Guest soloist Nathan Laube shows the power of Overture Hall’s Klais Organ.
Grandiose organ music and one of the most beautiful of choral works comprise the final program of the Madison Symphony Orchestra season, with a special dedication to a long-time benefactor, the late Margaret Winston.
The pre-choral filler comes first, a Concert Piece for Organ and Orchestra by Charles Villiers Stanford, a British late Romantic in the tradition of Brahms (composer of the program’s choral piece). Really a 20-minute concerto in three movements, it is a nice workout for the soloist but its musical content is slender.
The guest soloist, Nathan Laube makes the most of it, and, as if this showing off of the Overture Hall’s Klais Organ is not enough, he offers an encore. At the May 5 concert, that was the first movement of the Organ Symphony No. 6 by Charles Marie Widor — a French contemporary of Brahms. This is a thunderous test of both instrument and performer, and Laube showed just what the Klais powerhouse can do.
The last MSO season program always involves the Madison Symphony Chorus. They are put to work in Ein deutsches Requiem, or A German Requiem, by Johannes Brahms, one of the very greatest of choral composers, as well as a master of so much else. Unlike the Latin liturgical Mass for the Dead, this work uses various scriptural texts selected by Brahms from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible. The resulting spirit is less the dread of death and more assurance to the departed and consolation to the living.
The chorus does most of the work in this score. For this program the chorus includes 166 singers, a pretty huge aggregation. It has certainly been carefully prepared, but numbers and the distant stage location of the chorus makes for a thick sound, with diction problems. To be sure, both the German texts and translations are printed in the program, but they are unreadable in the darkened hall. English tags are, however, projected as surtitles, which is helpful. Overall, the choral sound is smooth and luscious.
For the work’s solo functions, soprano Devon Guthrie is satisfyingly maternal in the movement inspired by the death of the composer’s own mother. But Timothy Jones, with a light, high-baritone voice, sings perfunctorily and with little force for the texts in his two solos.
Conductor John DeMain chooses tempos that are broad and rather slow, for very monumental Brahms.
The program repeats May 6 at 8 p.m. and May 7 at 2:30 p.m. at Overture Hall.
