Saturday night, March 23, Maestro Jacques Lacombe led orchestral and choral forces in a stirring performance of Mozart’s Requiem, K.626. The programmed concert opened with Elegy, a 1953 work by long-time New Jersey resident Edward Cone, followed by Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D.759, “Unfinished.”
Mozart had a premonition of his death while composing the Requiem, and Schubert may have stopped composing his “Unfinished Symphony” over bad news about his health. Laurie Shulman’s program notes tell how Mozart received his inspiration for the Requiem in the form of a cash commission from an unidentifiable visitor, a messenger sent—it was learned after Mozart’s death—by Austrian nobleman Count Walsegg-Stuppach. The grieving count intended the composition to honour his recently deceased wife. Mozart’s own demise left completion of the Requiem to his gifted assistant Franz Xaver Süssmayr, but before dying “Mozart became convinced that a messenger from the netherworld had been sent: that he was composing his own Requiem.” These intrigues figure prominently in the conclusion of the 1984 Peter Shaffer film, Amadeus.
The program notes also point to Franz Schubert’s much-too-brief life (1797-1828) and the diagnosis in 1822, the year he composed his “Unfinished Symphony,” of a life-threatening disease. He was age 25. Perhaps this news stopped the creative outpouring and halted composition on this moving work, the poignant music of which conveys at once a certain sadness and urgency.
Maestro Jacques Lacombe—wearing slate trousers and coordinating charcoal jacket over a black mock turtleneck—performed both the Schubert and the Mozart from memory. The less-formal yet nonetheless elegant look may be the maestro’s way of making the orchestral music experience more relevant to modern audiences.
The “Andante moderato” of Schubert’s Eighth Symphony brought spontaneous applause. Maestro Lacombe shaped the several interwoven musical themes, from scurrying strings and pizzicato contrabasses and cellos to stormier sections, with finesse, maintaining tension throughout. The whispering violins and warm French horns of the “Andante con moto” contrasted with spot-on orchestral tutti, making it difficult to disagree with Laurie Shulman’s comment: “Live performance leaves us hungry for the two movements [the Unfinished Symphony] lacks.”
Soloists in the Requiem were soprano Christine Brandes, mezzo-soprano Suzanne Mentzer, tenor Gordon Gietz and bass Robert Pomakov. The Montclair State University Singers numbering 70 members were crisp on attacks, subtle in softer passages. The entire ensemble including orchestra was one united whole in delivering the power and subtlety of Mozart’s sublime score.
Christine Brandes, when not singing, was engrossed in the performance, noticeably stirred by chorus and orchestra in the more rousing passages. She sounded best in the “Domine Jesu” of the “Offertorium” section, especially leading the round sung by the soloists on the line “Sed signifer sanctus Michael.” Plummy Suzanne Mentzer and booming Robert Pomakov brought a richness to the “Ricordare” quartets and the penultimate “Benedictus.” Gordon Gietz nicely acquitted the smallish tenor role with winsome voice, leaving one wishing to hear more from him. The chorus ironically was most touching in the delicately quiet passages of the “Lacrimosa” with its weeping violins and whispered opening line and the “Agnus Dei,” though the powerful “Dies irae” and “Rex tremendae” were also highly moving.
Chorus, soloists, orchestra, conductor and chorus master all received a spontaneous, well-deserved standing ovation, generating plenty of audience energy in exchange for the powerful evening’s performance.
Overheard in the lobby: “The first piece they played was obviously twentieth century. It was hard to remember a tune.”
“There was no tune.”
“But it was still very nice.”
A special treat not on the program had come as a sort of curtain raiser. Four members of Greater Newark Youth Orchestra played the first movement of a Franz Joseph Haydn string quartet. The youngsters gave a spritely performance and were warmly and enthusiastically applauded.
Not quite so enthusiastic was the audience’s reaction to Elegy, by Edward Cone, perhaps due to it’s being unfamiliar. Maybe New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, with its creative programming, can do something about that.
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