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St. Paul Pioneer Press
February 10, 2018 at 10:01 am
"Minnesota Orchestra and Chorale offer a "Requiem" of rare beauty"
Bernard Labadie had an unusual request. Before leading the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale in Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem” Friday evening, the Canadian conductor asked that the audience in Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall greet its conclusion with silence. That the impulse to applaud be ignored, and that everyone pause for reflection before departing quietly.
It turned out to be a tough task. For the ensuing performance was an inspired one, a moving, powerful interpretation of Faure’s soft setting of the mass for the dead, a work less about the pain of loss than the wish for peace and the warm solace of a well-deserved rest. And Friday’s beautiful take wrapped listeners in a magnificent sound, the choir’s richly textured harmonies intertwining with an excellently executed orchestration, the solo voices of a baritone and soprano floating above them as if on angels’ wings.
And it all ended in silence. But that felt more than appropriate, for this was not written for the concert hall, but for the church. Or, more accurately, the cemetery, for Faure departed from the traditional “Requiem” text to conclude with a prayer customarily offered at a burial. So bathed in a sense of triumph was that “In Paradisium” that responding with reverent silence was both ideal and quite difficult.
But the entire concert deserved an avid expression of praise...
...The timeline leaped forward a century for the concert’s second half, which opened with the choral version of Faure’s popular “Pavane,” a short work of transporting beauty. Flutist Adam Kuenzel gave both heft and airiness to the main theme before it was taken up by the rest of the orchestra, the 107-voice choir laying lovely descants atop it. This was a case in which the text may have been more of a distraction than an enhancement, for Robert de Montesquiou’s poetry could be somewhat confounding, especially in the projected translation. Best to let the lovely sound of the choir’s French waft over you without the intellect’s interference.
If applause were allowed at evening’s end, it surely would have grown to a roar when Labadie gestured to the choir. For it brought forth one absorbing passage after another on the “Requiem.” The “Kyrie” was awash in lush textures, drawing listeners closer with a whispering conclusion, the “Sanctus” serene, the “Agnus Dei” both emphatically forceful and touching, especially when the wistful cellos emerged.
Our guide for a few legs of this journey to the afterlife was Philippe Sly, a bass-baritone with a gorgeous, textured tone. His solos on the “Offertorium” and “Libera me” felt like an invitation to eschew sorrow and embrace the comfort of rest. On the “Pie Jesu” section, soprano Helene Guilmette’s voice danced divinely with the nuanced organ of Dean Billmeyer, who was exceptional throughout the mass.
Labadie spoke in his introduction of a particular personal connection to Faure’s “Requiem,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if it had something to do with his own brush with death a few years ago. Diagnosed with lymphoma, Labadie went through multiple stem cell transplants, chemotherapy and an extended coma. He still battles weakness that likely accounted for his choice to conduct from a piano bench that sat high atop a tiered podium. It ironically made him seem all the more the master of the music, drawing attention to the clarity and authority of his cues and the way he sculpted the sound with his hands. I’d been hearing great things about Labadie for years, and this concert made me particularly grateful for the opportunity to at last experience his artistry.
-- Rob Hubbard
Minneapolis StarTribune
February 10, 2018 - 5:09 PM
"Minnesota Orchestra brings out beauty, intensity of Fauré's Requiem"
Conductors generally like applause, and some are good at milking it. But on Friday evening at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, the French-Canadian Bernard Labadie did the opposite: He asked the audience to refrain from clapping.
Why? In a short address before the Minnesota Orchestra's performance of Fauré's Requiem, Labadie explained that the work had special significance for him, and he wanted a period of silence and contemplation at the conclusion to allow its message of peace and spirituality "to speak for itself."...
...Labadie's performance of the Requiem was exceptionally successful. Perched upon a double riser on a piano stool, he paced the music beautifully, distilling a soothing atmosphere of elegance and quiet intensity from the performers.
The Minnesota Chorale, fastidiously prepared by artistic director Kathy Saltzman Romey, responded with style and sophistication to Labadie's direction.
The singers caught particularly effectively the sense of vocal levitation Fauré conjures in the exquisite Sanctus, and kept their tuning sweet in the a cappella and lightly accompanied moments.
