Horns Find a Haven in a Sacred Setting By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim May 15, 2013 After a long season that recently culminated in punishing marathon performances of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, the brass players of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra could have been forgiven for taking a breather. Instead, they assembled in full force on Tuesday evening at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for a scintillating if acoustically challenging concert of sacred and secular music arranged and conducted by John Sheppard. For this occasion the ensemble, which performs as the Metropolitan Opera Brass, was padded with additional musicians to a total of 44 players including 4 tubas, 16 trumpets and as many trombones. The first half of the program was given over to the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, whose antiphonal motets the ensemble recorded on their latest CD, “Sacrae Symphoniae.” Those recording sessions, too, took place in this gigantic church, which, with its 124-foot-high nave and occasional vocal interventions from the cathedral grounds’ peacocks, must offer a giddy change from the orchestra pit. But even Gabrieli’s majestic compositions, which were intended for spatially separated ensembles in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, suffered in these soupy acoustics. The concert was presented as part of the series Great Music in a Great Space, but while the playing was genuinely magnificent, the enormous reverberations, which muddied the harmonies and then amplified the resulting dissonances, quickly became grating. In Gabrieli’s “Mass” the perfectly voiced brass chords sometimes sounded as if played by an organ. The sound was most satisfying in the “Toccata” from Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” in which the jubilant trumpet flourishes and quick repeated notes in the trombones managed to come through with majestic grace. Mr. Sheppard’s arrangements skillfully wove ever-changing textures with one group of players while allowing individual soloists to stand out. A selection of opera scenes, which the ensemble previously recorded, showed off the multifaceted colors that brass instruments can produce, including velvet-soft horns and lyrical trombones. The touching sweetness of Mozart’s “Soave Sia il Vento” from “Così Fan Tutte” was beautifully translated into hushed, woodwind-like horns. But the heavy reverberations clouded the gently undulating textures and one chromatic modulation turned garish as neighboring keys clashed in space. The unpretentious charm of “Vilja Lied and Waltz” from Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow” fared better, with exquisitely delicate dabs of tuba underpinning, but never overpowering, the waltz, and a final chord puffed up with just a touch of crescendo. Thanks to the admirable clarity of Mr. Sheppard’s conducting - himself a trumpeter - entrances were always precise and harmonies perfectly voiced. For the concluding “Spem in Alium” by Thomas Tallis, the players stood in a semicircle with the sound gradually moving in a rolling wave from one side to the other until it crested in a glorious, rib-shaking fortissimo that settled in the listener’s body long after the final reverberation subsided.
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Horns Find a Haven in a Sacred Setting
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
May 15, 2013
After a long season that recently culminated in punishing marathon performances of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, the brass players of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra could have been forgiven for taking a breather. Instead, they assembled in full force on Tuesday evening at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for a scintillating if acoustically challenging concert of sacred and secular music arranged and conducted by John Sheppard.
For this occasion the ensemble, which performs as the Metropolitan Opera Brass, was padded with additional musicians to a total of 44 players including 4 tubas, 16 trumpets and as many trombones. The first half of the program was given over to the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, whose antiphonal motets the ensemble recorded on their latest CD, “Sacrae Symphoniae.”
Those recording sessions, too, took place in this gigantic church, which, with its 124-foot-high nave and occasional vocal interventions from the cathedral grounds’ peacocks, must offer a giddy change from the orchestra pit. But even Gabrieli’s majestic compositions, which were intended for spatially separated ensembles in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, suffered in these soupy acoustics. The concert was presented as part of the series Great Music in a Great Space, but while the playing was genuinely magnificent, the enormous reverberations, which muddied the harmonies and then amplified the resulting dissonances, quickly became grating.
In Gabrieli’s “Mass” the perfectly voiced brass chords sometimes sounded as if played by an organ. The sound was most satisfying in the “Toccata” from Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” in which the jubilant trumpet flourishes and quick repeated notes in the trombones managed to come through with majestic grace.
Mr. Sheppard’s arrangements skillfully wove ever-changing textures with one group of players while allowing individual soloists to stand out. A selection of opera scenes, which the ensemble previously recorded, showed off the multifaceted colors that brass instruments can produce, including velvet-soft horns and lyrical trombones.
The touching sweetness of Mozart’s “Soave Sia il Vento” from “Così Fan Tutte” was beautifully translated into hushed, woodwind-like horns. But the heavy reverberations clouded the gently undulating textures and one chromatic modulation turned garish as neighboring keys clashed in space.
The unpretentious charm of “Vilja Lied and Waltz” from Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow” fared better, with exquisitely delicate dabs of tuba underpinning, but never overpowering, the waltz, and a final chord puffed up with just a touch of crescendo. Thanks to the admirable clarity of Mr. Sheppard’s conducting - himself a trumpeter - entrances were always precise and harmonies perfectly voiced.
For the concluding “Spem in Alium” by Thomas Tallis, the players stood in a semicircle with the sound gradually moving in a rolling wave from one side to the other until it crested in a glorious, rib-shaking fortissimo that settled in the listener’s body long after the final reverberation subsided.