Saturday night at Hill Auditorium, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra made good on the glitter and excitement written into the words "opening night.''
The orchestra began its 78th season in a big way, in a big hall that is not its usual home. The audience rose for the "Star Spangled Banner;'' board president Jane Wilkinson announced the concert's dedication to those indefatigable supporters of Ann Arbor music making, Jim and Millie Irwin; and, with A2SO Executive Director Mary Steffek Blaske and Scott Westerman by her side, beamed the spotlight on longtime music educator Marijean Quigley-Young, on stage to be honored with the dedication of a cello chair in her name, sponsored by Westerman and his late wife, Marcy.
That was the prelude. The real glitter - and the reason for the hall switch from the Michigan Theater to Hill - was next to come, and it arrived with a whisper, with the opening chords and words of Verdi's "Messa da Requiem,'' the composer's grand and personal tribute to Italian patriot, author and friend, Alessandro Manzoni.
The requiem is at once grand - a full-evening work, highly dramatic, expertly deploying the resources of full orchestra, chorus and four soloists - and personal - spare as often as it is rich, filled with personal monologue and reaching out to the individual listener as much as to the group. And to paraphrase the old Levy's rye bread commercial, you don't have to be Catholic to enjoy - or appreciate - this requiem. It can grab everyone by the throat, holding fast till its last notes.
The "Requiem'' that A2SO Music Director Arie Lipsky led Saturday - with the University Musical Society Choral Union as the choral force and Melanie Helton (soprano), Deanna Relyea (mezzo-soprano), John Charles Pierce (tenor) and Gary Relyea (bass-baritone) as soloists - made its mark more strongly with grand statement than with the heart-piercing personal directness of which it is capable. It took the listener's breath away more with its stronger moments than its quieter ones - which were powerful still, though more through the composer's writing and highly competent, but rarely gripping, execution.
But turbo power is vital in this requiem, which has as its heart the "Dies Irae.'' And turbo power both orchestra and chorus (superbly prepared by its Music Director Jerry Blackstone) had in thrilling measure Saturday. They unleashed a Day of Wrath vivid with the flash of lightening, the crack of thunder, winds howling and rain driving in sheets. The music - and music-making - were awesome in the original sense of the word. Believers might be terrified, evil-doers fearful. Considering myself neither one nor the other, I sat back and reveled in the sound and fury, as one might from behind glass on a stormy day. Wonderfully, there was no protective cover in the "Tuba Mirum,'' with the trumpets sounding antiphonally from balconies and stage, "scattering a wondrous sound through the tombs of all lands,'' as the text puts it.
The work's opening and closing, like many moments in between, were hushed. The opening was particularly effective - though one wondered if the sound could have been even less - as it was, for example when the Swedish Radio Orchestra and chorus appeared in this work at Hill in 2001.
The soloists did yeoman work throughout. The most satisfying singing, perhaps, came from Helton, but Gary Relyea was wonderfully prophet-like in his pronouncements, and Deanna Relyea and Pierce delivered moments touching and clarion as well.
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©2002-2008
Ann Arbor Symphony
220 E Huron St., Suite 470
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734) 994-4801