Vibrato was rightly kept to a minimum, lending an extra sense of lightness and ethereality to both the tenor opening of the Agnus Dei, and the otherworldly soprano line of In Paradisum.
-- Terry Blain
Minneapolis StarTribune
December 22, 2017
"Minnesota's best classical music concerts bubbled with optimism in 2017"
These superlative concerts provided much-needed escape in an otherwise anxious year.
In a year of global upheaval, the Twin Cities classical music scene kept throwing up reasons for cheerfulness and optimism: The mischievously burbling sounds of Lou Harrison at Studio Z. Canadian art song rarities at the Source Song Festival. A flower child-turned-elder statesman playing Bach and Mozart in a mesmerisingly insightful piano recital. Moments like these meant a lot, given the increasingly ominous nature of world events. I suspect music-lovers will desperately need more in 2018.
...2. “The Dream of Gerontius,” Minnesota Orchestra, April 12: In England, Edward Elgar’s oratorio is considered a national treasure. In America, it barely registers. Edo de Waart’s Orchestra Hall performance was totally authoritative, boasting particularly beautiful singing from the Minnesota Chorale....
Link to full article
-Terry Blain Special to the Star Tribune
The New York Times
November 23, 2017
"500 Years Later, the Reformation Is Still Creating Music"
...No such strictures need apply to Mr. Currier’s “Re-Formation,” which is obviously intended for the concert stage and for contemplation rather than worship. And Mr. Currier, who is not Lutheran, gives the piece a decidedly secular twist, though without losing the biblical context. In fact, he harks back past “A Mighty Fortress” to its Old Testament source: Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength,” often called Luther’s Psalm.The Psalm text exalts God’s protection amid a hostile universe: “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” Mr. Currier “changes the roles,” he said in an interview, suggesting that it is we who must come to the rescue of an ailing environment.
Ms. Manguso’s poem reads as secular prayer:
Black sky, forgive us.
Black sea, forgive us.
Black earth, forgive us.
Orb rushing dead through the silent night,
all cinder,
forgive us.
Mr. Currier’s colorful orchestration of the earlier movements gives way in the end to a cappella chorus, singing, “Have mercy.”
The work, in its shift from sacred to secular, from brimming confidence to the slimmest thread of hope, is harrowingly effective. If not the most celebratory concept imaginable, it is nevertheless salutary in pointing up the need for our time to summon the Lutherian grit and imagination to change, to re-form, the world yet again."
Link to full article
-James R. Oestreich
St. Paul Pioneer Press
November 02, 2017
"Minnesota Orchestra concert a powerful tribute to Martin Luther"
...Currier’s “Re-Formation,” a piece that could be described as a deconstructionist take on the Mendelssohn symphony, but that would be shortchanging the composer’s vision. Yes, Mendelssohn makes cameos repeatedly — most welcome in the airy ascending string lines from the “Reformation” Symphony’s first movement — but “Re-Formation” has far darker terrain to traverse. Involving moments arrived in an explosive movement called “Broken Symphony,” the strings scurrying about while low brass stomped through heavily like the forces of evil.
The choir gave fine voice to a pastiche of Psalm passages in Hebrew, Latin, German and English, but its greatest contribution to this thought-provoking piece was on the moving finale, a setting of a poem by Sarah Manguso. In it, the earth is asked for forgiveness and mercy, a resonant plea in a time of destructive disasters. As Luther’s hymn re-emerges on a celeste — sounding like a lullaby from a music box — the choir whispered the final fading phrases, bringing an end to a gripping work and a memorable concert."
-- Rob Hubbard
MinnPost
June 21, 2017
"Those SPCO and Minnesota Orchestra season finales
...The first part of the concert was splendid. And then came the Mahler, so magnificently played that we spent most of the 90 minutes leaning forward or standing (we could do that where we were sitting, in a back row of a side balcony). It was almost like watching a grand theater piece, with musicians exiting and entering, soloists appearing (mezzo Sasha Cooke in glittery black, soprano Ruby Hughes in a sweep of crimson), and our mighty Minnesota Chorale at the back of the stage, waiting patiently through the first four movements (they don’t get to sing until the fifth), then entering, almost at a whisper, with “Rise again” sung in German. From there, it was a straight shot to Heaven, carried by glorious voices, brilliant brass and pealing bells. All led by Osmo Vänskä, pure energy on the podium, bringing out the best in everyone on the stage.
