Hallé/Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Since Hans von Bülow first dubbed Verdi's Requiem "an opera in church vestments", the debate has continued as to whether the work, written to honour the passing of the Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni in 1873, is an authentic liturgical setting or a secular music drama masquerading as a mass.

A symphony hall offers an ideal middle ground, with no props and costumes to detract from the work's spirituality, nor lingering incense to smoke out its agnosticism. Judging from this performance, there is little doubt in conductor Mark Elder's mind that Verdi was a theatrical composer whatever the occasion.

Elder precedes the work with a dramatic pause so prolonged it fills up with a Pinteresque sense of foreboding. He then shapes a performance that is pure drama from beginning to end. The chorus is entreated to hiss the words "Quantus tremor est futurus" (How great a terror there shall be) through clenched teeth; before a quartet of natural trumpeters ominously appear at the top of the steps and take aim, like mobsters entering a speakeasy.

There is something slightly sinister about the soloists as well - the towering Russian bass Mikhail Petrenko lugubriously rolls his eyes during his proclamations of death, while tenor Stefano Secco sings with a limpid tone which seems to intensify rather than assuage the terror. Mezzo Stephanie Blythe brings a commanding gravitas to the performance, and Claire Rutter is a more-than-adequate replacement for the disappointingly absent June Anderson, though she swallows the perilous pianissimo top C at the conclusion of the Libera Me.

The Halle Choir joins forces with the London Symphony Chorus to create a mega-choir of magisterial power, from the lulling sweetness of the Agnus Dei to the almost painful sound-pressure levels generated by the Dies Irae. The Day of Wrath has never sounded more furious.

Contributor

Alfred Hickling

The GuardianTramp

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