Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos conducted last night with singers Albina Shagimuratova, Alice Coote, Eric Cutler, and Alfred Walker.
(Michael J. Lutch/Boston Symphony Orchestra)
Music review
The Virgin Mary’s suffering, Rossini’s theatrical charm
Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos conducted last night with singers Albina Shagimuratova, Alice Coote, Eric Cutler, and Alfred Walker.
(Michael J. Lutch/Boston Symphony Orchestra)
Stravinsky once quipped that “composers commit fewer musical sins in church.’’ Yes and no, in the case of Rossini’s “Stabat Mater.’’ Rossini began his setting of these medieval Latin lamentations not long after his early retirement from opera, and what he produced is hardly the kind of buttoned-down, somber affair we might expect for these wrenching portraits of Mary’s grief as she stood before the cross.
Rossini’s score is often soaringly lyrical, full of boldly theatrical choral writing and flashy vocal solos. Sure, the piece taps various traditions of sacred music, and you can sense the composer was on his best behavior at certain moments, as in the mournful opening or the fugal Amen near the work’s conclusion. But more often, Rossini’s stage instincts were irrepressible as he produced one sensuous, colorful, and dramatically expansive movement after another.
Or so it seemed last night at Symphony Hall in a rousing performance delivered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and a fine quartet of vocal soloists under the baton of Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos.
The BSO had presented the work once before, in 1974, but Fruhbeck de Burgos has made it a staple through the years in his various guest conducting appearances with other orchestras. Last night, conducting from memory, he led a well-managed, spacious account that granted the music room to breathe and sustained a dramatic arc that did justice to the score’s extroverted theatricality.
Tenor Eric Cutler brought handsome Italianate phrasing to the famous “Cujus animam’’ solo, a curiously upbeat depiction of Mary’s anguish. Soprano Albina Shagimuratova sang with strength, clarity, and the required penetrating intensity in the “Inflammatus’’ and elsewhere. Mezzo Alice Coote rendered her solo with a moving expressivity, and Alfred Walker deployed a particularly robust and shapely bass.
It was a great night for the TFC, which sang with force and polish and rose to the occasion for the challenging writing of the ninth movement as well as in the finale. You can take the composer out of opera but, in this case, you cannot take the opera out of the composer: His “Stabat Mater’’ ended with a seasoned dramatic punch that lacked only a descending curtain. Last night the ovation was swift and enthusiastic.
The evening opened with the Overture and Incidental Music to Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ in a solid account, though the levels of charm and effervescence varied widely. The two pieces worked well enough together, but this night was really about the Rossini.
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