We’re still buzzing from both concerts. Both the SPCO and the Minnesota Orchestra ended 2016-17 in peak form and made us eager for their return. Back when both were locked out in labor disputes, some people were asking, “Do we really need two orchestras”? Two singular, remarkable orchestras, committed to their communities? We’re lucky to have them."
-- Pamela Espeland
Minneapolis StarTribune
June 18, 2017
"Mahler 'fireball' ends Minnesota Orchestra season
...It’s possible, given the scope and sensual beauty of the piece, for it to make an effect even in a routine performance. There was nothing routine, however, about the performance Friday night. Vänskä, always an animated figure at the podium, looked on this occasion to be in constant motion, urging the musicians to deliver ever-bigger, ever-more-vivid sound, as if his life depended on the outcome; and the orchestra, never less than good these days, responded with 86 minutes of precise, artfully-sculpted, cohesive playing.
...What was special Friday night was the sheer force of the playing. The funeral march at the start was like a fireball of energy propelled from the stage. The country dance in the second movement carried an aura of gentle sadness and nostalgia, and the vast finale where, as Mahler put it, “the earth quakes, the graves burst open, the dead rise and stream on in endless procession,” a vivid picture was painted of apocalypse and ultimate transcendence.
...The chorus, superbly prepared by Kathy Saltzman Romey, sang with admirable resonance and commitment..."
---Michael Anthony
Link to full review
St. Paul Pioneer Press
June 17, 2017
"Minnesota Orchestra's Mahler might provide the transcendence you seek
Just as on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — a work with which the “Resurrection” Symphony has much in common — a solo voice intrudes upon the orchestral landscape. But it’s a far gentler voice here, the smooth, sweet instrument of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke singing confidently of transcending earthly bonds. It would be the evening’s most gripping vocal performance, but the Minnesota Chorale made such a glorious sound on the finale that tears flowed in the balcony around me."
Link to full review
Minneapolis StarTribune
April 23, 2017:
Edo de Waart led a dramatic performance of Elgar's mystical "Gerontius."
...The performance De Waart led Friday night at Orchestra Hall was warmhearted, dramatic and totally committed...
...The Minnesota Chorale, prepared by Kathy Saltzman Romey, sang with compelling urgency and maximum clarity and with just the right sneer in their tone for their portrayal of the Demons.
At all times the conductor showed a strong feeling for Elgar’s long lines and surging emotions. This is a work De Waart obviously cherishes. He recorded it not long ago with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. It would be to our benefit if he conducted here more often.
-- Michael Anthony
St. Paul Pioneer Press
February 27, 2015:
"Verdi's 'Requiem' rendered with all of its passion, power
"...[W]hat a pleasure to experience the Minnesota Orchestra lending its rich sound to Verdi, whose music usually only finds its way onto their music stands every few years at the Sommerfest opera finale. But if anyone stole this show, it may have been the Minnesota Chorale, which covered a wide expanse of moods and dynamic levels and brought tremendous emotional power to each section of the mass."
--Rob Hubbard
Minneapolis StarTribune
February 28, 2015:
"If there is such a thing as a “conductor’s piece,” Verdi’s Requiem, his setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass in memory of the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, is one of them.
"As proof, consider the way record collectors talk. They speak of the “Leontyne Price ‘Aida’” or the “Callas ‘Norma.’” But it’s the “[George] Solti Requiem” or the “[Riccardo] Muti Requiem.” This means two things: first, that the singers can’t carry the Requiem. If the conductor is weak, it doesn’t matter how good the soloists — or, for that matter, the chorus singers — are.
"It also means that a conductor needs to display a strong conception as he moves through this profoundly beautiful and moving drama of life, death and salvation. Verdi wasn’t a churchgoer in his last years, but he felt these matters deeply: the fear of death and the hope for some kind of ultimate consolation at the end of life, an outcome about which he remained anything but certain.
"Happily, the performance of the Requiem by the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall Friday night scored heavily on all counts. Here was an accomplished conductor — Roberto Abbado — leading an excellent, well-trained chorus — the Minnesota Chorale — and four first-rate soloists in a galvanizing account of this massive work, exploring its operatic scale and thrust while remaining attentive to the score’s smallest details."
