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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
February 24, 2006
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By Michelle Dulak Thomson
Antonin Dvorák's Stabat Mater is one of those pieces once popular, subsequently shunned. The market for long and
mainly lugubrious choral music isn't what it once was. Which is a pity, because there's a marvelous wealth of music in this piece,
as the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, and guest soloists demonstrated Friday night at Oakland's Paramount
Theater.
Dvorák wrote the work in the wake of the deaths of three of his children in swift succession. The text is a medieval
depiction of Mary's sorrows at the foot of the Cross, and it has prompted composers to lengthy settings before. (Joseph Haydn's
marvelous ca. 1770 one is probably his longest sacred work.) Still, Dvorák's is probably longest of all, and as a consequence
it is not much performed.
This is a pity, because the music, as music, is excellent. There are, to be sure, places where the most charitable ear becomes
weary. (The tenor-and-chorus number "Fac me tecum" comes to mind — no tune can sustain that number of repetitions.) And in
general the sheer scale of the piece becomes oppressive after a while. But it's all vintage Dvorák, full of color, full of
melody — and, in many places here, full of pain. Those who know Dvorák mainly as a composer of cheerful symphonies and
dances might be surprised by the anguished harmonic twists in this piece, or for that matter by the stark F# octaves that open it
(and come back at the last).
The Oakland forces, all in all, did well by the piece. There were some strange things going on occasionally in the woodwinds (intonation was distinctly "off"), but otherwise the playing was splendid. The chorus was well-balanced and attentive. I could have wished for better text-projection, but we did all have the text before us. And the soloists were also fine, even if a couple were over-parted. Hope Briggs, the soprano, was exemplary, and Kalil Wilson's tightly focused, Italianate tenor was a treat. Mezzo Lisa van der Ploeg and bass Craig Phillips, though, each ran into tough territory when their parts got too low — Phillips in "Fac ut ardeat" and van der Ploeg in "Inflammatus et accentus." Important notes were hardly audible. Both sang excellently in their more accustomed ranges, but I am left wondering why a real contralto and a real bass couldn't be found. OEBS Music Director Michael Morgan pledged to do at least some Mozart on every concert this "Mozart Year," and this time it was the overture to Lucio Silla, played with grace and dash that I hardly expected to hear from these quarters. The "Mozart Year" continues to exceed expectations.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America,
and The New York Times.)
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