San Antonio Symphony, Sebastian Lang-Lessing
From Brahms, two views of the end
November 13, 2011The San Antonio Symphony and music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing marked Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, with two ruminations on death by Johannes Brahms, one from his early maturity and one from the year before his own death in 1897.
The more familiar to symphonic audiences was “A German Requiem” for orchestra, chorus, baritone and soprano, composed over several years in the middle 1860s -- the First Symphony was yet to come. The program opened with the Four Serious Songs, originally for baritone (or alto) and piano, as orchestrated and expanded by German composer Detlev Glanert in 2005. The orchestra was joined by baritone Morgan Smith, soprano Claudia Barainsky and a supersized chorus comprising the Mastersingers and the UTSA Concert Choir, prepared by John Silantien.
The earlier work is not a setting of the Requiem Mass, but of an assortment of Biblical texts that aim to console the living. Although Brahms chose some texts that point to the promise of life after death, he pointedly avoided explicitly Christian doctrine. Much of the music is somber -- the violins, those beacons of sonic light, don’t play at all in the first of its seven movements, and the second opens wih a trudging dirge -- but much is luminous. This is essentially a humanistic and hopeful piece.
The Four Serious Songs are much darker in character. The first three, with texts from Ecclesiastes, speak of the inevitability and finality of death and of the oppression and evil that pervade life. The last, from I Corinthians, suggests that agape love is our only lasting legacy. This is a humanistic piece, too, but it represents the existentialist strain of humanism.
The Four Serious Songs have been orchestrated before, most notably by the important British conductor Malcolm Sargent, but Glanert’s effort appears to be the first to gain traction. His orchestrations of the songs are very Brahmsian in color, and he has added four original preludes and a postlude that transform material from the songs and pull the style into the 20th century of Sibelius, late Mahler and the expressionist Schoenberg -- the first prelude builds up to a plangent 12-tone chord that, along with other passages, recalls Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. The third prelude is a diabolical waltz, leading naturally to the triple (3/2) meter of the third song, whose text from Ecclesiastes notes that death is bitter to the strong and fortunate but welcome to the feeble and sorrowful. The whole is performed as (and works effectively as) a single continuous piece.
Mr. Smith served both works exceptionally well. His instrument was dark at its core but with a bright edge and a very free, open resonance that seemed to spread beyond his body. There was a sense of foreboding in his voice that was entirely appropriate to the music. His diction was admirable, and he was consistently attentive to the meaning and feeling of the texts.
Ms. Barainsky comes with a sterling reputation, but in this concert her voice seemed narrow and constrained, and bothered by odd swoops, though it did warm up toward the end of her single contribution, in the fifth movement of “A German Requiem.” (But it can’t be easy to sing beautifully after sitting silently for nearly an hour.)
Choral ensemble and tone suffered a little from overpopulation, but for the most part the singing was clean and strong.
Mr. Lang-Lessing’s very carefully gauged balances, seamless flow and pointed rhythms came from the center and the high ground of the Germanic tradition. There was no funny business, no affectation -- just cogent, intelligent musicianship.
The trombone-tuba section sounded splendid in the rising figures of the sixth movement, and principal oboe Mark Ackerman contributed elegant solo work in the first. Only complaint: The understaffed violins (12 firsts, 10 seconds) couldn’t produce a full enough sound to stand up to the winds and the large chorus.
One comment about the counterchronological order of the program: Although the Four Serious Songs reflects the greater wisdom of age and ought properly to have followed the gauzier “A German Requiem,” our civic religion resists hard truths. Thus it was necessary to close with the more optimistic and uplifting work.
For more or less the same reason, Veterans Day speeches must affirm that soldiers fought, bled and died in service to our nation’s freedom when, truth be told, as often as not they fought, bled and died in service to the vanity, greed, ideology and stupidity of our nation’s leaders.
Mike
Greenberg