--Michael Anthony
February 10, 2018 at 10:01 am
"Minnesota Orchestra and Chorale offer a "Requiem" of rare beauty"
Bernard Labadie had an unusual request. Before leading the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale in Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem” Friday evening, the Canadian conductor asked that the audience in Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall greet its conclusion with silence. That the impulse to applaud be ignored, and that everyone pause for reflection before departing quietly.
It turned out to be a tough task. For the ensuing performance was an inspired one, a moving, powerful interpretation of Faure’s soft setting of the mass for the dead, a work less about the pain of loss than the wish for peace and the warm solace of a well-deserved rest. And Friday’s beautiful take wrapped listeners in a magnificent sound, the choir’s richly textured harmonies intertwining with an excellently executed orchestration, the solo voices of a baritone and soprano floating above them as if on angels’ wings.
And it all ended in silence. But that felt more than appropriate, for this was not written for the concert hall, but for the church. Or, more accurately, the cemetery, for Faure departed from the traditional “Requiem” text to conclude with a prayer customarily offered at a burial. So bathed in a sense of triumph was that “In Paradisium” that responding with reverent silence was both ideal and quite difficult.
But the entire concert deserved an avid expression of praise...
...The timeline leaped forward a century for the concert’s second half, which opened with the choral version of Faure’s popular “Pavane,” a short work of transporting beauty. Flutist Adam Kuenzel gave both heft and airiness to the main theme before it was taken up by the rest of the orchestra, the 107-voice choir laying lovely descants atop it. This was a case in which the text may have been more of a distraction than an enhancement, for Robert de Montesquiou’s poetry could be somewhat confounding, especially in the projected translation. Best to let the lovely sound of the choir’s French waft over you without the intellect’s interference.
If applause were allowed at evening’s end, it surely would have grown to a roar when Labadie gestured to the choir. For it brought forth one absorbing passage after another on the “Requiem.” The “Kyrie” was awash in lush textures, drawing listeners closer with a whispering conclusion, the “Sanctus” serene, the “Agnus Dei” both emphatically forceful and touching, especially when the wistful cellos emerged.
Our guide for a few legs of this journey to the afterlife was Philippe Sly, a bass-baritone with a gorgeous, textured tone. His solos on the “Offertorium” and “Libera me” felt like an invitation to eschew sorrow and embrace the comfort of rest. On the “Pie Jesu” section, soprano Helene Guilmette’s voice danced divinely with the nuanced organ of Dean Billmeyer, who was exceptional throughout the mass.
Labadie spoke in his introduction of a particular personal connection to Faure’s “Requiem,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if it had something to do with his own brush with death a few years ago. Diagnosed with lymphoma, Labadie went through multiple stem cell transplants, chemotherapy and an extended coma. He still battles weakness that likely accounted for his choice to conduct from a piano bench that sat high atop a tiered podium. It ironically made him seem all the more the master of the music, drawing attention to the clarity and authority of his cues and the way he sculpted the sound with his hands. I’d been hearing great things about Labadie for years, and this concert made me particularly grateful for the opportunity to at last experience his artistry.
-- Rob Hubbard
Minneapolis StarTribune
February 10, 2018 - 5:09 PM
"Minnesota Orchestra brings out beauty, intensity of Fauré's Requiem"
Conductors generally like applause, and some are good at milking it. But on Friday evening at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, the French-Canadian Bernard Labadie did the opposite: He asked the audience to refrain from clapping.
Why? In a short address before the Minnesota Orchestra's performance of Fauré's Requiem, Labadie explained that the work had special significance for him, and he wanted a period of silence and contemplation at the conclusion to allow its message of peace and spirituality "to speak for itself."...
...Labadie's performance of the Requiem was exceptionally successful. Perched upon a double riser on a piano stool, he paced the music beautifully, distilling a soothing atmosphere of elegance and quiet intensity from the performers.
The Minnesota Chorale, fastidiously prepared by artistic director Kathy Saltzman Romey, responded with style and sophistication to Labadie's direction.
The singers caught particularly effectively the sense of vocal levitation Fauré conjures in the exquisite Sanctus, and kept their tuning sweet in the a cappella and lightly accompanied moments.
Vibrato was rightly kept to a minimum, lending an extra sense of lightness and ethereality to both the tenor opening of the Agnus Dei, and the otherworldly soprano line of In Paradisum.
