If you ask the Pittsburgh Symphony’s conductor, Manfred Honeck, it wasn’t a trumpet that brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down in the Bible.
No — it was the trombone.
In Mozart’s time, there were traditions and idioms in writing music that were generally understood by the concert- and church-going public, including using the trombone to represent the voice of God himself. And on Friday at the symphony’s performance of Mozart’s ecclesiastic “Requiem,” a large-scale work with far beyond the typical musical forces, trombones were indeed majestic in their proclamations.
Oh, also the actor F. Murray Abraham of the movie “Amadeus” and streaming show “White Lotus” fame was there to give dramatic readings during pauses in the “Requiem.” These included snippets from the Book of Revelation, a letter from Mozart to his father regarding his own mortality and some poetry. Abraham was spirited and direct, his delivery was earnest and free of melodrama.
Also onstage were four vocal soloists, a soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass, as well as the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh. Members of the Westminster Choir stood in the balcony to interject brief Gregorian chants, another death mass tradition from 18th century Salzburg.
Mozart didn’t actually finish the “Requiem” before his death at the age of 35. To build an evening out of the fragments, Honeck — a devout Catholic himself — stitched together other works by Mozart like the “Masonic Funeral Music” and the “Ave Verum Corpus” in addition to the chants and readings to build a program that he’s conducted elsewhere in the world for a decade now.
“It is a spiritual thing, really, but it is not tied to any religion,” Honeck told me prior to the concert. “We are all united in confronting death. This is a meditation, really, a chance for depth.”
The performance alternated musical performances of the highest quality with religiously tinged traditions. (Even Abraham seemed to adopt a bit of a preacherly tone at times.) It was certainly reflective, but the spiritual overtones were unquestionably Catholic in nature. Blending an orchestra performance with such delicate subject matter raised questions: Is this an artistic experience? Is it a sermon of sorts? What is the message?
There’s no question that it was beautifully delivered. Honeck reduced the orchestra significantly, as a smaller complement of musicians would have performed the mass in Mozart’s day. This was wonderful — articulations were crisp, textures were transparent and flexible — there was some superlative playing Friday. The choirs, too, were powerful.
But as for a message, the performance wasn’t a statement so much as a ponderance of the mystery of death. It was a touch unsettling. That’s a compliment; it was certainly something different than a typical concert.
The first half of the program was more traditional. The evening opened with a touching performance of Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony (the throughline’s easy to spot, there). Winds were butter smooth, though strings could benefit from a little sharper articulations in the first movement; they were a tad mushy. To accommodate the extra musicians onstage, the timpani had been moved — from my position on the upper level, and it sounded significantly louder than normal. Something to keep an ear on Saturday and Sunday.
Finally, flutist Lorna McGhee shone in a world premiere work by composer James MacMillan. Both musicians are from Scotland and have known each other for decades. The work was inspired by a Tennyson poem, “Mariana,” having to do with intense grief. The work began with some rumbling chords, punctuated with silence before the flute began to soar and sing. There were moments of intensity and some excellent playing from the ensemble as a whole but the music itself came off as overly fragmented and seemed to undercut its own emotional arc.
Perhaps it is unfinished.
This concert repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets begin at $20 at pittsburghsypmphony.org.
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; Twitter @Reynolds_PG. His work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.
First Published: March 18, 2023, 4:00 a.m.
