by Janos Gereben
Post Arts Editor
SANTA ROSA -- The late Robert Shaw was alive and well here Wednesday (4/14) as Santa Rosa Symphony music director Jeffrey Kahane conducted Britten's War Requiem in a memorable, moving performance.
Two decades ago, Shaw presided over a "Festival of Mass'' in San Francisco. The very young Kahane was his rehearsal pianist for the Britten, and he fell in love with the work.
As a culmination of years of work, Kahane has organized large musical forces in this small rural community of orchards and farmland 60 miles north of San Francisco, including a 170-member chorus and a double orchestra of 89. He then signed up Thomas Quasthoff as the baritone soloist; one of Shaw's most often used sopranos, Janice Chandler; and when James Taylor fell ill, he got Richard Clement, another Shaw regular, as the tenor soloist.
Kahane and the SR Symphony have also pulled together a War Requiem project in the Santa Rosa High School (whose magnificent chorus was featured in the concert).
The result was extensive study and presentations about the issue of war -- in an unfortunately timely coincidence with breaking news stories.
Noble intentions notwithstanding, how about the central question: can a small regional orchestra of meager resources, using a high school chorus (plus the Sonoma State University Bach Choir), give an adequate performance of the terribly complex, demanding and large Britten Requiem ?
The answer is no.
There was nothing adequate about this performance. It was far above that standard in every way. If there were any Beckmessers in Luther Burbank Center, they might have counted instances of sluggish tempi, shaky balances, an out-of-tune organ, etc. But music lovers rejoiced in a a wonderful, moving performance.
These are the requirements of such: commitment, abandon, fearlessness, and the greatest among these is passion. It was passion that permeated the hall and carried away performers and the audience.
It took some doing to get to the happy end of genuine, well-deserved ovations, flowers, tears, hugs, etc. The beginning was rather surrealistic: a junior prom night (the chorus mingling in the lobby, in tux and gown) interrupted by a mock funeral procession (part of the war-studies project); duo-tone goats grazing outside the concert hall; local audience dressed to the max, with visiting San Franciscans in their usual "casual'' attire.
Those who are worried (correctly) about the gray-and-white American concert audience would have been heartened to see some 1,000 elementary and high school students participating in the daytime dress rehearsal. Sure, they whispered and went back and forth between the safety of the lobby and the weird music inside the hall, but they were there... and could see and hear their contemporaries on stage. They also giggled and made faces at the initial shock of seeing the severely deformed Quasthoff struggle to get up on a chair, but in a few minutes, they were all captivated by the baritone's incredible concentration and total dedication to his work, as well as by his passionate participation and enjoyment.
The evening performance began with a cautiously slow, but attention-commanding "Requiem," orchestra and chorus providing a hushed, deeply felt performance. Clement's opening solo -- "What passing bells'' -- was his best the whole performance; he maintained exemplary clear diction throughout, but the voice is not particularly strong or interesting. Following the verve and snap of the (high school!!) chorus in the "Dies Irae," Quasthoff had his first solo, "Bugles sang.''
He is a wonder: a warm, solid voice, full of colors, projected effortlessly, musically always accurate, conveying layers of feelings. His diction in English is marginal, but the force of his presentation makes that almost a moot issue. Still, it would be so much better to hear "bugls,'' rather than "bugels.''
When Chandler began "Liber scriptus proferetur,'' it was a shock: her voice "live'' is so different from what you hear on records -- it's big, vibrant, colorful, with a fine edge. She is the last singer in the world who needs amplification but she was, with a kind of "enhancement'' going on, resulting in an occasional echo.
Chandler is a real find. With the possible exception of some weakness in the mid-range, she has a fabulous voice, and is uniquely secure in powerful high notes.
However more I would have liked to hear Taylor, the truth is that Clement and Quasthoff sounded just fine together: they blended their voices well in "Out there'' of the "Rex Tremendae," and "So Abram rose'' in the "Offertorium."
I have heard the Santa Rosa Symphony, but never like this; the musicians were on fire tonight. Britten is so hard on brass instruments: there was nothing flubbed and the players were hanging 10 after 10.