-- Terry Blain
Minneapolis StarTribune
December 22, 2017
"Minnesota's best classical music concerts bubbled with optimism in 2017"
These superlative concerts provided much-needed escape in an otherwise anxious year.
In a year of global upheaval, the Twin Cities classical music scene kept throwing up reasons for cheerfulness and optimism: The mischievously burbling sounds of Lou Harrison at Studio Z. Canadian art song rarities at the Source Song Festival. A flower child-turned-elder statesman playing Bach and Mozart in a mesmerisingly insightful piano recital. Moments like these meant a lot, given the increasingly ominous nature of world events. I suspect music-lovers will desperately need more in 2018.
...2. “The Dream of Gerontius,” Minnesota Orchestra, April 12: In England, Edward Elgar’s oratorio is considered a national treasure. In America, it barely registers. Edo de Waart’s Orchestra Hall performance was totally authoritative, boasting particularly beautiful singing from the Minnesota Chorale....
Link to full article
-Terry Blain Special to the Star Tribune
The New York Times
November 23, 2017
"500 Years Later, the Reformation Is Still Creating Music"
...No such strictures need apply to Mr. Currier’s “Re-Formation,” which is obviously intended for the concert stage and for contemplation rather than worship. And Mr. Currier, who is not Lutheran, gives the piece a decidedly secular twist, though without losing the biblical context. In fact, he harks back past “A Mighty Fortress” to its Old Testament source: Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength,” often called Luther’s Psalm.The Psalm text exalts God’s protection amid a hostile universe: “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” Mr. Currier “changes the roles,” he said in an interview, suggesting that it is we who must come to the rescue of an ailing environment.
Ms. Manguso’s poem reads as secular prayer:
Black sky, forgive us.
Black sea, forgive us.
Black earth, forgive us.
Orb rushing dead through the silent night,
all cinder,
forgive us.
Mr. Currier’s colorful orchestration of the earlier movements gives way in the end to a cappella chorus, singing, “Have mercy.”
The work, in its shift from sacred to secular, from brimming confidence to the slimmest thread of hope, is harrowingly effective. If not the most celebratory concept imaginable, it is nevertheless salutary in pointing up the need for our time to summon the Lutherian grit and imagination to change, to re-form, the world yet again."
Link to full article
-James R. Oestreich
St. Paul Pioneer Press
November 02, 2017
"Minnesota Orchestra concert a powerful tribute to Martin Luther"
...Currier’s “Re-Formation,” a piece that could be described as a deconstructionist take on the Mendelssohn symphony, but that would be shortchanging the composer’s vision. Yes, Mendelssohn makes cameos repeatedly — most welcome in the airy ascending string lines from the “Reformation” Symphony’s first movement — but “Re-Formation” has far darker terrain to traverse. Involving moments arrived in an explosive movement called “Broken Symphony,” the strings scurrying about while low brass stomped through heavily like the forces of evil.
The choir gave fine voice to a pastiche of Psalm passages in Hebrew, Latin, German and English, but its greatest contribution to this thought-provoking piece was on the moving finale, a setting of a poem by Sarah Manguso. In it, the earth is asked for forgiveness and mercy, a resonant plea in a time of destructive disasters. As Luther’s hymn re-emerges on a celeste — sounding like a lullaby from a music box — the choir whispered the final fading phrases, bringing an end to a gripping work and a memorable concert."
-- Rob Hubbard
MinnPost
June 21, 2017
"Those SPCO and Minnesota Orchestra season finales
...The first part of the concert was splendid. And then came the Mahler, so magnificently played that we spent most of the 90 minutes leaning forward or standing (we could do that where we were sitting, in a back row of a side balcony). It was almost like watching a grand theater piece, with musicians exiting and entering, soloists appearing (mezzo Sasha Cooke in glittery black, soprano Ruby Hughes in a sweep of crimson), and our mighty Minnesota Chorale at the back of the stage, waiting patiently through the first four movements (they don’t get to sing until the fifth), then entering, almost at a whisper, with “Rise again” sung in German. From there, it was a straight shot to Heaven, carried by glorious voices, brilliant brass and pealing bells. All led by Osmo Vänskä, pure energy on the podium, bringing out the best in everyone on the stage.
