Verdi Requiem in Liverpool
Dated: 30/09/2008
Choral Society’s radio concert
Oct 4 2008 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
BBC Radio 3 will broadcast a concert featuring Huddersfield Choral Society at 7pm on Monday. It will be a broadcast of a concert given in Liverpool’s Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral last Saturday as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture celebrations. The Choral joined the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, under the baton of young conductor Vasily Petrenko, and Leeds Philharmonic Society for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem.
Two reviews of the Verdi Requiem concert in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral on Saturday 29 September 2008
Massed choirs make for a terrific Verdi performance
Sep 29 2008 by Our Correspondent,
SATURDAY’S heroic performance of Verdi’s operatically inspired Requiem, re-ignited a link between the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra spanning more than two generations.
That link is marked out by joint recordings marshalled from the heyday of Malcolm Sargent through to the already much-missed quintessentially English style of Vernon Handley who died this month.
Running the gamut from Handel (Messiah) to Mendelssohn (Elijah) through to Elgar (Gerontius) and Walton (Belshazzar), the partnership has a lasting place in the now remastered CD catalogues.
But what of the future?
This concert outing, augmented by the Liverpool and Leeds philharmonic choruses, plus a cathedral cantata choir, and directed by
Nobody in the first rank of British music nowadays relishes that challenge more than this young Russian conductor – still only 32 – and a vocal specialist, with more than two dozen operas in his repertoire.
Working together, backed by an enlarged orchestra, the breadth of experience of the massed choirs ensured the depth of expression and sustaining of power needed to make the cataclysmic zero tolerance of Verdi’s Day of Judgement (Dies Irae) both theatrically terrifying and musically terrific.
That meant that the tumult, when it came, even gave the impression that there was resource and energy still held in reserve, ensuring that the sound never became coarse.
Equally, when quiet and penitence were required, the choirs’ ability to produce a hushed accompaniment to the quartet of soloists was just as telling.
Two types of singing – and yet more variance to come in the Agnus Dei, where the style, in part, is reminiscent of monastic plainchant.
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Music Review: Verdi Requiem, RLPO, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Sep 29 2008 by Glyn Mon Hughes,
Verdi's Requiem performed by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the Metropolitan Cathedral _220
COME a performance of the Requiem by Verdi, there’s always the temptation to trot out the old cliché about it being his "best opera".
If anything, this weekend’s quite stunning performance by the RLPO with "reinforcements" from Huddersfield and
For this was a work of penitence, of soul searching and of making good with your Maker. Of course, there was drama – it would be hard to forget the shatteringly profound, almost terrifyingly hellish Dies Irae, whose intensity was concentrated each time the theme was recapitulated.
This cannot have been an easy performance for Vasily Petrenko, for he had to combine four choruses, all of whom have very different characteristics. It was particularly good to welcome the Huddersfield Choral Society back to
But, time was that this was something of a battleforce chorus – the days before some of the smaller, specialist choirs showed choral music in a new light.
After a disappointing decade 30 years or so ago, Huddersfield is now one of
And so, with the precision we’re used to with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, testing times were here. But no-one should have feared. There was dynamic force for the big moments, but, in the hugely risky and complex double fugue at the Sanctus, this could have been a mere octet. And with the opening pianissimo – as well as the chanted Libera Me at the end of the piece – even a force this size showed, under Petrenko, that it could be sprightly and disciplined.
Soprano Anne Schwanewilms, no stranger to the operatic stage, used that dramatic edge. And she possessed that rare ability to make the music come out of her very body – it was not just a performance, it was one which combined both performance ability and spirit. A particularly powerful mezzo, Mariana Pentcheva, was especially moving when she sang in duet with the soprano – Recordare, in particular.
The stand-in tenor Peter Hoare and bass Mirco Palazzi – not a part which features massively in this work – brought gravitas to their various solo parts, though all four soloists were most impressive when singing in together: Domine Jesu Christi was almost naïve in its spine-tingling excellence.
I’ve heard this piece in venues worldwide by what have often been called the world’s best this or that. This
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/liverpool-arts/2008/09/29/music-review-verdi-requiem-rlpo-liverpool-metropolitan-cathedral-64375-21922665/