The woodwinds shined, especially Roy Zajac (clarinet) and Karla Ekholm (basoon). Dara Saffer and Joseph Edelberg, concertmasters of the large and chamber orchestras, respectively, led the violins to glory. Cellos, basses, harp (Michael Rado), timpani and percussion all turned in best-ever performances. It was one of those nights.
Quasthoff's noble heldenbaritone-with-lyricism moved to tears in "Be slowly lifted up'' and "After the blast of lightning'' of the Sanctus.
The concluding "Libera Me" was an extended emotional high, from the chorus to the tenor to the baritone to the children's chorus to the deeply moving "Amen'' and then some 30 seconds of silence -- the greatest possible expression of audience understanding and appreciation. I don't think I have ever seen emotions running so high on stage after a performance, but good for Kahane and his forces: they all well deserved the tears of happiness shed in public. It was an extraordinary evening.
by Joshua Kosman
Britten's "War Requiem," as intricate and morally imposing a score as the century has to offer, is not a project to be undertaken lightly. Wednesday's superb performance by the Santa Rosa Symphony under music director Jeffrey Kahane never stinted, and the results were unnervingly great.
For any Bay Area music lover, the evening's initial draw was the first opportunity to hear Thomas Quasthoff, the extraordinary German bass-baritone who is slated to make his local recital debut in Berkeley next March. His singing was everything his recordings had promised -- richly textured, beautiful and precise.
But Quasthoff's solo contributions were only part of a magnificent tapestry that included the entire performance and extended beyond the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. The concert was dedicated to the memory of the late choral conductor Robert Shaw, through whom Kahane first got to know this work.
Wednesday's concert, the first of two, is the capstone of a months-long collaboration between the orchestra and Santa Rosa High School, in which local students explored the work's themes through a variety of interdisciplinary projects -- including, for the members of the school's impressive Concert Choir, participation in the performance itself.
Britten's magisterial lament for the dead of both World Wars demands no less. Composed for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral in 1962, it fuses the traditional Latin Mass for the dead with the unforgettable World War I poems of Wilfred Owen. The combination seems to encompass all possible responses to the carnage of war; the tone is at once placating and accusatory, ritualistic and starkly emotional.
Kahane and the orchestra captured that expansive response with unerring directness. For months, the reports have been trickling out of Santa Rosa about the high level of musicianship that is on display; if Wednesday's performance is an accurate barometer, the reports are not exaggerated.
Certainly there were weaknesses of intonation from members of the chamber orchestra that accompanies the Owen poems, and the occasional lapse of ensemble overall. But those were nothing compared to the fierce intensity, tonal control and profound dramatic arc of the performance.
Once past a slightly limp account of the opening "Requiem," the concert gained power and never looked back. The sharp, angular "Dies Irae" emerged clean and forceful; the radiant melodies of the "Sanctus" and the "Libera Me" -- exquisite backdrops to the more pitiless settings of Owen's poems -- shone.
Quasthoff was an integral part of the evening's success. The surprise of first seeing his small, deformed physique (the result of thalidomide) evaporates in an instant, but the deeper jolt of encountering his musical artistry lingers.
The sound is a marvel in itself, startlingly resonant and full of weight and color. His diction is excellent -- a necessity in projecting these complex texts -- and his technique well-nigh flawless. He lavished those gifts on poignant, remarkably direct readings of the poetry.
But his fellow soloists also did their part to make the concert a success. Soprano Janice Chandler brought a voice of haunting clarity and strength to the Requiem texts, never more stunningly than in the lambent phrases of the "Lacrimosa." And tenor Richard Clement, though he strained a bit in the punishing high notes that Britten wrote for Peter Pears, brought sensitivity and verve to his assignment as well.
The chorus, a combination of the Santa Rosa High School Concert Choir under Dan Earl and the Sonoma County Bach Choir under Bob Worth, sang with shapely con viction, particularly in the sumptuous tonal blend of the final pages.
In the balcony, Carol Menke's Santa Rosa Children's Chorus Concert Group provided a convincing aural glimpse of the angels.
San Francisco Chronicle - 16 April 16 1999