Stunning Verdi from Currentzis and Musica Aeterna

(review from September 2022)

I just finished one of the greatest performances I've ever experienced of the Verdi Requiem, Perhaps part of that was that it was filmed live on 12 April 2019 at the Church of San Marco in Milan, the same venue Verdi conducted the premiere 145 years before. The acoustics of the baroque church are lively, reverberant and in it, Teodor Currentzis and Musica Aeterna give a performance quite unlike any I've heard, shaping the music and filling the space with something as vital as the air within it.  

The unconventional (and still somewhat controversial) conductor and his band of young players and singers pour everything into the score and one senses musicmaking coming from the very depth of their souls.  All of this adds into an experience that is among the most spiritual encounters with this music one is likely to hear.  The mass is never treated operatically - a tough feat since the music is some of the best "opera" Verdi gave us.  Currentzis can be tough to watch at times, over-emotive, batonless hands floating into space, his odd attire, but then the camera catches him transcendent . . . we sense the itensity of the communication between he and his musicians and, it is something beautiful to behold.  

Interesting also to see, instead of the standard "stand and deliver" (and there's not a thing wrong with that) performances we're used to, watching a 100 piece orchestra and 80 voice chorus swaying, moving and not holding back the physicality of their playing and singing.  At times, such as moments of the Dies Irae and Libera Me, the sound AND appearance is as one of watching people trying to escape the very fires of hell - entreating . . . imploring from the depths of their soul - to be freed, to be saved from damnation.  It's impossible not to feel this.

I've heard of none of the soloists before, but a better quartet today one would be hard pressed to think of.   Soprano, Zarina Abaeva; Mezzo, Ève-Maud Hubeaux; Tenor, Dmytro Popov, and Bass, Tareq Nazmi all shine beautifully, emotions pouring from them, the texts delivered like Shakespearean monologues.  

Popov has a slightly covered sound without the squillo or ping we often hear (and want) from Italian tenors - or who sound like Italian tenors, but it is a beautiful, mellower sound.  Ms. Hubeaux (with enormous earrings that look like those worn by the young Callas) has a depth of sound that is formidable and her delivery of the Liber Scriptus is perfection.  Formidable is also the word I'd use to describe Mr. Nazmi, whose voice fairly thunders in his music. 

Zarina Abaeva is a soprano we could use a lot more of these days.  A big, but clean/pure sound she can pump out the volume, color the voice with a sweetness in the delicate higher sections, but is lacking nothing at the bottom of the range.  For the Libera Me, Currentzis has her moved from the front where the soloists had been, to the middle of the chorus and the effect, again both musically and visually, adds something extra. 

The Requiem ends and Currentzis remains motionless, transfixed, as do the 180 musicians he's just led.  One  - or at least I - expects a thunderous ovation, but instead, the audience sits in reverence as the musicians process out of the sanctuary as silently as they had entered.  I was, and not for the first time, in tears.