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SYMPHONY REVIEW
February 20, 2004
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By Jeff Dunn
The strength of incomplete Mozart and the weakness of incomplete programming characterized the most recent Oakland East Bay Symphony subscription concert. Music Director Michael Morgan led a superbly well-rehearsed
Symphony Chorus and excellent soloists in choral music that overshadowed a fine new orchestral work by Ann Lathan Kerzner.
The C-minor Mass was composed during Mozart's infatuation with new wife
Constanza and old-fashioned composer J.S. Bach. Little more than half the Ordinary
was set, and in a mixture of styles. Arias come from Italian opera, fugues
from Bach, and turns of choral phrasing from Handel. Even the Messiah
tunelet on "Hallelujah" seems referenced in Mozart's setting of "in
excelsis." Are the mixtures and gaps a problem? Hardly. The "incomplete"
Mass, starting with the performing version put together by Alois Schmitt in
1901, has been rightly declared one of the greatest settings of all time.
Soprano Aimée Puentes sang confidently and gloriously. Her fellow soprano
Julia Hunt Nielsen was a joy as well after minor intonation problems in
the Laudamus te. Tenor Jushua la Force and baritone David Britton were also
excellent though their parts were smaller. Who knows what Mozart would have
had in store for them had he fulfilled his promise to complete the work?
But the incomplete Mass does not a complete concert make. Scheduled to begin the first half of the concert were the ever-ready Mozart "Ave Verum Corpus" and the Adagio from Ann Lathan Kerzner's symphonic work, Diary of the Damned. The eleven-minute movement was labeled a World Premiere. But the five-minute Mozart wasn't enough to make for a satisfactory complement to the first half. So Music Director Morgan chose to wrap up a Mozart sandwich for patrons, sticking the Kerzner in the middle of repeated Corpuses and asking for no intermediate applause. Much as I ordinarily appreciate creative approaches to programming, this solution seemed a mistake. It did a disservice to Kerzner. Her music was too distinctive to be footsocked into a Mozart shoe. Unlike Mozart's, her three-movement work is complete. Why not perform it in its entirety? Give Diary of the Damned equal time. According to Kerzner, the full work "depicts the journey of a tortured soul." Perfect! You can then bring the soul back to church in the second half. Kerzner writes that her work began as a simple melody "that just wouldn't go away!" The theme is a great one that cries out for variations and combinations in the tradition of the Elgar “Enigma” or the theme by Frank Bridge varied by Britten. The middle movement performed in Oakland, for strings and harp only, has plenty of counterthematic and structural interest, with an agitated central section building up to a fair climax. Yet it nevertheless seems incomplete in itself. The ideas seem too big for the forces in the adagio movement alone. When the real premiere including the other movements for full orchestra is presented, perhaps then a masterpiece will be unveiled.
(Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in Geologic Education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of NACUSA, a Bay Area correspondent for the journal 21st-Century Music, and President of Composers, Inc.)
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Aimée Puentes
Julia Hunt Nielsen
Ann Lathan Kerzner