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By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts CriticThe Master Chorale of Tampa Bay accents the Florida Orchestra's performance of the Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.
TAMPA - Sacred music by two of the more secular composers of their respective times - Mozart and Stravinsky - made up the first choral program by Stefan Sanderling as music director of the Florida Orchestra.
It was a triumph, one of the best of the half-dozen masterworks programs he has conducted, thanks in no small part to the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, singing at the absolute top of its form.
Sanderling, orchestra and chorus performed the Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms Friday night in Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
The art of orchestration was something of a theme in the program, whose two works complemented each other in satisfying fashion.
Stravinsky eliminated violins, violas and clarinets from his score, but the absence of those instruments' warmth of sonority was more than compensated for by the glorious sound of the chorus, prepared by its artistic director, Richard Zielinski.
The chorus built to a powerful sense of exultation in the Latin text of the opening psalm. Winds and voices were intricately joined in the sublime double fugue of the second psalm. The spiky rhythms of two pianos gave an almost jazz feel to parts of the third psalm.
Mozart died before he finished the Requiem, and this weekend's performances feature a reworked score with somewhat scaled-down orchestration by pianist and scholar Robert Levin, generally improving upon the original completion of the work by Sussmayr.
Levin, whose version of the Requiem premiered in 1991 for the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, actually left much of Sussmayr's handiwork relatively untouched.
But there are a few surprises, most notably the "Amen" that closes the Lacrimosa, the last section Mozart composed. From a six-note theme Mozart had scribbleddown, Levin created a sumptuous fugue.
Sanderling has a clear beat and expressive body language that drew a dramatic performance from the enormous chorus in sections such as the lushly contrapuntal Kyrie and the energetic Dies Irae.
Donald Zegal was the trombone soloist in the Tuba mirum. The vocal quartet was excellent, especially the silvery soprano of Laura Whalen.
Requiem performances inevitably are tempered by thoughts of what might have been. Even with ingenious editing, the last few sections of the mass can't help but be a bland anticlimax. It's music by Sussmayr and Levin, not Mozart.