Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Springfield, MA
April 27, 2019
by Michael J. Moran
 |
| Kevin Rhodes |
In his program book “Reflections” on this concert, SSO Music
Director Kevin Rhodes called it the first of “two grand finales” for the
orchestra’s 75th anniversary season, featuring two pieces concerned with
“renewal, rebirth, and a communion with something greater than the self:”
Mozart’s motet “Ave Verum Corpus” (“Hail True Body”) for chorus and orchestra;
and Mahler’s second symphony, featuring soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists and
chorus in the last two of its five movements.
After a spoken introduction to the program, Rhodes broke
with tradition, first, by omitting an intermission, and, secondly, by moving
without pause from the 4-minute motet into the 82-minute symphony, making
Mozart a sort of overture to Mahler. While this quick transition may have
confused some concertgoers (one could be heard whispering to another during
Mahler’s second movement: “I’m not sure if this is Mozart or Mahler”), it
powerfully reinforced the commonality of their themes.
Rhodes told the Springfield Republican that the 250
musicians onstage at Symphony Hall tonight were the largest ensemble he’d ever
led there. All three choruses (the Springfield Symphony Chorus, prepared by
Nikki Stoia, and the UMASS Chamber Choir and Illuminati Vocal Arts Ensemble,
prepared by Tony Thornton) and a subset of the SSO presented a radiant account
of Mozart’s poignant setting of this fourteenth-century hymn text, written just
six months before his death in 1791.
Without missing a beat, the enlarged SSO then tore into the
turbulent opening of Mahler’s first movement, subtitled “Funeral Rites.” The
brief “Andante” recalled happy memories, while the more boisterous third
movement, sometimes echoing the Jewish klezmer music that Mahler loved (in his
pre-concert talk, Rhodes even heard “If I Were a Rich Man” from Broadway’s
“Fiddler on the Roof” here), was eventually interrupted by what Mahler called a
“death shriek.”
In the fourth movement, mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore
sang a hushed setting of the German folk song “Urlicht” (“Primeval Light”). The
death shriek opens the kaleidoscopic 32-minute finale, where Lattimore, soprano
Amy Burton, and the chorus sang “Resurrection” verses by German poet Klopstock
and Mahler.
