Review: Stutzmann dedicates ASO’s intense Mozart Requiem to Ukraine victims

With orchestras and opera companies around the world protesting Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, it was time for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to add its own voice. An insert in Thursday’s program printed the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag, with the words to the long-besieged country’s national anthem, “Ukraine’s Glory Has Not Perished.”  

With her purring and warm contralto speaking voice, conductor Nathalie Stutzmann spoke to the audience about this “senseless war of aggression.” She mentioned being deeply moved by the social-media video of a musician in Ukraine who, brushing aside bomb debris from her piano, played the instrument one last time before evacuating.  

“We are just musicians,” Stutzmann said. “We have no weapons. But we must do what we can, and we offer what we can give: our music.” The ASO’s music director-designate dedicated the performance of the Mozart Requiem to victims in Ukraine, with “hope for goodness and humanity to rise above it all.” 

The audience solemnly stood. The ASO Chorus, almost 200 voices strong, sang the anthem in Ukrainian. Written in the 1860s, banned for most of the 20th century, it returned only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. With music by Mykhailo Verbytsky, the anthem evokes earthy, heartbroken Slavic folk music (a vocabulary that was also picked up by Mussorgsky). This is music of suffering and determination.    

Not surprisingly, the Mozart Requiem that followed held all its usual power and sorrow, and much more. Stutzmann’s reading was unusually swift and intense, faster than I’ve ever heard in performance and likely much faster than this orchestra and chorus has ever experienced — where gravitas is typically expressed through accumulated weight and where slower tempos suggest a deeper exploration.

But here something curious happened: Instead of diminishing the expected profundities, Stutzmann operated by a different set of performance standards. Some conductors, in an attempt to de-romanticize a work, will take a “historically informed” approach, getting the orchestra and choir to make the music leaner, swifter, brighter and more crisp in articulation. 

Stutzmann, as an early-music contralto, comes out of that world. But here she opted for the grandeur of the full ASO Chorus (not the smaller, Classical-era Chamber Chorus), and while she scaled back the size of the orchestra, it was still robust enough to counterbalance and partner with the huge mass of singers at the back of the stage. Through it all, her grand conception — perhaps we should call it Stutzmann’s personal approach — enhanced the work’s meaning. 

After a rather traditionally paced opening movement, Requiem aeternam, the second movement, Kyrie eleison, zipped along at top speed, where each overlapping fugal line barely had time to register. Lord have mercy, the waves were crashing in, almost all at once.  

The Dies Irae, a battering-ram of music for Judgment Day, was also super-fast, which kept the performers on the edge of their seats. But the clarity and focus of the chorus, prepared to such exacting standards by Norman Mackenzie, remains a wonder to hear.

The quartet of operatic vocal soloists were stationed mid-stage, in front of the chorus and behind the orchestra. This setup looks and feels appropriate, where the individual singers aren’t the stars of the show up front but, rather, embedded in the tapestry of the Requiem. Unfortunately, this setup sounds terrible, as if the singers were in a different room. Any nuance in their voice evaporates in Symphony Hall’s muddled acoustics and beneath the loud whoosh of the air conditioner.

Still, the four singers had strong voices. Bass Burak Bilgili, who has sung a charming Don Pasquale at Atlanta Opera, here offered the Requiem’s Tuba mirum with powerful tones. Tenor Kenneth Tarver was bright and tangy in tone. The women came off a bit better. Soprano Martina Janková and mezzo Sara Mingardo, two gorgeous voices, sang their parts like they were characters in The Magic Flute, full of personality and attention to the texts.

The opening sections of this Requiem were slow to fuse together — understandable with an unfamiliar conductor at the podium and with an often extreme interpretation. The chorus came together with the Rex tremendae movement, where the words “Rex” and then “salva me” were so light, on a pillow of air. Breathtakingly beautiful.

They were likewise superb for the heaven-and-hellfire images of the Confutatis maledictis, backed by a wonderful trio of trombones, led by Nathan Zgonc, the three of them standing for menacing effect. 

This was the ASO’s first post-Covid regulations concert. With pandemic protocols lifted in Symphony Hall, everyone could perform without masks. For the chorus, that meant uninhibited vocalizations and clarity of projection. For the orchestra, no masks meant no more open-collar, all-black attire, for comfort. They returned to traditional white-tie-and-tails formal wear. 

The evening opened with a touching scene. As Stutzmann arrived on stage, the crowd gave her a hearty standing ovation. Perhaps because she’s relatively new to this conducting business, or because it really is her personality, but she seemed surprised and touched by the support. Unlike too many maestros, who might be excellent conductors but never seem to relate to their audience, Stutzmann put her hand to her heart and you believed she was sincere.

Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration was the only other music on the formal program, a celestial, big-orchestra tone poem on the fear of death and making peace with one’s own life, then slipping away into spiritual release and blissful death. The cascading melodies, hyper agitation and glorious woodwind solos have long played to the ASO’s strengths under Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles. Stutzmann, as with everything, brings her own vision to this familiar music and has everyone hearing it anew.   

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Pierre Ruhe was the founding executive director and editor of ArtsATL. He’s been a critic and cultural reporter for the Washington Post, London’s Financial Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was director of artistic planning for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. He is publications director of Early Music America.