Verdi Requiem
Usher Hall, 24/8/24
Philharmonia Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, conductor, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, soprano, Jennifer Johnston, mezzo, Rene Barbera, tenor, Tareq Nazmi, base
A good but not a great performance! That was my feeling at the end of the Verdi Requiem at the Usher Hall last night. Of course there was great applause from the fairly full hall; notably there were an unexpected number of empty seats in the stalls, possibly reflecting resistance to the high prices. This is a great work although as my father used to say more an opera than a Requiem! We also had a fine orchestra, The Philharmonia, under the flamboyant baton of their principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus in fine voice under the direction of James Grossmith. Yet I was left underwhelmed at the end.
The reason for this was in part the soloists, and the regrettable realisation that I have heard many Verdi Requiems in my more than fifty years of concert going, and that this unfortunately did not stand comparison with the very best. Indeed writing this review I am listening to what many critics acknowledge as the greatest ever live performance of the Requiem. It is the opening concert of the 1982 Edinburgh Festival, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the great Claudio Abbado and with four of the finest soloists ever, Jessye Norman, Margaret Price, Jose Carreras and Ruggerio Raimondi. On that occasion I was sitting in the front row of the stalls a few feet away from these great singers. The good news is this recording is filmed and recorded to a very high standard and is available on YouTube. I would highly recommend it.
Is it fair to compare last night’s Requiem with this great performance? I believe so. It is the job of the critic to be critical, yes to share the pleasure of the performance, but also to say it could have been better. The soloists last night were good but not great, firstly the tenor Rene Barbera who comes highly recommended as winner of the Operalia competition sounded a little shrill at times and lacked the beautiful tones of Carreras. The bass Tareq Nazmi again has a good international reputation; he has a very deep bass voice which last night at least lacked the range to reach the lighter baritone tones which are needed to light up this work. I liked the mezzo Jennifer Johnston, who was also well received critically when she sang the Requiem with the RSNO last year. It is invidious to make comparisons with the frankly incomparable Jessye Norman, but a comparison might help us to understand why, even at its best, this Requiem failed to lift our spirits. A similar comment might be made about the fourth soloist. The soprano, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, won the song prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World in 2021 and recently sang the Requiem in Salzburg. She is maturing into a very fine singer, but maybe a way to go to stand comparison with the wonderful lyrical voice of Margaret Price.
Of course every performance of any work cannot be the best, but we make critical judgements on the basis of our knowledge and experience and that’s what I’m doing here. It was a good but not a great performance.
