The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was fortunate to have secured the services of veteran conductor James Conlon last year as “Artistic Advisor,” to help transition between the directorships of outgoing Marin Alsop and incoming Jonathan Heyward (who starts this fall). Conlon, Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera and guest conductor with all of the world’s major symphonies, brought his mature if somewhat stolid skills to bear on one of the greatest masterpieces of the choral/orchestral canon, the Verdi Requiem. Last night’s performance at Strathmore was their third go-round, and everything sounded clean and secure.

Joined by the Washington Chorus under Eugene Rogers (has the BSO’s own choir gone by the wayside?) and a terrific quartet of soloists – soprano Michelle Bradley, mezzo Yulia Matochkina, tenor Russell Thomas, and bass Morris Robinson, Conlon presided with understated authority, leading the massed forces through the 90-minute work without a score and without a lot of shaping but still with firm control.  

The BSO is a fluid instrument these days, lacking (according to their website) a principal flute, principal horn, and principal bass, and there were numerous strange faces in the cello section last night. So it was a pleasant surprise to hear such a well-tuned and cohesive performance, no weaknesses anywhere and superb intonation from the brass. I don’t know why the antiphonal trumpets in the Tuba Mirum were stuck backstage instead of up in the balconies as is done everywhere else; we got only a simulacrum of Verdi’s heaven-storming effect. But the bassoon section positively blazed in the Libera Me, and its principal handled the difficult undulating solos in the Quid Sum Miser with expressive mastery. The strings dug into the Dies Irae figurations like the furies were after them, and the many bass drum and timpani strokes were balanced just right all evening.

The Washington Chorus was good though not great. The sopranos didn’t attack high notes with unanimity, and the virtuoso Sanctus was shaky in spots. On the plus side, they were clearly drilled on diction, and the soft singing had a nice luminosity.  

Diction was more of a problem with the otherwise-excellent soloists, the women in particular. Without consonants there is no text – everything becomes just a vocalise -- and even following along in the program it was sometimes hard to tell where Bradley and Matochkina were. Robinson left off the “s” in his repeated “Mors,” but he and Thomas were otherwise significantly clearer than their colleagues. All four artists had healthy, robust voices, though Matochkina and Thomas became blurred in the quartets as the soprano and bass dominated.  And I don’t know why the women needed to sing so loudly in the Agnus Dei; Verdi marked it dolcissimo, and the gossamer orchestration throughout would’ve allowed them to float the sound without any force at all.  

So those would be my quibbles as to an overall highly-satisfying rendition of this titanic monument. The Verdi is heard somewhere in the region almost once a year, and it is a gift every time. 

James Conlon Photo credit ©Bonnie Perkinson