"Saint Matthew's Passion" — Alive and A-Livin' in 'Bama!
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| Posted on April 22, 2000 at 18:44:40 | ||
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Charlie F. 
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The Struggle 'n' Strife and I attended the Alabama Symphony Orchestra's performance of Papa Bach's "Saint Matthew's Passion" last night. (Hey! They played the piece on the one day of the year J. S. wanted it done!) Our young ASO is most honored to be led by Richard Westerfield (former assistant — and, later, associate — of the Boston Symphony conductor; second conductor [behind Ozawa] with the Vienna Philharmonic; and many guest conducting dates in the States and abroad), and he kicked butt last night, ably assisted by members of our ASO, a boy's chorus, an adult chorus, and guest soloists from New York and elsewhere. Tempos were natural, dynamics supported content, phrasing was complete (by this, I mean that phrases ended cleanly and precisely), and the balance was impeccable (save the bass soloist, who tended toward providing volume about one marking too quiet for much of his singing). The performance felt Baroque, without being straightjacketed into some idealized picture of what that might mean (for example, concertmaster Daniel Szasz's solo featured a breadth of vibrato and use of portamento that I myself would consider more a Romantic approach than Baroque … but it sang beautifully and fit into the fabric of the overall performance extremely well). The soloists diction was extremely impressive, with very clear enunciation of the endings of words throughout. The almost three hour long performance seemed less than half that length. Thankfully, the Birmingham audience also rose to the occasion, with very few plebian solos (!) being offered by its members (well, never mind the lady sitting behind me who periodically used her program as a guest instrument in the percussion section). We have a relatively new performance hall, the Alys Stephens Performance Center, here in town and, well, it ROCKS! It is not a large venue (oh, I don't know … I'd guess it seats vaguely 2,000–2,500 people), and it has very good acoustics. My wife and I have season's tickets to the "Masterworks" series about 2/3 of the way back on the main floor, but we got seats in the middle of the 8th row for last night's performance — and were treated to a marvelous matching of clarity and blending of all the voices. All in all, I'm glad I didn't stay home and drink beer. Yours beatifically,
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| Mengelbeer <nt>, posted on April 23, 2000 at 02:20:51 | |
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Rob
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| Errr....... Mengelberg that is <nt>, posted on April 23, 2000 at 02:23:12 | |
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Rob
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