Review: A deeply felt Brahms German Requiem from Fabio Luisi, Dallas Symphony and Chorus

Given music’s ability to comfort in difficult times, many composers have penned musical memorials. Some have been settings of traditional Latin texts of the Requiem Mass for liturgical use, from Johannes Ockeghem’s in the 15th century to Maurice Duruflé's 1947/1961 version. Other composers, notably Berlioz and Verdi, have used the texts in large-scale, dramatic concert works.

Other composers have chosen their own texts, Frederick Delius paraphrasing Friedrich Nietzsche and others, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem interspersing Latin Requiem texts with words of the war poet Wilfred Owen.

Johannes Brahms, whose German Requiem was performed Thursday night by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, led by music director Fabio Luisi, stuck to biblical texts — but Brahms’ own choice, from Luther’s German translation of the Bible. The catalyst for its composition was the February 1865 death of the composer’s beloved mother, but not until 1869 was its complete seven-movement version premiered in Leipzig.

Although raised a Lutheran, the intensely private Brahms left no record of his religious views. Never explicitly Christian, the texts of A German Requiem acknowledge deeply felt loss but also imagine resurrection and joyous afterlife.

The seriousness of the words — and music — has prompted some conductors to lugubrious tempos, but metronome markings almost certainly from Brahms suggest dignified mobility. Luisi’s deeply felt performance never lacked momentum, even as it allowed for lovingly shaped phrases and gracious yieldings at just the right moments.

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In part because choral sound projects so powerfully from the Meyerson Symphony Center’s choral terrace, I sometimes think the DSO uses too many singers to balance the orchestra. In this case, the Dallas Symphony Chorus, prepared by director Anthony Blake Clark, completely filled the choral terrace, and sometimes overwhelmed Brahms’ relatively restrained orchestration. Sections of the chorus were well balanced among themselves, although tenors might have used a little more tonal buffing.

The chorus sang as expressively as Luisi conducted, from glowing pianissimos to heroic proclamations. But in German, that consonant-driven language of forward vowels, too much of the diction was mushy. (English translations were projected in supertitles.) In a work like this, if consonants and vowels feel wildly exaggerated to singers, they’ll be about right out in the room.

Luisi carefully balanced the orchestra, trumpets and trombones ever so subtly touching in parts that are mainly texture fillers. The optional organ part is another texture filler, and although Bradley Hunter Welch could be seen pressing keys and pedals, in only three places was there the slightest evidence of organ pedal sounds. (Welch is playing a solo recital on the Meyerson’s C.B. Fisk organ at 3 p.m. Sunday.)

Soprano Golda Schultz sang expressively, although I would have welcomed upper notes more floated than projected. Matthias Goerne, with his dark, covered baritone, was certainly communicative, but an almost operatic physical dramatization — repeatedly grasping the podium rail — was a bit distracting.

Here’s a plea for future DSO and Chorus performances of two other gorgeous Brahms works about death, Schicksalslied and Nänie.

Details

Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $52 to $227. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.