We’re still buzzing from both concerts. Both the SPCO and the Minnesota Orchestra ended 2016-17 in peak form and made us eager for their return. Back when both were locked out in labor disputes, some people were asking, “Do we really need two orchestras”? Two singular, remarkable orchestras, committed to their communities? We’re lucky to have them."
-- Pamela Espeland
Minneapolis StarTribune
June 18, 2017
"Mahler 'fireball' ends Minnesota Orchestra season
...It’s possible, given the scope and sensual beauty of the piece, for it to make an effect even in a routine performance. There was nothing routine, however, about the performance Friday night. Vänskä, always an animated figure at the podium, looked on this occasion to be in constant motion, urging the musicians to deliver ever-bigger, ever-more-vivid sound, as if his life depended on the outcome; and the orchestra, never less than good these days, responded with 86 minutes of precise, artfully-sculpted, cohesive playing.
...What was special Friday night was the sheer force of the playing. The funeral march at the start was like a fireball of energy propelled from the stage. The country dance in the second movement carried an aura of gentle sadness and nostalgia, and the vast finale where, as Mahler put it, “the earth quakes, the graves burst open, the dead rise and stream on in endless procession,” a vivid picture was painted of apocalypse and ultimate transcendence.
...The chorus, superbly prepared by Kathy Saltzman Romey, sang with admirable resonance and commitment..."
---Michael Anthony
Link to full review
St. Paul Pioneer Press
June 17, 2017
"Minnesota Orchestra's Mahler might provide the transcendence you seek
Just as on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — a work with which the “Resurrection” Symphony has much in common — a solo voice intrudes upon the orchestral landscape. But it’s a far gentler voice here, the smooth, sweet instrument of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke singing confidently of transcending earthly bonds. It would be the evening’s most gripping vocal performance, but the Minnesota Chorale made such a glorious sound on the finale that tears flowed in the balcony around me."
Link to full review
Minneapolis StarTribune
April 23, 2017:
Edo de Waart led a dramatic performance of Elgar's mystical "Gerontius."
...The performance De Waart led Friday night at Orchestra Hall was warmhearted, dramatic and totally committed...
...The Minnesota Chorale, prepared by Kathy Saltzman Romey, sang with compelling urgency and maximum clarity and with just the right sneer in their tone for their portrayal of the Demons.
At all times the conductor showed a strong feeling for Elgar’s long lines and surging emotions. This is a work De Waart obviously cherishes. He recorded it not long ago with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. It would be to our benefit if he conducted here more often.
-- Michael Anthony
St. Paul Pioneer Press
February 27, 2015:
"Verdi's 'Requiem' rendered with all of its passion, power
"...[W]hat a pleasure to experience the Minnesota Orchestra lending its rich sound to Verdi, whose music usually only finds its way onto their music stands every few years at the Sommerfest opera finale. But if anyone stole this show, it may have been the Minnesota Chorale, which covered a wide expanse of moods and dynamic levels and brought tremendous emotional power to each section of the mass."
--Rob Hubbard
Minneapolis StarTribune
February 28, 2015:
"If there is such a thing as a “conductor’s piece,” Verdi’s Requiem, his setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass in memory of the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, is one of them.
"As proof, consider the way record collectors talk. They speak of the “Leontyne Price ‘Aida’” or the “Callas ‘Norma.’” But it’s the “[George] Solti Requiem” or the “[Riccardo] Muti Requiem.” This means two things: first, that the singers can’t carry the Requiem. If the conductor is weak, it doesn’t matter how good the soloists — or, for that matter, the chorus singers — are.
"It also means that a conductor needs to display a strong conception as he moves through this profoundly beautiful and moving drama of life, death and salvation. Verdi wasn’t a churchgoer in his last years, but he felt these matters deeply: the fear of death and the hope for some kind of ultimate consolation at the end of life, an outcome about which he remained anything but certain.
"Happily, the performance of the Requiem by the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall Friday night scored heavily on all counts. Here was an accomplished conductor — Roberto Abbado — leading an excellent, well-trained chorus — the Minnesota Chorale — and four first-rate soloists in a galvanizing account of this massive work, exploring its operatic scale and thrust while remaining attentive to the score’s smallest details."
--Michael Anthony
