Cousens Gymnasium transformed from an athletic facility into a concert hall on Saturday afternoon, playing host to a conglomerate of three different choirs and the Tufts Symphony Orchestra performing Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutches Requiem (which translates to AGerman Requiem). Though the amount of people playing and singing in the piece nearly exceeded the number of those sitting in the audience, the members of the Tufts University Chorale, the Wheaton Chorale, and the Eastern Nazarene College A Cappella Choir complemented the orchestra's dynamism to create an exciting afternoon of music.
The Requiem, which premiered in Leipzig, Germany in 1869, is Brahms' longest composition and is noted for its controversial inclusion of texts from the Lutheran Bible. Like its name suggests, the piece offers reflections on life and death, which historians suppose in this case were initially inspired by the death of composer Robert Schumann in 1856. But unlike most requiems, there is no mention of sin or redemption in Brahms' chosen texts. Rather, the oratorio offers a widespread message of consolation to people of all religions and creeds.
This becomes apparent right in the opening movement where the chorus offers words from the Book of Matthew: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." These initial strains of music rose gradually and smoothly from both the orchestra and chorus and set the right mood for the remainder of the concert, conducted masterfully under the baton Tufts University Chorale director James John.
There were certain moments in the piece - particularly in the many canonic passages - where the music sounded like pure bits of heaven. Much of this can be attributed to the skillful blending of the choir; an extremely difficult feat to achieve in a group with significantly more women than men. Occasionally the soprano melody seemed a bit heavy, but for the most part remained at the perfect level - especially toward the latter movements of the piece where everything came together at a moving cadence.
The orchestra faced the opposite problem, with the lower bass instruments dominating in a few sections. But this may very well be attributed to the seating arrangement in Cousens which placed some of the audience directly in front and on the same level as the orchestra, thus making the center of sound contingent upon where a person was sitting. Regardless, the orchestra did justice to several particularly difficult string passages, with cutoffs that were crisp and accurate and dynamics that were reflective of the solemn mood.
Though the choir mastered the difficult German text, there were times when it seemed that the singers were not fully internalizing the music, though there were others where the music seemed to speak for itself. The English translation in the program helped enormously in understanding both the figurative and the literal meaning of the piece.
And the two soloists - baritone Thomas Jones and soprano Carol Mastrodomenico - made up for any flaws in interpretation with their expressive emotion and stage presence. Jones joined the choir for the third and sixth movements, filling Cousens with powerfully rich vocals. Mastrodomenico, who teaches voice at Tufts and directs the Tufts Opera Ensemble, produced a gorgeous and completely unforced sound on the fifth movement - which was quite possibly the most beautiful and moving section of the entire piece.
The concert was the result of a semester's worth of labor on the part of all three choirs and the Tufts Symphony Orchestra. While the orchestra, currently under the direction of interim conductor Chris Younghoon Kim, has made several other appearances over the semester, the group has made this Brahms Requiem concert its major focus.
The orchestra and choirs reunited yesterday at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall for a concluding engagement to their weekend of Brahms Requiem performances.
