Mendelssohn Choir shines in Pittsburgh Symphony’s mostly choral program

In the final subscription program of the calendar year, Pittsburgh Symphony Music Director Manfred Honeck led his ensemble in a thoughtfully offbeat program that verged on the spiritual. Three of the five selections engaged the distinguished Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, singing in as many languages. A busy weekend for the Mendelssohns with the PSO’s annual Messiah performance falling in between the two offerings of this program. 

Reena Esmail composed RE|Member for the opening of the Seattle Symphony’s 2021 season. Emerging out of the pandemic, this was not a typical season opener, and the work leans into that significance. The piece opened with an oboe solo from Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida – but instead of being presented live, she was projected onto a video screen, recalling the only option one had for attending concerts during those solitary days of lockdown. With thundering timpani, the orchestra joined with vigor and all the requisite excitement of a curtain-raiser. The work closed with another oboe solo, this time with DeAlmeida rejoining her colleagues in the flesh.

Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine is a youthful work, but one of the composer’s first important conceptions. Lush harp and strings opened, and the Mendelssohn Choir added a sumptuous layer to this gorgeous hymn. Only five minutes in duration, this gem of a piece says much in little.

Brahms’ Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) is something of a spiritual cousin to his German Requiem, occupying a similar sound world. Gentle, pondering beginnings were deftly shaped in a carefully nuanced reading. As the trajectory reached upwards, the chorus entered, fittingly speaking of the music of the gods high above. Chorus and orchestra were astutely blended, each enhancing the other. Warm brass and blankets of strings had a calming effect, but were upended by stormier material given with conviction. The Friedrich Hölderin setting ends at that point, though Brahms diverged and returned to the material from the opening to close on a hopeful note.

Fauré’s Requiem excludes a Lacrymosa, so it was clever programming on Honeck’s part to preface the work with the standalone Lachrymosa: 1919 by Adolphus Hailstork. Written in 1994 for the 75th anniversary of the Virginia Symphony, it skirts the purely celebratory and instead acknowledges the founding year of 1919 as a particularly dire time in American history – and Black history especially. Scored for strings alone, Hailstork employs a piquant chromaticism sustaining a somber mood; I was somewhat reminded of Barber’s Adagio. The orchestration thinned and the principal string players were given solo passages that invoked African-American spirituals.

Unlike the boldly dramatic requiems of Verdi or Mozart, Fauré’s is restrained and reflective. This was an ethos apparent from Bar 1, wherein a strident opening gesture immediately retreated inward. The Offertorium opened with the chorus alone, purveying a monastic austerity, and introduced baritone Joshua Hopkins whose clear diction and directness gave a no-frills reading.

The Sanctus was angelic with some delicate touches from the violins, a quality maintained through the Pie Jesu which put the lovely voice of soprano Jeanine De Bique front and center. The work proceeded with dignified purpose, landing on the closing In paradisum, with its ethereal touches of the gently rolling organ. At the end, Honeck held the audience in reverential silence — and one certainly felt spiritually warmed before leaving Heinz Hall into the cold December evening.