes equally well projected,
that one had the retrospective sense that the words of the poem had determined
the music of the introduction too.
Alas, soprano Simona Šaturová’s
first entry was, quite frankly, weak, and both the tenor (Steve Davislim) and
bass (Jan Martiník) proved rather ‘operatic’, in an almost Verdian way, for me.
Only Elisabeth Kulman’s predictably excellent way, rich of tone, thoughtful of
words, seemed in keeping with the rest of the performance. Davislim and
Martiník sang very well on their own terms, though, and I can only presume that
Hrůša had no problem with those terms either. It does one no harm, in any case,
to listen to performances of high quality that do not correspond to how one
instinctively, or indeed otherwise, hears a work in one’s head. In that sense,
only Šaturová was disappointing, and she improved as the work proceeded. If her
vowels were odd, and her consonants often indistinct, in her later duet (‘Fac,
ut portem Christi mortem), her line was much cleaner by then.
A great strength to Hrůša’s
reading was that there was always a strong sense of the work as a whole, just
as in a symphony. Individual movements, or numbers, or whatever we want to call
them, were sections of the poem, not poems in themselves. And so, the second
movement Quartet followed on, related to, intensifying, certainly not repeating
the mood of its predecessor. Even if I did not always care for the style of the
solo singing, the RSB’s playing was second to none, not least the sweetness and
warmth of the strings. (Czech music is no better served by ascribing some birth
right to ‘national’ orchestras, than English music is. Who, after all, is
better with Elgar today than Daniel Barenboim?) Fundamentals, in the harmonic
and a more general sense, were always well taken care of: generative, again
just as they would be in a symphony. The following chorus continued in similar
vein: which, again, is to stress ‘continued’, with the kinship and difference that implies. The cries
of ‘fac’ were every bit as ‘dramatic’ as one could have hoped for, not least
since they were presented in context, no mere ‘effect’.
Different characters were to be
heard in the following movements: never unnecessarily contrasted, but likewise
never quite drawn from the same colours. Brahms, for instance, haunted the
tenor solo and chorus, ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’, but in the orchestral sound
itself, orchestral and textures themselves simpler, yet undeniably radiant. As
the work progressed, transformation, even perhaps transfiguration, crept upon
us. It was difficult to say precisely where or when: doubtless as it should be.
Hrůša’s control of large-scale structures proved just as un-showily impressive
as it had earlier this year when I heard him conduct – magnificently – the Beethoven
Violin Concerto.
The neo-Baroque character of
the penultimate movement, the solo contralto ‘Inflammatus’ was for me very much
a highpoint – both of work and performance. Compassion here seemed very much to
the fore, both for Kulman and the orchestra. Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, but
certainly not to be taken for granted, Hrůša proved masterly in binding
together the work in its final quartet and chorus. It was not merely a
recognition of reappearance of earlier material, but of its developmental
quality; contextual difference spoke just as strongly as similarity. There was
ambiguity, quite rightly, at the close: exultant, yet not unalloyed. That one
could – and this listener, at least, did – read back into what we had heard
before. This, then, was an excellent concert; I was sad only to have had to
miss the bonus concert of a cappella
works scheduled immediately afterwards.
