Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and light perpetual to shine on them.” Common words, from the Latin Requiem for the Dead, though they can be interpreted in different ways. This BBC Symphony Orchestra concert on Friday presented three responses, plucked from far-flung centuries.
The composers Josquin des Prez, Pierre Boulez and Mozart don’t usually mingle in concerts but here they did. The choral polyphony of Josquin’s Nymphes des bois (a tribute to the composer Ockegham) gave way to the processing blocks of Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, which in turn dissolved into Mozart’s Requiem, in his pupil S?ssmayr’s reverent completion.
Clever programming, this: in each work, one composer was paying homage to another. But David Robertson’s conducting, typically brisk, underlined another link: eccentric orchestration. Boulez had his eight groups of players dominated by wind, brass and untuned percussion. Mozart kicked out bright piping winds in favour of lugubrious bassoons and basset horns. Robertson immediately trained his eye on Mozart’s bass line: in the opening bars you could definitely hear the dead souls trudging. A curious interpretation followed. Warmly mellifluous in the Josquin, the BBC Symphony Chorus now brought out their shiniest, loudest timbres, whipped up by Robertson’s urgent tempos and tendency to rush one section of the Requiem into the next. Pauses for breath were very few. For a bar or so in the Domine Jesu, the men of the vocal quartet fell behind Robertson’s beat. It was understandable.
All soloists were youngish voices: Elizabeth Watts, Anna Stephany, Ed Lyon, Jonathan Lemalu — fluent enough in the skills of emoting, but constrained by the performance’s temper. For Robertson’s athletic approach quite squeezed out the work’s spirituality. This was Mozart’s Requiem made dry and hard. Boulez’s requiem for Maderna suited Robertson better. His hands flicked left and right, forwards and backward as the BBC players polished and chiselled its ritual patterns, spattered with ticking percussion. Not the most poignant musical requiem, but we felt its solemn splendour.