No rest in Brahms Requiem for Seraphic Fire and guest singers
— David Fleshler, South Florida Classical Review, 6/6/11
For two weeks, 50 aspiring singers drilled with the professionals of the Miami choir Seraphic Fire at a choral boot camp of sorts at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Their work culminated in performances of Brahms’ German Requiem, presented Saturday in Tampa and Sunday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale.
The singers at the front of the church clearly had a different tone from that of the dozen or so who usually perform for Seraphic Fire. Textures were fuller, less distinct and softer around the edges, without the almost piercing clarity that Seraphic Fire brings. But the difference may have been more reflective of the intentions of the composer, who wrote the work in the golden age of amateur choruses and used 200 singers at its 1868 world premiere at Bremen Cathedral.
And despite the larger forces, the chorus performed with surprising agility, as in the middle section of Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras, and in strongly marked fugal passages. Sopranos sang with particular warmth and brilliance in the work’s closing passages.
Artistic director Patrick Dupré Quigley took brisk tempos throughout. This decision brought an exciting momentum to Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt – in which the text says the dead shall rise in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, with a powerful crescendo in the chorus – and in the third section’s long fugal passage over a pedal point in the piano.
But Quigley’s tempos also cost the work something in breathing room and seriousness of tone, as in Selig sind die Toten, or Blessed are the Dead, in which the fast pace seemed hurried.
The singers performed the British version of the work, a Brahms arrangement that replaces the orchestra with four-hand piano accompaniment. Taking on the thankless task of imitating an orchestra were pianists Justin Blackwell and Scott Jarrett, who handled their parts with intelligence and sensitivity, playing with enough power to support the chorus but without making the piano shake by attempting to achieve full grandeur.
Paul Tipton sang the baritone solos with a darkly lustrous voice, bringing an urgency to the passages of death and resurrection. Soprano Teresa Wakim brought a radiant voice to Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, words of comfort for mourners.
The Sunday performance was under the auspices of the Professional Choral Institute, a collaboration between Seraphic Fire and the University of South Florida, where Seraphic Fire singer and chorus master James K. Bass is director of choral studies. The combined forces have recorded the British version of the Requiem, and the CD should be released in August.
The members of Seraphic Fire also performed Frank Ticheli’s There Will be Rest, a short work of slowly changing, gently dissonant harmonies that profited from the choir’s absolute clarity and even tone.
