RICHMOND —
Eastern Kentucky University’s new Center for the Arts aimed high as it hosted its first highbrow event Wednesday.
After two country stars, an old rocker and the King of Blues, the center welcomed the Munich Symphony and the Gloriae Dei Cantores choir from Cape Cod.
While some large U.S. cities struggle to maintain a symphony orchestra, Munich, the capital of Bavaria, boasts four. With that embarrassment of riches, the city that gave birth to Oktoberfest can afford to loan one of its orchestras for an American tour.
Bavarians are reputed to be more carefree and fun-loving than their uptight Prussian or even Rhineland cousins. However, the Munich Symphony demonstrated its players have a passion for precision they can apply to strong emotion for a beautiful result.
The Bavarians fearlessly opened the concert with Arnold Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night,” music that some may think too heavy for a provincial American audience, even a university town.
The audience listened attentively, however, seeming to hang on every note and musical nuance as 30 violins and violas, five cellos and four basses drew a musical picture of a married couple’s troubled night that concludes with transfigured morning.
Schoenberg, a Viennese native, wrote “Transfigured Night” at age 25 in 1899. The mood of the Austrian capital that once whirled to the waltzes of Strauss is said to have fallen into a fatalistic despair as the century ran down, somehow anticipating the Austrian empire’s defeat in World War I, its dismemberment by the Treaty of Versailles, its descent into Nazi madness and the near annihilation of the city’s Jewish community to which Schoenberg belonged.
The brooding sounds of apprehension and struggle the full orchestra graphically portrayed in the work’s early stages gradually gave to a quiet relief, deftly and sensitively interpreted by a few players.
After being rewarded with warm applause, the orchestra left the stage for intermission.
It returned with five brass and four woodwind players, a timpanist and the 40 voices of Gloriae Dei Contores. They were joined by four soloists in a performance of Mozart’s “Requiem.”
Both choir and orchestra were led in splendid fashion by Phillippe Entremont, the symphony’s conductor. With his stocky torso and wavy, light gray hair, he also looks the maestro’s part.
The “Requiem” is another brooding piece that some orchestras would not consider playing for a small town audience. Mozart kept working on the “Requiem” even as he lay dying, but he did not quite finish it. Commissioned by an anonymous patron, the work could be considered the composer’s own funeral oration.
The choir demonstrated that Americans can hold their own with Germans who are the heirs of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
The choir’s website states it purpose is, “To illuminate truth and beauty through choral artistry and to glorify God through a faithful interpretation of two millennia sacred choral music.”
Those who braved a light rain to hear their rendition of the “Requiem” learned that is no idle boast.
The male soloists sang well, but sopranos Julie Cherrier and Valentina Fleer get some special praise from a music lover who is partial to female voices.
Just as the trumpets led the instruments, Cherrier and Fleer stood out among the singers. Their harmonizing duets seemed to magically multiply their voices. I had to glance at the chorus to verify no one else sang during their duets. Together they were far greater than the sum of their parts.
For me, at least, the orchestra and chorus again proved that music, especially Mozart’s, reveals a reality that resides beyond the material world.
Recently, EKU played host to Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist in the English-speaking world. Wednesday night’s concert was an appropriate counter point.
I defy any scientist or philosopher to refute this proposition: “If there were no God, there would be no Mozart, no Bach and no Beethoven. There is Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. Therefore, God and eternal life are real.”
Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.
Lifestyles & Community
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Bill Robinson
Munich Symphony, Gloriae Dei Cantores soar in concert at EKU Center for the Arts
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