Mason Bates & Gil Shaham
Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra presents Brahms’s German Requiem
By Linda Holt
The Philadelphia Orchestra hit the trifecta last weekend with a savory program of music inspired by humanity’s spiritual journey as Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a world premiere by Mason Bates, Luis Ernesto Peña Laguna’s Oraison for chorus and orchestra, and Brahms’s massive A German Requiem.
If anything, this program of works embracing contemporary and classical values was almost too much good music to absorb and appreciate, and that is not a complaint. The concert opened with Bates’s colorful Nomad Concerto for violin and orchestra, starring violinist Gil Shaham (for whom the piece was written) and an abundance of exotic percussion instruments. (Rutes and Thai gong, anyone?) Laguna’s multilingual work headed the second part of the program. For the Brahms finish, the stage and conductor’s circle teemed with 174 musicians and choristers as the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, in its usual superb form (directed by Joe Miller), took the stage alongside the orchestra, featuring soprano Jeanine De Bique and baritone Christopher Maltman, each guest soloist tucked neatly in a high corner of the conductor’s circle overlooking the stage.
The Nomad Concerto by itself is an absorbing, moving, and sometimes convivial delight, with Shaham navigating the technical difficulties of the score like an Olympic skier racking up gold medals. Ornamenting the work with spiccato (bouncing), pizzicato (plucking), and techniques I never dreamed possible, such as playing legato and pizzicato at the same time, Bates takes the listener through four encounters (literally “movements”) in the nomad’s life. These are the Song of the Balloon Man, Magician at the Bazaar, Desert Vision: Oasis, and Le Jazz Manouche. Whether you listen to this as an integrated, 25-minute concerto or focus on a particular section (I loved the soulful third movement, based on a Jewish song of sorrow and hope), the work is a breath of fresh air. It elevates and entertains, reminiscent in many places of Berlioz’s viola masterpiece, Harold in Italy.